Khan & Konpa

It’s another Monday and once again I can look back at another kickass weekend, one that ended up taking me from one end of Hyogo to the other. Friday night was drinks, Mexican food and Jenga at Jeremy’s in Shukugawa. Give the amount of booze littering the house it was surprisingly low key and due my three hours of sleep the night before, I certainly wasn’t contributing much. I pretty much collapsed in a heap about one thirtyish only to be awoken about ten minutes later by Jenn taking flash photos of my pasty white legs and ungainly posture as I sprawled across the living room floor. Lucky I’m such a mild mannered gentleman (hah!) because being woken up by three successive flashes to the face is not the most pleasant experience. Needless to say, I was all ready to instigate a swearing match but thankfully common sense kicked in, I bit my tongue and went back to sleep.

People arose early on Saturday, Lorna and Jenn shot off to meet someone else and Mel, J and I nursed our coffees and worked out a plan of attack that would allow us to see Batman Begins before I had to rush off to Himeji and meet Susanne in the afternoon. We decided the only possible option was at the Diamond City Mall in Itami, right near Osaka. So we raced for a train, split up with Mel at Shukagawa, and made our way towards Itami. Batman was great. With Nolan at the helm and Bale, Freeman, Cain, Neeson and Oldman playing key roles I suppose that’s not surprising. It was much better than I expected it to be though. Villains vanquished and a new appreciation for spelunking fostered, I bid goodbye to J and grabbed a train for Amagasaki from where I could get a connecting train towards Himeji.

Had a great coffee and chat with Susanne at St Marks in Himeji. We managed to destroy a large proportion of their cake selection before I had to think about moving on again, this time heading toward Ako for the main event, Genghis Khan! Susanne and I grabbed a train westward. For a rough idea of the geography of the day, check this map. Jeremy and I had come from somewhere near Nishinomiya in the south east corner, gone to Itami at the very east, and then I’d shot back to Himeji in the south west, before heading to Ako in the very far south west. I left Susanne to head home in Aioi, and headed on to Ako.

Nick had left me a bike and a hand-drawn map at his apartment. Apparently the place where we were to ingest huge amounts of sheep meat was on the top of an extremely large hill behind Ako. No problem, I thought, I live in what seems to be the hilliest suburb in the entire world, it shouldn’t be a problem. By the time I’d got to the top of the hill some twenty minutes later, I was gasping for breath and ready fall on the floor and die. Thankfully the view from the top was awesome and beer was readily available on tap.

I have no idea why the Japanese call BBQ with sheep meat Ghengis Khan other than the obvious “He ate a lot of barbequed sheep in between razing cities to the ground.” Well, we certainly did eat a lot of meat. After we’d finished we retired outside, beers in hand, to admire the view. Once the pansies with their cars had taken their leave, we hard ass bikers went hurtling drunkenly down the hill to get cocktails at konpa and go to karaoke. We sang for three hours and when I woke up the next day my voice was completely and totally fucked, an excellent indication of night well spent. That morning we rode out past Sakoshi and had Okinawan food and hotcakes for brekky.

Jenga on Friday, Genghis Khan on Saturday and Champloo on Sunday, what a great weekend.

Posted in Japan on Monday June 27, 2005.