"How to cure a hangover" SOLVED!

After putting all my effort into climbing those never ending stairs. I rang the door bell. Robin answered looking tired, but much better put together than I. I took off my shoes and the first thing I said to her was, "I need your toilet, I'm going to be sick!" She kind of chuckled, thinking I was joking, but I pushed past her and she soon realized it was no joke. I'm not sure how she survived the last night-but I was hanging by a thread. I came out of the bathroom my head hung shamefully. All that effort with the stairs and now I had just made another bad impression of myself! Brenda must have received the note, as she was long gone and we momentarily thought about trekking down to find them (although none of us had a phone) but then my stomach and head started reminding me of last nights endeavor. Usually when I have a hangover, my pimply teenager side takes over and I seclude myself to my pitch dark room, answering to no one, until I've recovered. I think this was the most effort I had put in a long time to try to fight my hangover. We plunked down in front of Robin's laptop and watched "Youth in Revolt."  Robin had heard that a drink called "Pocari Sweat" (appetizing name, I know) that worked wonders and she had the energy to go back to the now cursed convenience store to get some. When I came back and drank that boy did I feel better! What is is this miraculous stuff?! It was better than anything I had ever tried in my several years of experience, in trying to solve the age old question, "How to cure a hangover!?"

Pocari Sweat-The Cure to My Hangovers!

The Japanese people prepare for everything! There is a whole section, usually located at the front of the store closest to the door, probably for the strangling hung-over drunk people, that is full of hangover cures. About twenty different selections of drinks or pills, that some people swear by, to prevent or cure a hangover after a night out. Amazing! Many aspects of the Japanese culture embraces binge drinking. Many festivals are based around 'being off your head drunk' to participate, such as the Sakura (Cherry Blossom) season. Japanese families or friends sit under a Sakura tree, with a basket of food and a cooler of booze and won't leave until it's empty! My brother who lived in Niihama, said there was a festival where parents got wasted and watched there kids, in knee-high water trying to catch slippery eels! Part of the Japanese salaryman's job is to socialize after work with colleagues, which usually constitutes becoming, rip-roaring drunk! Of course the Japanese scientists had to work hard and find a solution for these respectable holidays and work purposes, to be celebrated the one night and resolved for the next day!

As you can see it's all quite scientific, the 'Constituents of sweat'!

*This blog is dedicated to my appreciation of Pocari Sweat, I don't know how to thank you enough!

The Hangover

We had decided after a couple hours into our night to stumble back to my apartment, as Brenda was sharing a paper-thin walled apartment with Robin and I most likely we were unintentionally being obnoxious loud drunkards! Brenda had invited Robin and I to join her early the next morning to go visit Nagoya castle. This was not happening, we realized quite early in the night so we attempted to write a legible note to leave behind. The sun was just peaking when I faintly remember Robin saying she should go back to her apartment and crash. I immediately collapsed on my futon and didn't arise for several hours. I tossed and turned and cursed the sunlight breaking through my curtains. If I ever knew how it would feel to be a vampire it was now-as the sun burned through my eyes and I attempted with as little movement as possible, as my stomach was on edge, to shield myself from it's beaming glare.

The vampire-like state of waking
up to the sun with one helluva hangover!

It was past 4pm and the guilt about not making contact with my new friends was surpassing my troublesome stomach. I splashed some water on my face and dared to face the outdoors. The humidity punched me in the stomach so hard, I had to run back to my apartment to vomit. This liquor had kicked my ass and I was in pieces because of it! Why oh why I continued to lecture myself in my head. OK attempt number two. I braced myself as I walked out in the boiling sun (hangovers and hot weather are an even worse combination). I clung to the hand bars and very slowly made my way down the staircase. I managed to get to the parking lot and made my way over to there building, next to mine. The trek seemed like a "Lord of the Rings" journey, although it was a mere minute from my door. My stomach was still doing somersaults, I apprehensively looked up at the three flights of stairs to climb. One foot in front of the other. I knew the quest towards maintaining friendships was worth this, but oh how my body hated me that day!

