Look, I’ll be straight with you from the get-go. This one is kind of embarrassing for me… ^_^”

So a friend of ours (who’s name I won’t mention) met up with us in Shinjuku to take us to some of his favourite bars. I had been dying to go to my own favourite bar in Shinjuku, “GODZ: The World Heavy Music House“, so Sari and I started our night there, head-banging to awesome rock and metal tunes. Our friend met us there, had a Drink and some food, then we took off for his favourite bar.

“My friend will meet up with us tonight” he told us. “Oh cool, the more the merrier” I replied, or something along those lines at least.

We arrived at Deca Bar Z. I was immediately interested as their was some impressive Dragon Ball Z inspired anime artwork covering the walls of their establishment. 

We entered, and the DBZ theme was no longer apparent. Instead, we sat at a small table, and began to check out the drinks menu. Not many people were out this night, there was a few people along the bar but it was otherwise pretty dead. Except for the incredibly apparent video footage repeating on nearby TV screens of Completely naked girls dancing around in the very bar we were sitting in. And I mean VERY naked. As it turns out, this is a typical Friday night event for this bar, and we were there on a Saturday, so we had missed out on naked frolicking by less than 24 hours. Alas, we were out for a fun night with our friend, so no big deal.

I asked said friend “So when is your friend coming to meet us?” to which he replied something vague like “My friend will come soon, she’s just on the train”. I wasn’t too sure how long we’d stay at this fairly quiet bar and was expecting to move on shortly, so concerned this friend of friend would not know where to meet us, I continued to question along the lines of “Is your friend going to meet us at this place? If she’s going to be a while, should we meet her somewhere first or tell her which place we’re going to next?”. He was confident that we should stay seated and wait, so wait we did.

Whilst waiting for the friend of friend, we had a great laugh at the drinks menu. “Haribo” shots were available, which according to the photo was a shot of God-Only-Knows-What spirit, with the glass full of Haribo gummy bears (heck yes we’re doing that later!), and of the utmost hilarity was my drink of choice, “Absinthe Sperm”. 

“Haha, crazy Japanese bad translations” I scoffed, looking forward to my delicious aniseed Absinthe drink. Little did I know, the name was completely intentional. No, there was no actual sperm in my drink, but good lord was the consistency something resemblant of sperm. With each sip, the drink literally stuck to my lips, creating a sticky thread of “Absinthe sperm” from my lips, to the lip of the glass. Being the mature guy I am, many NSFW jokes were made, and we laughed about that particular drink for the rest of the night (and sometimes we still do!).

“My friend is here!”. Finally, friend of friend had arrived. She entered the bar, briefly said hello to our friend, then ducked into a room behind the bar, rolling a small suitcase behind her. Shortly later she emerged with a different outfit, a light blue one-piece dress if I recall correctly. 

“Well, she takes going out seriously” I thought, but that’s pretty typical of most girls I know – nothing suss. Yet.

Friend of friend came to sit with us, and friend bought a bottle of champagne for us and friend of friend to share. I’m not a big fan of champagne but hey, he offered it to us to share so I got in the spirit of the night and enjoyed it to honor this new friend-of-friend-friendship.

By this point in the night there was a 2-3 small groups of people spread around the bar drinking. Suddenly friend of friend remembered that she was also friends with the small group of people across from us, and after a glass of champagne she swiftly moved over to sit and chat with them. 

“Gee your friend is popular!” I said to my friend, completely unaware thus far as to the scenario I had been placed inside. 

“Ahaha, yeah she has many friends who come here” he replied. 

My friend was briefly distracted and Sari nudged me in the ribs and whispered something along the lines of “you know what’s going on right? …”. 

“What…?” I replied, completely baffled. Sari had no chance to inform me without making things awkward, so she could only respond with “… I’ll tell you later”. There may have been a “you idiot” in there somewhere, which would have been completely fair.

Note: Neither of these girls are the friend of friend

The night carried on and friend’s friend moved from group of people to group of people in the bar and rarely spent any time siting with us. I was a little upset by this. My friend had invited his friend all the way out but she was barely spending a moment of her time with him. 

“Does she really know all these people? Is she just a huge flirt?! OMG is she flirting with all these guys while our friend is sitting here feeling embarrassed?!?!”. I was so completely and entirely confused by this situation.

A little longer went by and we all agreed it was time to move on to a new bar. We decided to finish the night with a (drum roll) Haribo shot! With a disappointing total of 1 gummy bear inside!

SAN! Ni! ICH! KANPAI!

We took turns smashing back our Haribo shots so we’d be able to film each other’s expressions. I can shot anything. Whiskeys, vodkas, gins, tequilas, absinthe or grappa – no problem. But this… this was just horrible. Not Haribo. Horrible. Infact “horrible” has a new scale. “From 1 to Haribo”. We had one last laugh at Deca Bar Z then began to move on. 

“Your friend isn’t going to join us?!” I said to our friend. “No, she is going to stay here with some other friends” he replied. I thought that was a little rude of her but hey, she bumped into other friends tonight and I don’t know her exact relationship with any of them (yet).

The rest of our night bar-hopping is rather irrelevant to the story. It wasn’t until Sari and I were alone that she finally got to get it off her chest.

“SHE WAS A HOSTESS!” Sari told me.

“A what?!” I replied, somehow still oblivious that this is even a thing in Japan.

“A hostess! She wasn’t our friend’s friend. She didn’t just happen to bring a suitcase with a change of clothes to a random bar, then proceed to the staff-only area to get changed. She worked there and get’s paid to entertain the male customers!”.

A good 2 to 3 years passed whilst I stood there, jaw dropped and heart broken. 

“But… he said it was his friend.” I said to Sari.

“That’s the culture in some parts of Japan – it’s hard to make real friends so they go to host or hostess bars and pay to be friends with the staff”.

And just like that, for the second time in forever I had a brief feeling of “Oh no, Japan’s not as beautiful, sweet and innocent as I had always believed”.

And if you’re wondering what the first time was – let’s just say I learnt the word “Massaji” while a Phillipino lady attempted to grope me. But don’t get me wrong – Japan is still so beautiful, sweet and innocent despite a few little oddities!

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