I had a really good weekend.

Since my last blog post, I have infiltrated an entirely Japanese-speaking friendship group and I can confirm that as of Saturday I am one of the gang. A few weeks ago, Reishiro and I made some new friends when we were drinking in Nakano. The new friends, all of whom are Japanese and none of whom speak English, invited us out drinking with them this weekend. Reishiro is my housemate from the sharehouse I used to live in. He is currently a salaryman although he will be quitting his day job next month to go to sushi school. Then he’s moving to Colombia to open a sushi restaurant because, according to Reishiro, the Colombian visa is the easiest one to get.

Reishiro texts me telling me our new friends want to go for drinks and on Saturday we all meet in the upstairs of a bar in Nakano. In total there are six of us, three boys and three girls. I am the last to arrive and I sit in the middle of the girls, Haruna and Yoko. Reishiro is opposite me, with Ichiro and Naoki on either side of him. As I sit down, Reishiro tells me that Ichiro has been studying for tonight. Ichiro, a loud man in thick glasses, nods excitedly at me and claps his hands.

“Quiz him,” Reishiro instructs me.

“Quiz me,” shouts Ichiro in glee.

“Quiz him on what?”

“English.”

So I ask him what the capital of England is. Ichiro looks baffled. Reishiro translates the question and he still has no idea. Everyone waits and waits and Ichiro stares at the table in thought. Eventually Naoki answers for him. Ichiro smacks the table and shouts in Japanese that he knew all along it was London.

“You’ve embarrassed Ichiro,” Reishiro tells me. “He wanted you to ask him a question about English, not England.”

Despite the initial hiccup, conversation flows from there. I don’t always understand what is said but Reishiro does a great job as the middleman. Almost every minute, someone shouts, “Eyy!” and we all join in with an equally loud “Eyy!” and that is basically the conversation for most of the night.

They ask me why I am leaving Japan and I say that I miss my family. “We are your family,” says Ichiro. We all cheers to that and agree we are now a family.

“Ichiro wants to take you to eat real Japanese sushi,” says Reishiro.

More grinning and nodding from Ichiro. “Not convenience store sushi,” he says proudly.

“So you mean Sushiro?”

“Not Sushiro.”

“Kura Sushi?”

“Not Kura Sushi,” says Ichiro.

“Nicer than Kura Sushi,” says Reishiro. “Ichiro wants to take you out for expensive sushi. He will pay.”

I tell Ichiro it’s very kind of him to take the whole family out for expensive sushi and he tells me he isn’t taking the whole family out for sushi, he is just taking me. I pretend not to understand and I keep telling him how generous an offer it is.

Ichiro insists it would just be the two of us until someone finally says, “Ichiro, what about your wife?” Whoever says this is quickly shushed. As it turns out, Ichiro isn’t planning on inviting his wife.

We have a few more drinks and Reishiro starts telling them about our sharehouse. Pretty much everyone has moved out now and Reishiro starts reminiscing about our previous housemates. Then, out of nowhere he says, “Annie is feminist.” He says it loudly, like he’s outing me for having some kind of disease. Everyone looks at me and then at Reishiro and no one knows what to say. When we used to live together, every time I spoke to Reishiro he would always respond, “Okay, feminist.” If I said, “Reishiro, shut the fridge,” he would say, “Okay, feminist.” If I told him to stop drunkenly knocking furniture around in the middle of the night, from the bottom of the stairs he would shout up, “Okay, feminist.” It was never meant as a compliment.

Tonight no one seems to have an issue with me being a feminist so Reishiro quickly changes his tune.

“Actually, I think feminism is good,” he says proudly.

“No you don’t.”

“Yes I do. I learned so much about feminism from you. Now I think it’s really good.”

This isn’t the first time a Japanese boy whom I’ve taught not a single thing about feminism insists that they’ve learned so much from me. I tell Reishiro I have taught him nothing other than maybe how to pronounce the word.

His response of course is, “Okay, feminist.” And then he laughs loudly.

Reishiro orders some raw fish and skewered liver for the table. “I think maybe you don’t like this,” he says as the liver arrives in front of us. Reishiro enjoys telling me what I do and don’t like. I tell him I do like liver. “Hmm, maybe not,” he says. I tell him again that I do like liver and then I eat mine and Ichiro’s skewers to prove a point.

Yoko says she wants to eat shirako and again Reishiro tells her I won’t like it. I have no idea what shirako is and no one knows how to say it in English but I insist nonetheless that I will definitely eat it. A cluster-like white creamy blob arrives in a bowl and I pick some of it up with my chopsticks. Reishiro says he won’t eat it. Yoko eats most of it and I have the rest. It’s slimy and not particularly flavorsome. Once the bowl is scraped clean, I google it. I’ve just eaten half a bowl of cod semen.

• 

• 

As the night progresses, we get even drunker and move to another izakaya. We order more sashimi and a large bottle of sake. Reishiro starts singing Help! by the Beatles and everyone joins in. Next we sing I Want To Hold Your Hand and then All You Need Is Love. Finally I sing the intro to Yellow Submarine, expecting them to all join at the chorus. Reishiro stops me.

“That’s Oasis,” he shouts across the table. “That’s Oasis.”

“It’s not Oasis, Reishiro.”

“Yes it is. We only know the Beatles.”

We stop singing after that. Eventually I am so drunk, I’m practically falling asleep on Ichiro’s shoulder. Someone takes a picture of Ichiro excitedly smiling into the camera with me floppily leaning against him. I am shown the picture and I decide to take the train home after that.

Sunday is a little more wholesome. The next morning, I rise wearily at eight o’clock because I’m meeting my other former housemates, ShinYu, Fatou and Mami-san. We are taking the train out to Kawagoe to dress up in kimonos for ShinYu’s birthday. We pay 2000 yen (~£15) to be dressed in a full kimono. First we are told to select the one we want from the rack and this is a task in itself because there are so many and every single one is beautiful. After that, we put on thin white cotton robes that are worn as the undergarments. In front of a mirror, someone dresses each one of us and wraps the obi around our waist. After we are dressed, we sit on stools and have our hair plaited and beads slid into it. We look absolutely beautiful by the end of it.

Then we spend the entirety of Sunday walking around Kawagoe in full kimonos. The kimono itself is very comfortable but the shoes are not. Anyway, here are some pictures for you to enjoy. I hope your weekends were just as enjoyable. Thanks as always for reading!