What the staircase ahead of me looked like in my state.

The Deadly Shochu and It's Reaction To Foreigner's Tongues

Robin and I had discussed beforehand, how much a typical night of getting ourselves foolishly drunk would amount to, and settled on about 6-8 beers as a general ball park. We had obviously done some partying in our time to be able to amount to this, and neither of us being of a she-male statue, we could generally impress the general public with our ability to hold our liquor. Robin seemed to be doing better than I at handling our drinks this time-but we both noticed the drastic change of how the alcohol was affecting us. About midway through my second drink, I was starting to feel quite tipsy. I had eaten a whole lot, so knew it couldn't be blamed on this. I also didn't have exhaustion or a substantial time difference playing into the calculation either. This alcohol, shochu we found out as the night went on, was powerful stuff!

Shochu in it's varieties

Shochu is an alcoholic beverage that is usually distilled from barley, sweet potatoes or rice. It only amounts to 25% alcohol-so seems like a safer liquor, but oh so wrong! This liquor, as it is quite uncommon to be found outside of Asia, is a whole other category for what had been put in my body up to this point. I'm not sure what it was specifically, but all the other foreigners that I have spoken to have the same reaction-shochu is dangerous! It replaces, the hard to find tequila here, but in my books are quite on par with one another. Maybe this was Japan's answer to the common,"Asian Flush Reaction" many are teased about abroad, to create "Foreigner Excelled Drunkenness Reaction" in retort with this drink!

Lindsay Lohen must be drinking Shochu this time around!
Best drunk picture I've seen so far!

Kanpai Japan

Kanpai Japan

That night became a little blurry quite quickly. We filled our stomachs with unknown ingredients, the novelty of these tastes overpowering any rational choice for us to stop. We sat on the floor surrounded by half ripped and consumed bags of junk food. It was the worst binge eating, I had ever punished myself with (yes I say punished, because stretching my stomach that thin was painful)! That night's binge surpassed the breakup food binge, Thanksgiving dinner binge, or just an ordinary visit to my Grandma's house binge, by a landslide! Our throats were not left dry either, we drank one, tall fruity, alcoholic substance after another. We quickly realized that what we could drink back home did not translate into what we could drink in Japan.

Many people have the fictitious view that Japanese people can't drink and may I be the one to tell you-They can! Japanese people love to eat, but no meal isn't complete without beer or sake or shochu or some combination of all three and then some! Even after you finish at the restaurant, the roads are filled with vending machines, not just filled with refreshing fruit juices but also alcoholic beverages.

I remember my brother telling me a story about his time in Japan and the rumors he had heard about being allowed to drink in public. He wasn't sure what to make of it and didn't want to be the one to test it. He told me that one day, mid afternoon, he was sitting on the train heading to work, when he saw a petite, Japanese elderly woman hobble past him, take a seat, and crack open a beer and take a swig. At that moment, he said he knew it was ok for him to do.

Someone's Gradmother enjoying a tall one!

So how is alcohol tolerance so well endeavored over here? Aside from the accessible vending machines, 24/7 convenience stores supplying  liquor and being able to drink in public there is also what is known as 'Nomihodai', translated to "All-you-can-drink" restaurants and bars. You sit back with you and a group of mates and bask in yet another amazing aspect to Japanese society, drinking cheaply until your most likely sloshed. A usual 'nomihodai' costs about  ¥2500 (~$28 USD) and last about 3 hours. Being drunk in public is also not as shamed as you would think, as there are many other things you might think of as insignificant here, such as blowing your nose, that is quite offensive. Having been on trains late at night returning from work, I see the usual flux of inebriated business men, stumbling along without anyone batting an eyelid.


Noises of tin cans colliding paired with shouts of 'Kanpai'-cheers', giggles and another  language, resembling English being drunkenly muttered back and forth,  ragged on well into the night.

