I had no idea it was St. Patrick's Day until...

Posted on 2006/03/18 02:26:58 (March 2006).

[Friday 17th March]
By the end of Friday, me and my favourite drinking companion at work decided we had both done enough for this week, and so left very much on time to head out for the evening. We went over to Roppongi, so my colleague could meet a friend from the broadcasting industry, and it also meant I could invite Chie along.

We started off the evening in the Hobgoblin - arguably the best English pub in Tokyo. Upon entering I found an overwhelming number of gaijins (i.e. non Japanese people) in there - I really don't think I'd ever seen so many in one place before. Then it occurred to me - it was St. Patrick's Day! We stayed for dinner and a few pints, and there was a really good atmosphere, very much a little piece of England (or Ireland?) in some far off land.

Right on schedule, around beer number three, the desire to go for karaoke overtook me. So we went to a really classy place in Roppongi, of the box/booth variety. I'm reliably informed it is used by the workers of TV Asahi. It was very clean and nicely designed (karaoke places can be a bit grotty at times). One of the rooms even had a jaccuzzi in, but this seemed a little over the top for the purposes of this evening, so we went for a regular room. I'm not sure how long we were there, I guess an hour or so. Again it was a really good atmopshere - we'd clearly brought some of the St. Patrick's Day spirit along with us from the previous bar.

Chie headed home after the karaoke place, but my thirst for night life was clearly not yet quenched, and so I dragged my colleague over to Shinjuku (actually it is on the way home for us), into the karaoke bar we often go to there. The St. Patrick's Day theme seemed to be carrying on there - a number of people had shamrocks painted on their faces and so on. I am surprised by how big it is in Japan -at least in the gaijin community.

At some point we left the karaoke bar to go for a curry. It's a sort of tradition me and my colleague have developed, at the end of a good night out (like going for a kebab I suppose).

...however this actually didn't seem to mark the end of the evening, as we went back to the karaoke bar for a bit longer afterwards.

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