Girls Bar

Rod and I visited a "girls bar" in Minami.

What is a girls bar? It's basically a poor man's hostess bar. This particular establishment is called "Girls Bar Honey". Upon alighting from the elevator on the 4th floor, I took in the scene of a dark, quiet bar with a few salarymen sitting at a counter in front of three waitresses - a tall, half-Brazilian-looking woman, a short cute j-girl and a brown-skinned, brown-haired j-popstar. It seemed all tastes were catered for.

The salarymen looked up upon what I imagine to be a rare scene of two white guys walking in and said in unison "Kakkuiiiiiiii!" (meaning either cool or good-looking). We paid our 1800 yen for the first hour and received our complimentary drink, then chatted to the waitresses. There turned out to be a one-to-one ratio between the ladies and the customers - I don't know if that was deliberate or if it was just a quiet time of night. I ended up talking to the cute short girl, who turned out to be a university student and very typical Japanese girl. I don't know why that surprised me. Was I expecting them to have had some kind of... flirtation training? I actually asked her about their training and found out that being able to mix a drink was pretty much the only prerequisite.

She was really sweet and had I 'met' her - I mean how normal boys and girls meet (however that is) - I would have gotten her phone email. That sums up the girls bar experience: it's just like meeting nice girls in a regular bar, except that there's no chance of taking it further. That's not to say it wasn't fun. I enjoyed the chat and even won a free drink in a card game. This kind of place is so ubiquitous in Japan that I considered it part of my education to go along. But I might have to roll with the big boys and visit a full-blown hostess bar if I want to really understand why people spend so much time in these places.