First night out in Nagoya

What are two Canadian girls going to get up to when Japan is at there disposal for the night..um convenience store, of course! We didn't have too much money to spend and we're not yet brave enough to dive into the deep end and hit up a club, just the two of us-so what better place to start than at the local 7-11, Lawson, Family Mart, Mini Stop store (all within walking distance from each other)!

The first point about the greatness about the Japanese convenience stores is that they are very convenient (more than 40,000 in Japan)! Open 24/7 and located every other block (they are well beating out Starbucks here)!  They serve hot, cold and lukewarm food and beverages and of course liquor! The 'amazingness' (new words need to be created in order to describe the caliber of majesty associated with these glowing buildings) factor is unimaginable!

Ok maybe I go to far but that night was exactly how we felt about it. Where the night was taking us, the more liquor that was put into our bodies, the more this haven was praised for its brilliance-but then again cursed the next morning for the same reason.

It was like Christmas, Robin and I went crazy buying loads of interesting, weird, food items we had never tried before. The well marketed packaging again paid off for those companies, as every smiling face looking up at us on those packages were bought! We even decided to buy magazines and go home and flick through them.

The liquor section takes up a good portion of the store. It is separated into cold beers (mostly individually sold), coolers, wine, hard liquor, sake and shochu. Now I'm usually solely a beer drinking girl myself and Robin, the same, but this night was special so we decided let's go back to our younger days and drink the "girlie" drinks, we had grown out of. We selected about 5 different cans with various fruits, not quite knowing what type of liquor was in it but practically jumping up and down a tall boy that was 9% some unknown, but strong liquor and only 150 yen ($2.00 USD)!

We spent about almost an hour wandering around excited and even cracked a can open walking back to our apartment, just because we had to cheers to the best convenience store we had both ever seen!

The selection of junk food is almost endless!

The liquor section with everything you
could ever desire!

The Trash Queen Bandit

I shoved down my food and had a quick shower, as I'm sure odor was another one of the offenses I had committed earlier, with my atrocious first impression. Walking around in 30 degree heat and then having someone chase you down, was a workout and a half for the sweat glans! I freshened up and hoped I would have a chance to start anew. I would have to track down that note of mine too, as they hadn't found it yet and I didn't want some other random English person knocking on my 2A apartment, I had written down on my note. But I felt like it was a safe enough code in Japan for me to use English as a lock-at least in this blockade of run-down apartments, where learning English was the least of these peoples worries!

I found the note sitting right in the same place with the lone rock sitting on top flickering in the wind. It was so pathetic laying in the middle of the cement floor, and reading over what I wrote, was even more pitiful. The desperate attempt to make friends! I guess my note plan had failed. Luckily they didn't read it, so now I could beg for their friendship in person! I crumpled it into my bag, to place in its designated garbage bin at a later time.

The bin system in Japan is pretty overwhelming for a newbie. It is unlike anything I've seen, in a wonderfully environmentally friendly way, to make recycling mandatory and keep landfill space to a minimum. But in a selfish way, I hated the effort that went along with it. There were three main types of trash: burnables, plastics and cans/bottles. All items needed to be washed out and placed neatly in each of the different colour-coded bags. The signs indicated the time and day they needed to be placed outside, the specific location and how to properly clean, cut and place it in the bin, which was after the page list of what items belonged in each bag!  I had read to that if garbage wasn't disposed of correctly, people would drop the bag on your doorstep, with a viscous note about say, how your cup of noodle soup wasn't properly rinsed (because clearly the only person in the apartment complex that can mess up this garbage thing is a dumb foreigner). Or worse yet that you could get a hefty fine if you secretly dumped it somewhere at the wrong place or time!  I stared numerous times at the instructions in my apartment dumbfounded. I decided it couldn't be done with all the confusing instructions, but mostly because of stubborn laziness.

The organized trash system.

