Growing old disgracefully

Beer garden season seems to have officially opened in Japan now, which means the fake palm tree and spring roll industries are booming. Buildings across the metropolitan area are unfurling their spiky green astroturf, Hawaiian shirts are being reluctantly buttoned up and everyone, including us, is rushing toward the beer machines. Saturday night was one such example, where we headed to Himeji for Andy's 27th birthday. The sensible had to end eventually, I suppose.

We spent most of Saturday morning constructing Andy's present which ended up being, for some reason, a packet of bubblegum, a Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday card with liberal use of the C word and something else I probably shouldn't mention in polite company. Suffice to say, it was won out of a very dodgy UFO catcher and was intriguingly called a "spider". He hasn't told me why yet.

We got to Himeji for about 6 and headed to the Forus beer garden, where we were unceremoniously presented with a beer mug. The girls were also given some flower hair clips that the boys seemed more interested in wearing. The theme there is "coconuts", meaning that the whole thing looks like the kind of bar you'd see in a 70s Miami Beach cop show. Some girls in Hawaiian dresses stood next to the beer machine ready to pour, looking much less happy about it than the increasingly drunk patrons. Andy said they get paid more by the hour for being dressed like that - they lose a couple of bucks for putting a jacket on, apparently. I'm not sure if he just made that up. In any case, we got our beer and sat down amongst heaping plates of chicken nuggets, sausages and just about anything else you can think of battering and frying. I think I heard Jamie Oliver scream every time I took a bite.

The sun started to dip over the horizon and as the gold disappeared from the sky, the lanterns came on. Kicking back on top of a breezy building and watching the city light up is one of the best bits about summer here. 9 o'clock hit pretty quickly and Auld Lang Syne started piping through the speakers to get rid of us. The Japanese folk we were with insist it's a happy song and the resulting argument continued all the way to the elevator as we finished our drinks and shuffled out. This was probably the point we should have hopped on the train back home, but instead we followed everyone over to Himeji's most notorious pub, with me wobbling along on Andy's bike. Everything seemed like a good idea by this stage, it seems - one guy asked me if I would be interested in playing a Dungeons and Dragons campaign set in Burma. "Sounds great," I said, trying to keep my eyes pointing in the same direction.

A lot of things happened at once then - I vaguely remember the pub owner showing up and smashing several glasses one after the other, for example. I stepped back to take a photo and felt a hilarious amount of beer soak into my pants, then I was in the kitchen stuffing a tea towel into my back pocket to soak it up. Then a guy was shouting over the top of Kevin Bloody Wilson about how much he approved of Lisa. Then the owner was dancing on top of a table without a stitch of clothing. "That's why he owns this place," Andy said, "so he doesn't get chucked out for doing that". The sun also seemed to be coming up - it was time to go home. On the way, we grabbed ourselves some food from the convenience store so that we didn't feel awful in the morning.

We felt awful in the morning. Lis and I woke up at the same time and made the same noise, the kind of noise you make when you're offended at how bad you feel. In my case, I felt like my brain was trying to kick out my eyeballs and escape through the sockets. We eventually surfaced from the room, Lisa croaking about how she was too old for this, and Andy joined in with the same sound. We switched on the TV to a show about cheeseburgers and the stomach-lurching sight of grease dripping off cheese just about did it for all of us. Eventually we struggled to our feet, said some half hearted farewells and stepped out into the eye-watering sunlight. Lis and I went straight to McDonalds, then a message from Andy confirmed he had gone straight to KFC - that's how bad it was.

Clothes still stinking of smoke, we struggled through our train trip home and crashed out on the couch for the rest of the day, vowing absolute piety for at least the next few weeks. We'll see how that goes - there's an ominous sounding "Kobe scavenger hunt" coming up on the 19th, and I hear one of the challenges may be to make a necklace out of beer cans. We're also all dressing up as Mario characters, it seems - this could be trouble. Stay tuned for photos, there is an 85% chance of hilarity.