Tonight, Saturday, September 24, turns out to be British kids’ night. Kaiyo is having his friend Euan (He’s half British) over for a sleepover and Avalon is having her friend Haruna (She’s from Britain) over for a sleepover. Yay! It’s a mini-Brexit-expat slumber party. John graciously offered to stay at home with the craziness (and probably contribute to it himself) and let Halyard and I go out for a night on the town. It’s actually John’s idea and I’m pretty excited to have a chance to hang out with Halyard. He’s so busy staring at his iPhone he rarely has time to talk anymore. And when he does have a spare moment it seems he can’t hear a word I’m saying because of the earbuds in his ears. Tonight he will be my captive audience.
John has already done some research and found us a jazz bar to go to. It’s in downtown Osaka in a popular, hip area called Namba. John knows that the stand up bass is my favorite instrument and I love to hear a trio when it includes a stand up bass. Halyard knows I love the stand up bass because in 7th grade when he wanted to play the electric bass guitar in the school band and there wasn’t a need for another electric bass I encouraged him to play my favorite instrument in the orchestra instead. So now Halyard plays the electric bass guitar and stand up bass and he is always interested in hearing live music.
John is practically kicking us out of the house at 6 (18:00). He seems to be worried that I’m going to be my usual late self. I’m trying to make dinner for all of the kids before I go but John says he can manage. Well okay then! Don’t twist my arm. Tonight there is a trio of girls playing and it looks like a singer, pianist and stand up bassist. I called the bar earlier and — using Google Translate in front of me — asked if it was okay to bring my 14 year old son to the club tonight. The man said a string of words in very fast Japanese that I couldn’t understand. Then he said, “Daijobou,” which means no problem. So I’m going with that.
Halyard and I walked to the bus stop and took the bus to the train station. Then we hopped on the train to Namba. Halyard spent a good amount of our exclusive mom and son time to give me an in-depth analysis of his character grievances in Suicide Squad. Specifically, I got to hear all about the many incarnations of The Joker and why Jared Leto’s Joker could have been so much better. I hate to say this, but I’ve already been subject to this topic from Halyard before. I guess this is how he feels from my repeat lectures.
I had a Google street map that I had printed out and it showed that if we exited the subway at “Namba Walk number B1” we would be just steps from the bar. Well it didn’t work out that way because it never does. But we did find the place. It’s a teeny, tiny, hole in the wall basement club that has a very nondescript door and small street sign outside.
It’s called Cafe and Bar 845 and I don’t know what the 845 means. The cover charge is 1500 yen per person and that includes one drink coupon. By nighttime club/bar standards in Japan that’s about half the usual rate for a cover charge and they usually make you buy your first drink instead of including it. At least that’s what my online research shows. John and I still need to personally test that theory out further.
The inside of the club is intimate – as in cracker box small. It seats about 20 people with bar stools around the bar, couch seats along the back wall and two small round tables in front with 5 chairs around each table. The seats around the bar are occupied by smokers. The seats along the back wall are already full. So Halyard and I took seats in the chairs in front. I think this is Halyard’s first time in a smoky jazz club setting!
The two girls with instruments played first without the singer. They looked so cute and young! They were all dressed up in their fancy dresses and high heels and perfect make up. They all looked about early 20s. After an hour there was an intermission. Turns out it was the bassist’s 20th Birthday and they surprised her with a cake and someone played Happy Birthday on her bass. Kawaii!! (Cute!!)
Then the singer joined them for the second half. She had a lovely, cheerful voice and she really added to the music. And she sang in all English. I said to Halyard, I wonder if she actually understands what she’s singing or did she just memorize the words and she has no idea what she’s saying. Young people here do that a lot I think. They love American music and they want to sing along. They know every word but they have no idea what the lyrics mean.
When the girls finished playing their 2-hour set I decided to talk to them. I asked if any of them spoke English. (Can you speak English is “Eigo ga hanasemasu ka?” I know this because I preface every conversation I have with someone I don’t know with this sentence.) The girls pointed to the singer. She DID know English. I told them we were here from California and we loved their show. I told them Halyard is going to Osaka International School and the singer said, “OIS? I went to SIS! I graduated in 2015!” Wow. They asked Halyard his age. He said 14. They said, oh are you in 8th grade then? Ha ha. He towered over all of them!
Anyway, how’s that for more small world. SIS is the Japanese sister school half of OIS. And she just graduated last year! So that means she’s probably about 19 years old. I love the small world occurrences which are happening all the time.
Around 10 (22:00), Halyard and I stepped out for some dinner. We wandered over to a brightly lit area with lots of restaurants. Bright lights with black wire lantern shapes hung from the sides of the street. It looked like this could be Japan’s Little Italy. We counted three Italian restaurants in a short distance. All of them were packed full. Each restaurant is a tiny space with seats for about 15-25. We ended up at a sushi place called Souya Sushi and Grill. We blindly ordered the fish set (Okay, I asked first if it was going to be grilled or raw. The answer was grilled.), some selections from the creative sushi menu, and some “little spoon” sushi that literally arrived on a little wooden spoon. The best was the salmon sashimi off the recommended section. We really wanted to try the bonito sushi because that’s something I’d never order back home but it was all sold out!
After we’d eaten about 4000 yen ($40) worth of sushi we left. I think $40 for sushi is pretty darn cheap considering my date was a hungry teenage boy. It’s true that you can eat for “cheap,” that’s relatively speaking, in Japan. You just have to look for it and also stay out of hotel restaurants.
We hooked a train ride back to Senri Chuo but I was quite alarmed when we arrived because some people, men really, literally took off running like Usain Bolt out of the train doors. I said to Halyard, uh-oh, I wonder if we’ve missed the last bus. Or maybe he said that to me. Indeed, we missed the last bus home by 10 minutes. Halyard pointed out that if it had been a weekday, we would have made the last bus by 13 minutes. We took a cab instead and the ride home was 1400 yen! That’s about 1000 yen more than the bus for the two of us. That was a good lesson.
Well, I didn’t get any insider scoop into girls, grades, or even general 10th grade gossip. But it was a great, rare night with my favorite first born.
And by the way, when we got home near to midnight/24:00, the lights were still blazing, the boys were still up, and Euan was watching his favorite football/soccer club, Manchester City, play live online. I thought I could hear the girls’ feet patter upstairs, too.
Comments (2)