It was all scary business, this new underworld of crime I was getting myself into. Every time I placed a can in the plastics bin, or put my burnables out on the Tuesday instead of Wednesday, I was a committing a heinous crime.  I would just have to learn to adapt to my new role as a garbage criminal. *Cue eerie music* I will forever be known "The Trash Queen Bandit," the girl that sneaks around with large bags,  places them in the wrong areas and whose trash is disorganized, unclean and messy! But maybe it could be seen in a different light, I mean I wasn't robbing people, I was giving back to the people! It would just happen to be numerous things unwanted by me. Maybe in a way I'd be seen as a hero, one persons trash is another persons treasure after all!

My new-found role as 'The Trash Queen Bandit"!

Anyways, I arrived at the girl's apartment and got to speak to them for a couple hours. One of the girls, Brenda, was originally from Vancouver and had spent many years traveling and living abroad. She was a certified teacher back in Canada and thought it might be a cool, new experience to teach in Japan. She also was a beautiful product of a whole heap of different cultures (Welsh, Native American, Japanese..I think I'm forgetting one more), so she had a curiosity towards Japan and part of her roots. The other girl, Robin, was also a beautiful Canadian, but from the other-side, outside Toronto. She had finished up her degree and worked for a year to save up and decided to come over to teach and travel Japan. Both of them had spent time researching and having a desire to go to Japan, which was something I lacked. I explained how I more-or-less had nothing else at that time, and my brother suggested just going for it so, I thought what the heck I'll go! Not that I had anything against Japan, it just wasn't a country I was pulled in by, but neither were many of the other countries I had lived in, more of a coincidence that turned out to be a great decision-so why not dive in head first!

It was so great to speak with them and return a bit of normality and luckily I hadn't scared them off with my rare flare up of super awkwardness! Brenda decided to head to bed, as she was still battling off the jet lag, which luckily for me was only a one hour difference from Sydney time so didn't that problem. Robin and I felt we had the energy so decided lets hit the town!

Knock Knock Who's There??

I locked the door twice and threw a pile of shoe in front of the door, just as an added booby trap in case Mr. Nagoya stalker had outsmarted me again. I had considered completely booby trapping my house, copying a 'Home Alone' type of situation, but decided otherwise, I was getting a flat mate late tomorrow night. I turned on the TV as to distract myself from my earlier experience. I started to relax when..

Knock, knock!

I slowly crept towards the door to look through the peep hole. My imagination was going wild and all I could think of was the creep I had earlier encountered today. I pressed my eye up to the door trying not to breath if it was who I was scared it was.

Peep hole with potential horror movie
value

It wasn't. It was two girls about my age. Hurray! My note had worked I thought! I opened the door wildly with a goofy grin on my face. I was so happy to see other teachers!
"Hello!" I practically shouted at them.
They introduced themselves and that they were both from Canada. I invited them in. The polite introductions only could last so long before I exploded with everything I had been bottling up to say to anyone that would listen. It came out, in the words of Lindsay Lohen in her only good movie (Mean Girls), as 'word vomit'. I couldn't stop myself I just had to spue out all the obstacles I had
faced in my short time here.

They stood there wide eyed and flabbergasted by my stories. One of the girls piped up something about 'How we had just met' and I knew then I should slow down. I apologized, I really didn't want to lose the chance of friends and these girls seemed cool. I was in the middle of cooking something and they suggested for me to come over in a bit..probably more to give me some time to compose myself. I asked them as they were heading down the staircase if they had gotten my note and they asked "What note?" They mentioned that the man that dropped them off told them when I'd be arriving, so they thought they'd stop in. Damn my English note plan didn't work..I would have to secretly hunt it down as now it would appear foolish (not that I hadn't already given them that impression of myself) and would only add to the probably horrible impression I had given off.

Geez... I completely lost my 'cool' composure. I laughed at myself when they left at how ridiculous I had come across. That was by far the worst first impression I had ever given anyone! I can imagine them debriefing back at there place, talking about how nuts I was. They did seem somewhat understanding about the situation and they did invite me over to there place, so I couldn't have messed up that bad right...right? At least I could be thankful it wasn't the Nagoya stalker creep!