[journal] We went to a club called Air. We got lost walking there because we only had landmarks to guide us (they also put me in charge of finding it, lol). There was one point I started vigourously sniffing the air and with a serious look on my face I asked "Do you guys smell pizza?" They started laughing because the question seemed sudden and random. I added, "I swear that's the smell of pizza." They started laughing harder. Then we hit a bend in the road and it was a pizza store and everyone cracked up. They didn't know I was asking because it was the last landmark before the club.
The Club
The club was secretly nestled away, behind a door, in the basement of a restaurant. 25 dollars cover got us in with a drink ticket. It had two floors, though one was negligible---a bar, 2 sofas, 2 standing tables and the tiniest dance space. The lowest floor was very spacious with a great sound system.
The overall look of the place was minimalistic and clean. It had geometric furniture in black or red. The dance floor led up to a raised floor where the DJ spun and behind him was a large projection screen with flashy, bold graphics.
The place was empty at first until around 2 am when it started to get full. It packed to just the perfect amount. You could easily dance with your elbows sticking out on both side, but move any further and you'd hit another person, exactly the personal space I like.
The Music
It started off as very boring, hard to dance to house. The beats were very slow and the songs monotonmous. As the night went on the music switched to trance and there was even a remixed Billie Jean song and other remixed songs. There was no breaks, which was the reason why I came (false advertising). To make up for it they had a live 4 man performance that was really good. They really psyched up the crowd who was already delirious from alcohol (Japanese people can't handle their liquor. All their repressed emotions are set free at these clubs)
The Girls
The hot girls weren't in any greater number than Toronto. I think the number of cute girls in Japan triple the number of cute girls in Canada, but the number of hot girls is equal.
The way they dress is on par with how they dress outside, slutty below the waist and respectable above.
I'll quote Tiff on how they dance: "It's like they are being forced to dance by gunpoint. They don't move their hips." The girls sort of just rock to and fro lifelessly. After they get drunk they stumble back and forth like stocky dwarves, permanently off-balance. It totally kills attraction vibes but is utterly hilarious and mesmerizing to stand and watch.
Here is the crappy video:
What happened
We got there at past 11 and it was pretty dead. Alex is a good dancer so he attacked the empty dance floor right away. I tried to sidekick him but my house music dancing is pathetic. I look very stiff, and if I try hard to look cool dancing I look like I'm trying hard to look cool dancing, which makes me very uncool. Yet, I was really in a dancing mood too so I forced myself to dance in spurts, and if I needed any reassurance I just looked to my left or right and saw the Japanese females trying to dance at gunpoint.
One of my dance club weaknesses is that I've made very few approaches (I could count one hand). Being in a new country has the power of concentrating 5 New Year resolutions. You feel like you have a good opportunity to try something different. So I wanted to approach the hottest looking girl and the coolest looking girl, and I figured if I approached the hottest girl first then it would make any and all the following approaches easy.
The hottest girl was a cute girl in all black (V-neck cotton top to a slightly angled skirt) who was smoking a cigarette (even though smoking was prohibited on the dance floor) by herself. Her friend had just left so she was alone. I walked straight to her so that she could see me and not be suddenly freaked out by the sudden appearance of a looming guy beside her. I asked, "Do you know who this DJ is?" A simple approach showing neutral interest.
She smiled and then said DJ Koade. I lied (and thankfully I did) and said, "He's pretty good, don't you think?" She looked real proud when I said this and added "He's my boyfriend." We chit-chatted for a bit and then I said I was going to go dance with my friends. It wasn't much of a talk, but it helped my confidence and conversations are difficult anyway when one person has less of a vocabularly then any Canadian kindergarten student I've taught. Some had trouble spelling their name.
There was this other girl I approached, and when I asked her something she got giggly and slung her arm around me, real sexy like. I thought, okay, time to do something funny. So I grabbed my friend Alex and pulled him over. I said to her, this is my friend Alex. Don't you think he's good looking? She nodded and smiled. I said, "You should give him a kiss." I looked at her face to see her reaction. It seemed favourable but I wasn't sure if she would, so I planted my index finger on his cheek and said, "RIGHT HERE!" She leaned in and kissed him.
Later on the ride home Alex told me he couldn't hear anything I had said and had been so surprised when that girl suddenly came up and kissed him. He thanked me for his first Japanese kiss.
Later on that night she found me and danced real near me which was when I basically got to learn more about her . She had her back towards me and all I did was put my hands on her hips and then she grabbed my hands and well I was basically given carte blanche. When her friend came by she slunked away because I suppose she was embarrassed at what she was doing with a stranger and didn't like her friend to judge her (which her friend had every right to do so because I later saw their boyfriends who had just arrived to the club!).
About midway through the night I saw a real cool looking girl. The only problem is that cool girls usually look the most snobby too and this girl was no exception. She had on black sunglasses, a white t-shirt with the arms torn off and bold english writing on the front that was either offensive or rebellious. Her fashion seemed to be a cross between glamour (her sunglasses and belt) and punk (her torn shirt and tattered stockings). She was thin and tall (my height or a bit taller) and was also dancing beside another girl who was very pretty too. I was a little nervous saying anything to her because I felt I was about to get snobbed if I tried. She was dancing beside me when I noticed her so I merely had to take one step towards her but it seemed like an awfully big step. I took it and said, "How can you see anything with sunglasses on?" and made a very crinkly confused look with my head slightly cocked. She gave a small smile then laughed and said "I can see fine." I said hmmmmm as if in doubt then turned around and continued dancing. I didn't know how to follow that one up because I thought it would be lame to say, in my real nerd-like voice, "My name is Joe by the way" to a fashionably dressed girl. I almost feel like if I talked to her I would have to say something provacative or ironic or continuing teasing her as I did with the sunglasses comment. So that was all I could muster for her, but I did however talk to her friend later that night and we did some drunken arm over arm over shoulders dancing and that was when she fell down like the lush she became and pulled me down with her.
