It Comes In Pints?

The four of us, Jose, Bill, McCann, and I, headed out to Shinjuku to hangout at an Irish pub for drinks and food. Yeah, I know it sounds funny to go to an Irish pub in the heart of Tokyo, Japan, but they understand English well enough and make great drinks. Plus I liked the place.

I ordered fish and chips, I think, along with my usual drink. I don’t drink beer, ale or lager, but loved me some vodka. I just can’t drink it straight so I had been drinking this apple vodka drink they served there; reminded me of a liquid Granny Smith apple with a kick.

Now compared to the US, many servings of food and drink are smaller than an American is used to having. A good example of this is Wendy’s. In Harajuku, there was one of two Wendy’s I knew of and I went there often for the spicy chicken sandwich which I ordered large sized and left full. When I left the military and I was back stateside, I found the large size I had been eating was roughly the same size a regular in the US. All that being said, the drinks I was drinking were not large ones and I put a couple away before I got halfway through my meal. That’s when I made my first mistake of the night.

I am not sure of the actually size of the drinks I had been drinking before, but after I emptied another glass the waitress ask why I had not been ordering them in pints and if I wanted one. At the time I didn’t realize this was a line form Lord of the Rings, but honest to God, my eyes got big like a kid in a candy store and I replied, “It comes in pints?” So I ordered one and made that first mistake. Now a pint is 14oz and a shot is 1.5oz. Out of my pint I would guess about 6oz of it was vodka (or about 4 shots) with the rest being an apple liquor and ice. Since I no longer remember how much I drank, my best guess is I drank about half a bottle of vodka before we left the pub.

Sometime later, we left the pub and I was feeling pretty good. I used to drink a lot back then so I was still functional, but very buzzed. Bill, who is the bass player for a Japanese death metal band, had to take off to see a friend perform so that left us to our own devices. McCann decided that he wanted to go to a strip club. I wanted to go home and play Xbox. I lost.

Now in my humble opinion, McCann just didn’t know what a good thing he had. He was an A1C (low ranking Air Force Enlisted) I believe, but he managed to end up dating Gena, this SSgt that was quite attractive and most guys (which definitely included me) thought about getting her in the sack. But instead of going home to her, he decided he wanted to see someone else naked. Last I heard, she was married and not to him. What I am saying is he is an idiot.

Of course we can’t find a strip club. Instead we came across a guy offering to take us to girls. What he was trying to do was to get guys to go to their gentleman’s club. In other words, you pay X amount of money to have a girl sit with you for X amount of time plus paying for drinks. Not my thing, but the idea appealed to the group. Well, two of the three of us. I still wanted to play Halo.

McCann tried to haggle price with the guy and failed. Honestly he sucked at it and we just told him to shut up and that he wasn’t allowed to talk. Originally it was something expensive like $50 a person for half hour or something like that. Jose, unlike McCann, is a ninja negotiator. I think he got it down to something like $50 for all three of us for over an hour or something like that. I didn’t pay it since I was more or less broke after all my drinking at the pub.

The guy then takes us a couple blocks to the club and we make ourselves comfortable. We order drinks and they ask what kind of girls we want. I don’t know if I made a request or Jose made one for me, but a blonde Russian ends up bringing me my drink and sits next to me. I like me Russian girls. I have accepted my drunk opinion that she was very attractive because I don’t remember and neither does Jose to doubt the claim so she was very attractive. Plus ugly girls don’t make places like that money. No one will ever know because I don’t have the brain cells that know the truth anymore. Those cells died later that night.

Right away we ran into a problem. I didn’t speak Russian and she didn’t really speak English and neither of us really knew Japanese. Two things I remember are her asking “You like vodka?” and “You like sex?” Not sure which question came first. But it led to my biggest mistake that night.

If you don’t get anything else from this story, get this. Do not, and I repeat DO NOT, go shot for shot with vodka against a Russian especially after previously drinking half a bottle yourself. It just doesn’t end pretty.

A couple things I do remember from my drinking with her are as follows. I gave her my number so that she could call me and I could teach her English. No clue what I was thinking other than more time with the Russian. Her hand was on my crouch quite a bit and her tongue down my throat a lot more. I didn’t have anything to complain about except that feeling you get when that last shot you took was one shot too many.

Now I am like 99% positive I started getting sick while still on the couch with the Russian. In other words, I threw up. But I have no idea where it went because I didn’t get any one me or her so I have no clue. There is always that 1% chance that I made it to the bathroom before I got sick. All I know is that I threw up a lot while I was hugging that toilet.

I confirmed this later with Jose because I wasn’t sure I remembered it right, but as soon as the girl got me to the bathroom she went into some weird Russian mother mode. No one including Jose or the guys that ran the club were allowed to get anywhere near me. They couldn’t touch me and I wasn’t going anywhere.

Now if anyone else has had this happen to you, I have to know because this is either the nicest thing anyone has done for me or the weirdest or both. I go with both. After I would throw up, this girl would make me drink some water only to shove her finger down my throat and make me throw up again. This went on for some time and I understand the reason for it. It does a great job of getting the alcohol out of your stomach.

Shortly after that, Jose told me that there was a hotel nearby and they were going to take me there. Jose grabbed me by one arm and someone from the club grabbed me by the other one and they carried me from the club. The next thing I know I am laying on a bed and very sleepy.

The next morning I wake up without a hangover. Thank you, Russian girl. I was a bit confused as to why I was in a Japanese love hotel, but a quick check determined that I was alone and still clothed. Still slightly tired, I crawled out of bed and made my way to a train station to get back home.

A couple days later, when I found Jose, I got a little more of the story and cleared up some details. I guess he went back to the club and drank with them some more and then to another club only to end up with alcohol poisoning. He spent a day in some Japanese girl’s bed while she nursed him back to a slightly more functional Jose.

Not sure if it is a good thing or not, I will go with good, but apparently Jose told the Russian were I was and she was going to come to my room. I am not sure if that happened though because one Jose accidentally locked the door as he left me there, and two, if she did show up, I was too dead to the world to hear her knock. I will never know.

The only other time I went out drinking after that was with the same guys and ended with us drinking Heinekens with the yakuza, but that is a different and less entertaining story.

NOTE: The photo isn’t from that night, but ifrom the night we drank with the yakuza.
From left to right: Jose, some Japanese waitress (Jose dragged her into the photo), Brian (behind Bill), Bill, myself, and McCann