Day 43 (December 31,2012)- All-You-Can-Drink + Darts + No One Speaking English = Typical Moreau New Year's Eve

Luckily for me, I didn't lose the "sleeping on the floor" lottery the night before and was well rested for what would probably be my first and last New Year's Eve in Japan. Unlike North America, where Christmas is arguably or biggest/most celebrated holiday of the year, in Japan that honor is bestowed upon New Year's. It is traditionally a time where people get together with families and visit local temples. Fortunately, some Japanese people do like to get ignorantly drunk and make asses of themselves like we do on this side of the Pacific!

That day, Kiel and Peter decided to head into downtown Tokyo, while I chilled out with my Mom and Colleen. Our day mostly consisted of trying to find a place close to our hotel to ring in the New Year, as we weren't in the mood to lug our asses over an hour in each direction into the heart of the city. Factor in that we would all probably be finely tuned after the stroke of midnight and it's safe to assume that it would take us even longer to get back to the hotel. After perusing the lovely neighborhood of Hachioji with my girlfriend and mother for a few hours, I was able to safely draw a few conclusions:

· After visiting a pet store, I can see that Japanese people grossly overpay for pet dogs, which they in turn dress in ridiculous clothes. (Seems particularly odd since many of their nearby countries are reputed to have canine on their menus)

· All women like shoe shopping. Men do not.

· The five of us had to be the least exotic eaters in the history of travel. We subsisted almost our entire time in Japan on a diet of McDonald's, Burger King, Denny's, and Subway. Oh, and don't forget beer, wine and snacks from 7/11.

Later that evening we all met back up at the hotel and the five of us decided that we would hit up some club dive attached to our hotel called "Club Motown". The dude at the front desk of our hotel translated the sign out front for us and told us that they were having an "all-you-can-drink" from 8pm until midnight. Where do we sign up!?



The ladies getting dolled out for their night on the town.

After the ladies got all dolled up and the gentleman shampooed and conditioned their chest hair (okay, maybe just Peter), we headed over to Club Motown shortly after 8pm. When we got there, there were probably under 20 people and throughout the course of the night, this number maybeincreased by 10. Oh well, we were here now and that meant we each had to get our $40 worth! The initial translation barrier was tough, but once our waiter figured out what we were all drinking, the drinks started flowing at a nasty clip and it wouldn't have mattered if there were 25 or 2500 people there, we were going to get rowdy. Once we got a few drinks in to us, we got up some nerve and headed over to play some darts. Unfortunately, all the beer in the world wasn't going to make us good dart players, and we were quickly ridiculed by our Japanese counterparts. In fact, they took it upon themselves to go and find someone in the bar who could speak a little bit of English so that they could use this translator to tell us that we need to practice! Later on in the evening, the venue also rolled out some casino games, although because of Japanese gaming laws, you could not actually win money. Sure, you could lose all the money in the world to the house, but you were never going to win. I may be a degenerate gambler, but even by standards that was a bit ridiculous.

Since gambling and darts were now out of the equation, we settled on doing what we do best: drinking. As the night started to wear on, some people (see: Kiel and Dawn Moreau) were very well lubricated and started to get a little rambunctious. So when the bartenders started handing out party favors and champagne to the now growing crowd (almost 50 people!) a little before midnight, it seemed inevitable that they were going to start setting them off early and causing a ruckus. Oh well, at least we all made it to 2013!


The crew on New Year's Eve with our classic waiter.

Shortly after midnight we headed out into the night, although we put my mommy to bed first, as it appeared she had won the contest to party the hardest before midnight. Colleen, Peter, Kiel, and I ended up wandering the streets for a bit and couldn't really find anything worthy of catching our attention so we ended up packing it in shortly thereafter.

2013 was officially underway, and it was time to make the most of it...right after I sleep off this wicked hangover with two other grown men in 10 foot X 10 foot hotel room!

~Brentski~

Pretty much sums up the night.