The other day I was craving some bibimbap so I went to this little Korean restaurant around the corner. The only customers were me and a couple of older Japanese businessmen. The businessmen were having a really good time. There had an empty wine bottle and were working on a bottle of whiskey so I figured they had already had quite a few drinks. I sat alone, finishing off my bibimbap, when the two guys asked if I wanted some whiskey. I told them I was ok, but pretty soon they had the owner bringing over a glass and then they motioned me over to sit at their table. So, I headed over and they poured me another glass of whiskey. They didn’t speak any English so it was pretty difficult to talk to them, but they were enthusiastic about attempting to communicate. They gave me their business cards and I gave them mine. It turns out that one of the guys is the CEO of a construction company. They asked me all kinds of things. They wanted to know if I was in the military and how many countries I had been to. They were particularly interested in China. When I ran out of Japanese they started dialing numbers and handing me their phones so I ended up talking to several of their coworkers and one if their sons in attempts to translate. One of them started singing Elvis and Beatles songs. A young Japanese couple walked in the bar and somehow the businessmen convinced them to translate things for us. I felt sorry for the couple, but then the guys started passing them drinks as well. I was sitting with these guys for over an hour and they were being totally ridiculous. They refused to let me pay for my meal and eventually a cab arrived to pick them up. I thanked them for everything and then they were off. It was an unexpected adventure.
In other news, I found this gnarly Japanese Band called Maximum the Hormone and I’ve had a lot of fun listening to some of their stuff.
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