There was also this one girl who Alex thought was real good looking. She sort of danced half lyrical where her arms would swerve around in wavy patterns, but had a dance club fever kick to it. She pulled it off okay. One time she was swinging her arms all around, octopus like, and then she made eye contact with me and with her arms still flailing she pointed at me and gave me a sheepish smile. I smiled back. Later I approached her and said hello. She told me I was a good dancer. I said, "Hmmmm" and I asked her "Okay tell me this, who is a better dancer, Alex (pointed at Alex who was busting it up and again didn't know I was talking about him) or me (I pointed at myself)? Alex or Me? (pointed again at Alex and then myself) Better dancer. Who?" This is generally how I have to speak. Lots of arm motions, pointing and repetition with simple words.
So she smiled at me and then very decisively pointed at Alex. The nerve!
Then came my Oscar performance. I made my face real hurt and acted like I didn't want to look at or speak to her again. She tried to put her arm around my shoulder to fake console me while she was laughing at me, but I brushed it away. I tell you, I was acting so cute-angry that if I was a girl I wouldn't have been able to resist having sex!!! Anyways, this was about Alex since he seemed to like this girl, so for the second time during the night I pulled him over to where we were and said, "She thinks you're a better dancer than me!" She leaned in and shouted in my ear "You are a good dancer too!" I said "No no. You think he's better. You should dance with him." I would have narrowed my eyes when I said that, but that would have been pushing the envelope from cute-angry to cheezy. It was smiles all around and when she wasn't looking I blantently and chauvinistically slapped Alex on the back as if to say, go get'em, tiger, stud, stallion, big-boy or whatever vulgar term you prefer.
I saw Alex dancing real close to her so I smiled then walked away. I later asked him what happened and he told me she was very politely edging her dancing away from him when he tried to dance closer.
I made a few other approaches too. One led to a long conversation and the other to me meeting a group of 4 other girls. Don't think (and this is directed at Karen because I know you're thinking it) I was a pure horndog pervert because I approached guys too. And I didn't approach guys merely so I could say hey I approached guys too. I met three separate guys and the graphics projection screen guy (I wanted him to persuade the DJ to put breaks on but it didn't work because I don't have a vagina). The guys are VERY fun at these clubs. They get really weird and wild. One guy was spanking another guy with a stick and another guy kept throwing me up in the air like we were cheerleaders and I was his bitch. I thought I would get seriously hurt because I'm so light and he was so strong... and drunk, and I never worked a day in my life as a cheerleader. I was almost afraid he would, afterwards, want to try a human pyramid.
Finally, there was this one tall white guy named Mike who looked like he was an ex-raver. He did some liquiding and wore a white collared shirt and a short tie. I didn't get a good vibe off him when I came by to talk (Alex had already befriended him after they had some sort of dancing battle). Alex was real nice to him. He bought him drinks. I felt bad because he's short on money and he bought me drinks too. To make it worse, originally he was just buying shots for Mike and me but Tiffiny and her friend happened to walk by too so obviously he couldn't just buy shots for 2 of us and not the other 2. It was cool though because the other friend bought us all a round of shots too. Also at some point during the night I swear Alex came by and made me drink a mug of beer.
Anyways, so this white guy is hanging around with us and I started talking to the girls who were dancing beside us (it's the girl who kissed Alex and who later "danced" with me) and he, liquid ex raver, wormed his way in between me and kiss-girl. I was fine with that because he's sort of in our group through Alex. But he danced closer and closer to the girls and then he said something to them and they left, him and the two girls. He didn't say anything to either me or Alex. Later I found out that he bought them drinks. He bought them drinks over his friends. It's supposed to be bros before hoes. He bought the girls that I introduced to our group drinks. He stole the girls that I had to approach and he just parasited to. Not only that but he didn't tell us where he was going because he didn't want to buy us drinks. Not only that but Alex had just bought him a round of drinks and Tiffiny's friend did also. Yet he sneaks off with the girls and gets them drinks. Basically he was sneaky to me, he who introduced him to the girls (what if I was actually interested in her?) and ungrateful to Alex, he who bought him drinks.
I later asked him, real nice as though I wasn't bothered by anything, what he did when he disappeared with the two girls and he told me "I don't know. I got them drinks and after they finished the drinks they sort of just disappeared." SUCKER. I wanted to tell him that's because if a girl isn't attracted to you, drinks are not going to help. IDIOT. I'm so cool I read it in a book about pick up artists. IDIOT They used you. IDIOT. He got even more weird after the club when we went out to eat and he started speaking chinese to Alex. Imagine a giant white raver guy in a collared white shirt and short short tie speaking chinese, hardcore fast styles, and it was that weird dialect with slurring and lots of shhhhh and slithering sounds. It thought he was so cool to sound like a snake.
So that was my night. It was super fun and Alex wants to go again next week, but I know the limits of my body and dancing for one night already surpasses that limit lol. I'll very likely go out every other week however. I'm young enough to break my body here and there.!
[journal] We went to a club called Air. We got lost walking there because we only had landmarks to guide us (they also put me in charge of finding it, lol). There was one point I started vigourously sniffing the air and with a serious look on my face I asked "Do you guys smell pizza?" They started laughing because the question seemed sudden and random. I added, "I swear that's the smell of pizza." They started laughing harder. Then we hit a bend in the road and it was a pizza store and everyone cracked up. They didn't know I was asking because it was the last landmark before the club.
