Bars in Japan

I love love love travelling, discovering new places, experiencing new food and culture. Although, I must admit, travelling can be quite exhausting. It is not the type of exhaustion we feel at work, its different to that, because this is actually a holiday! Yet it is tiring because you wake up very early in the morning, you are out on your feet all day, and then you get back to the hotel late at night, and you can hardly keep your eyes opened! Haha Grumpy and myself always try to make our travels as enjoyable as we can, without cramming in too much. I am usually the first to leap out of bed first thing in the morning, ready to take on the new city, while he, on the other hand, will be in bed, snoring his heart out. So we try to do all the tourist-ey stuff during the day. And by night time, we have dinner.. and then we look for a nice bar to sit down, sip on drinks, look through our photos and give our aching feet some rest. This is how we like to end the day.

At a Spanish tapas bar in Kyoto. It probably only sits 10 people most, in the entire bar. I found this very common in Japan, especially when there is scarcity of land here.

A leg of pork, which has been cured, at the same Spanish bar in Kyoto. The leg of pork is covered by its natural fats and oils as a way of protecting and preserving the meat. We tried a few thin slices. I liked it.

Next up, is a bar at Hiroshima called Nikka Whisky, which we found randomly by chance.

We had no idea what this bar was about, but decided to try it. It was very interesting, because we discovered that Nikka whisky is actually Japanese whisky which is made in Hokkaido, Northern Japan. The entire bar was filled with bottles of Nikka whisky, and the selection was endless. Bottles in every shape possible.

These were my favourites. Samurai inspired bottles of whisky.

After the very serious whisky bar, we decided for a change of location. And we found another bar which was my ALL time favourite! Also in Hiroshima, this bar was tiny as, again, only sitting a maximum of 10-12 people at one time. It seemed pretty ordinary at first. After a few introductions, us coming all the way from 'Meowbourne' (note, they cannot pronounce the letter 'L') etc etc.. the bartender/owner insisted that we sing some songs on karaoke. At first I was highly embarrassed, because my other three companions were not going to sing along with me, plus there were other Japanese patrons there sitting in the bar. But after a song or two, I was belting out tunes from Mariah Carey, Beyonce, Pink and Lady Gaga.

I absolutely loved it! It was so much fun! We made friends with the others in the bar (they hardly spoke any English), and they sang Utada Hikaru's 'First Love' which we requested. It was so lovely... they were all 2,000 times better than I was at 'singing' but who cares?! They requested that we sing along to Michael Jackson as well.

Everyone had such a good time, even Grumpy had a go at some 'Back Street Boys' ballads. Priceless!

Without watching the time, we realised it was 2.30am and we had to take a taxi back to the hotel. We have been warned that taxis were ridiculously expensive in Japan, but at 2.30am, we had no other means of transportation. Haha Before we left the bar, I insisted on singing one last song, and I picked Rihanna's 'Take A Bow'. Perfect way to end the night.

Here is a video of our bartender singing to Ricky Martin's 'Livin' la Vida Loca' in Japanese. Complete with tambourine. Hilarious.