Beer and skittles

Right, I've given up worrying about financial responsibility. No more will I live on tofu and cabbage - caution has been thrown to the winds and I'm living on the edge. Woh. Also, we've complained so much about being poor that kind hostelmates are bringing home food parcels for us (seriously) and claiming that oh, they must have bought too much, or it will go off, or they don't want it. It's very kind of them and Row and I generally resist for thirty seconds before caving in and pawing through it greedily. So, to live out this new craaazzy philosophy, we went out for the First Time in Japan. It was suitably weird. We tagged along with kind hostelmates (using the rapid bonding of desperation), leaving the hostel at midnight for an unspecified reason. A, one of the departing hostelmates (there seems to be a mass exodus) is an artist, and he spent two years part time making four delightful rubber cakes, featuring grotesque sirens tearing gingerbreadmen apart with their tentacles, bare breasted women savaging fake Oreos and other bizarre things. Anyway, rather than exhibit them (they were really quite good), he had decided to destroy them after taking pictures of them in a variety of Hirakata's (our 'burb) public toilets. So, we had to tote large rubber cakes through the streets, which is always a good start for a night. The night officially began at N and G's house, two recently ex-hostelmates who have taken pity on us several times, and here we were plied with free drinks and conversation. Next, we were evacuated (fear of new neighbours) to the public toilets, where photos were taken of the cakes before their ritual destruction. I couldn't believe he was so casual about it. Two years of creation and thirty seconds of destruction? But he did it easily, carelessly, tearing them apart and stuffing them next to a bin. Puzzling. The night was brutally cold so we took refuge in an all-nite store (they've taken off here recently and people spend hours late at night, browsing magazines and even flirting) and we were able to buy remarkably cheap beer in single cans. Hirakata was going off, kind of. A blue van loitered (vans don't normallyloiter but this one did) nearby. It had been modified beyond recognition - an elongated tow-bar coupled with what looked like little wings dangling behind it. Again, puzzling. Eventually, we made it to the bar with the sole remaining cake (Row had grown attached to it and successfully pleaded for its life. It's now gloomily sitting in our room). The bar was called 'egg', and took its name rather literally; the roof consisted of egg cartons and there were little cubicles scattered around, trying hard to look like eggs. There were hipsters and green haired men and a barman with a single remaining tooth. Two of my hostelmates revealed that they'd sometimes worked as volunteer barmen (I shit you not) at egg, and one promptly volunteered his services. He was a little clumsy/drunk, and knocked things over, but the beauty of the volunteer barman system is that drinks somehow cost much less. Later, a bottle of complimentary champagne was pressed on us by the dentally-challenged barman, who had lost his pants and tshirt somewhere along the line. For the next hour, he served customers in his underwear, beaming his gap toothed smile. An exhibitionist, apparently. Then a hipster tried unsuccessfully to beg for a random girl's number, holding his phone out in a heartfelt plea; she left him hanging, with much mock-pain and flirtation. Again, a puzzling night. It seems the Japanese culture is one of contrasts - rigid external appearances versus an internal wildness. It would certainly explain their taste in television.