Last night in Takayama

It begins with food. I am hungry (as I sometimes do become) and am looking for a particular restuarant when the street I am on suddenly ends in darkness, and looks very depressing. I notice a bar nearby however, well lit and with lots of English menus out the front and all sorts of foreigner-welcoming signs. The menu is about 20 pages long, and I assume that it is more of a restaurant than a bar, and it promises free internet access and even a special gift for foreigners. Well, I am hungry!

Of course, too much English, and too much friendliness is a sure sign of a tourist trap, but the little pixie on my shoulder forgot to tell me that at the time. He looks confused when I dont want any alcohol (just water is fine), and it turns out that the sign out the front did indeed say that internet was free to those who drink here, not those who eat, and it would otherwise cost 300 yen ($3...in your dreams!). The tempura price is a bit pricey (1000 yen, $10), but has a far greater variety than most places, so I decide to just give up on my budget and order it. Then he tells me that the tempura price really is just for the tempura, and if I want rice with it, that will cost extra. I pay another 300 yen for half a bowl of rice, and tuck into a bucket of tempura most likely meant for more than one person (I think most of the meals here are meant to be shared among drunk friends). When I go to pay, the bill doesnt quite seem to add up, until I realize that my glass of water cost another 200 yen. As I leave, I get the special gift that I had completely forgotten about - a brown, depressed looking banana.

I get back to the youth hostel to a very cosmopolitan crew of foreigners (who had cleverly used the kitchen facilities to cook cup noodles and other very cheap meals), and we spend most of the night sitting around the table chatting. Two guys from Connecticut, USA (is that how you spell it? And where is it for that matter?), another two guys from Israel, and an older man from Scotland all exchange hilarious stories about strange, crazy Japan. One person swears he saw a train employee bowing to an empty train carriage, and another one tells of a town where absolutely every shop shut at 5pm, and he was forced to have beer and chocolate for dinner as that was all he could find in vending machines. They too are victims of the Gods of Irony it seems, as museums and shops have completely random holidays (Sorry, we are closed on Wednesdays), and they arrive in towns just in time to see the mess from the years biggest festival, which was of course the day before they arrived. We also muse over the strange phenomenon whereby Japanese buses manage to arrive at least an hour later than a car going to the same place. By nights` end the topic of conversation is the Israeli `textile factory` (which definitely, definitely does not make nuclear weapons) and for some reason, advanced mathematics. When we got onto the topic of the different types of infinity and other abstract mathematics, Eytan, one of the Israeli guys who has a degree in pure mathematics, grabs a peice of chalk and starts writing up mathematical symbols on a blackboard. I wonder what in gods name a blackboard is doing in the kitchen...perhaps its just in case someone ever wants to teach maths at 1am?