Feeling surprisingly Hopeful

Hope can kill a man in Yamagata: so said Max.

You hope for a night on the tiles, talking with new people, no, seeing new people, no, just in the same room as other people and it doesn't happen. I'm in rural Japan. This place has natural beauty in abundance but night-life it does not have and increasingly, it seems no young people either. All the young people clamber into burrows half way up the trees by night.

I've also learnt to expect surprises here. Mostly to do with food (I seem to be writing about food a lot recently.) Oh, it might look just like a mini omelette sausage, innocent enough, unnassuming, yes it might even look tasty but wait, oh no! the crunch comes, it's a crabby, wet and cold crunch and who thinks to put crab meat in a cold omelette sausage anyway and you realise you know NOTHING of the crunch.

..Do you see where I'm going with this?

Last night was a James Brown Memorial Party at J's bar (it even has a real bar you can sit at and lean on and everything!) organised by Dom in town not Dom from out of town who came to town for a night in the Shi (imagine! travelling for a night in Yamagata!). It paid off. Dom from out of town coming to town not the James Brown Memorial Party.

In fact, Johnny double booked (the sly devil) and the James Brown Memorial Party was held in the backroom on a discman linked to the karaoke machine sound system. In the main room, the room with the bar, was the monthly hiphop night that I have just noticed happens monthly.

So we all hoped hard for the James Brown Memorial Party but whaddeyouknow, there's young people, they climbed out of their trees and its a surprise you see, it's a surprise (that's why I wrote about surprises here back there) to see them, it's a surprise when you end up dancing with them and takling, sorry talking with them many gin and tonicas later and it's a surprise when we all pick up numbers. I couldn't give a monkeys about hiphop but for all that, once a month, I'm going to hang up my hopes on J's bar.