Part 2: Niko Niko grappling/volunteer trip to Kamaishi

Recap: Left Tokyo via night bus, drove all night, Saturday morning got off the bus and made a park with our bare hands, all day.

At night, we went to this Izakaya (Japanese style restaurant). The food wasn’t so good, but I had fun socializing with everybody. The group of about 50 people consisted of members from our host Hirano-san’s MMA Gym “Graaca,” my gym Reversal Gym “Groundslam” owned by Katsumura-san, and a few other affiliated fighters.

I sat next to Brittany, other Groundslam girls, and Yamamoto-san. I didn’t enjoy listening to the lude comments of a few people who sat nearby… Man! And when people get drunk, they really let it all hang out. Literally. I was…surprised? I kept asking Brittany, “Do Americans do this, too?” “Do Americans do that, too?” She’s like “Yes. But it takes a lot of alcohol.” LOL See, I don’t drink… Being around alcohol and inebriated people is not my usual habitat…. hahahaha I was averting my eyes quite a lot as the night went by.

I dunno….call me strange…but for me, watching muscular shirtless men trying to beat each other up is MUCH more entertaining than inebriated dancing ones who seem to have misplaced their pants…….HAHAHA am I weird?

(I’m trying SO hard to look up kanji and vocab on Google cuz they weren’t in my dictionary!!!)

Nobody wanted to explain some of the words to me, because they were so dirty! LOL I kept bugging poor Yamamoto-san next to me, saying “What does blahblahblah mean?” and he was freaking out, like “oh oh I can’t say such a thing! Too difficult!” 😀

Anyway. Then our two hour-reservation was up, and some people wanted to go to a second drinking party. Brittany and I stopped in a convenience store first, while listening to Katsumura-san hollering, “AT THE FIVE! AT THE FIVE!” When we came out, they were gone. We noticed a sign for a place called, “At the 5.” Okay, you’d assume that they must have gone in there, right? We went up. We slowly opened the door. We peaked our heads in. There was music. It was dark. There were men sitting around tables smoking. No Groundslam team…. There was some kind of stage and some women dancing….hmm let’s look more….WHOA!

…and we high-tailed it outta there real fast. LMAO
(pic taken the next day)

We poked our heads into another place downstairs that was REALLY seedy, so we backed out as fast as we went in. We finally found them at a place down the street, but I left shortly after.

Let me just say that I was not interested in the entertainment of the night.

The whole thing was just crazy for me. CRAZY ADVENTURE!!!
But choking people alcoholic experiences.

But whatever, it was a reunion for the two gyms and everyone seemed to have a great time. 🙂 I went to sleep at about 11:30, and then woke up at 6 AM! GRAPPLING TOURNAMENT TIME!!!

…to be continued in part 3…..…