Tokyo Hooters, Japanese Birthdays and the Religion of Food.

      Yesterday was my buddy Tetsuya's birthday (he's the guy dancing in the video) and he wanted to try out the new Hooters restaurant.  It is the first Hooters restaurant in Japan so I was interested to see how the concept would translate.  The surprise is that it is almost identical to Hooters back in the states, with the exception that most of the staff and customers are Japanese.  The menu items, signs, and even the customs were just like home, and most weren't even translated fully to Japanese, if translated at all.  The food also tasted exactly the same (meaning that it was mediocre). 

      Well almost everything was the same.......except the price.  Look at this:

      Yeah that is 680 yen for a Coors Light, which is $8.10 USD.......for freaking single bottle of Coors lol.  That is expensive even by Tokyo's standards. The food items didn't have that big of a price hike compared to the American versions, but it was still probably 30% more or so based on my memory. 

      And this leads me into the main point of the today's post.....Japan's real religion, which is without a doubt food.  I go to school with people from all around the world and I think most are in agreement that Japan's obsession with food far surpasses that of their own country.  I would guess that nearly half of the television programs on TV, at any time of the day, regardless of the channel, involve something to do with food, or the production of food. 

     So what this means if that you are going out with a group of Japanese people for a special occasion involving food bring two things:  1.  An empty stomach and 2.  A fat wallet.   Don't expect to just pick your own little menu item to keep to yourself (both the food and the check).  You are part of the group, so you eat and pay as a group.  We basically sat at the table for 3hrs or so, with everyone just constantly ordering food as they saw fit.  Everything got put in the middle, and everyone just ate whatever they wanted. 

    But here is the crazy thing.  After 3hrs of Hooters I plopped down my roughly $80 portion of the check (it was a little over $300 split between 4 people, as the birthday boy obviously didn't have to pay) and wondered where we were going next.  The answer?  ANOTHER RESTAURANT.  No not a bar or some some hang out location that just happened to serve food either.  It was an even fancier location (not exactly hard to do compared to Hooters, but still)where we broke out the bottles of wine and champagne while we received some simply amazing chicken and vegetable dishes of all sorts, that were once again brought out on an almost continuous basis.  That was another $40 between everyone as a few more people showed up to split the bill.  After that?  Karaoke of course.  In Japan you usually just pay a set price for the time you want a booth, usually around $20-30, and for that you get unlimited drinks while you blast away in your own private booth with your friends.   And then to top off the night we left the karaoke place and climbed into an extremely small little bar in the Golden Gai district and just sipped on a few beers until the early mornings hours. 

      Good times.