Izakaya the same as Akachōchin?

I went to my first izakaya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izakaya) tonight! My housemate invited me out to join him and the other instructors (including my other housemate) and Japanese staff from his branch for dinner, and usually i'm kinda shy in these situations, but I thought "well i better say yes, otherwise he might not ask me again".... so I went and had an awesome time! I drank a little bit (okay I had four drinks) - my first drinks on Japanese soil!

This was also the first place I've been where I've had to remove my shoes as well (apart from my home). So we all sat at this really long table, which was set into the floor a bit, so that every time the waitress came to take a drink she knelt down - I could imagine they would get sore knees if they did this too often. Then we just ordered a stack of food from the menu - it was kinda like the yum cha days we used to have in the meetup group. I had some salmon sashimi, some sort of dumpling things, some chicken liver (I think, it was very chewy), some snow pea-type things that I was told after I'd been chewing for a while that you're not supposed to eat the husks, just the pods, a blob of tofu type stuff and we were going to try raw horse meat,but they didn't have any tonight. They also have a Russian Roulette type dish, 5 or 6 dumpling type things, and one is packed full of wasabi and peppers. So everyone around the table takes one, then you all bite into them at the same time. Apparently the last time they did it the girl who got the bad one was gagging and had tears in her eyes! So we didn't do that one.

The first drink I had was called a sour - I think it was peach flavoured - and I realise now that it was made of egg white.... I also had a plum drink, no idea what alcohol was in it, but a pickled plum was at the bottom of it (which my housemate tried to eat, till we told him that probably wasn't a good idea). Then I had this weird drink that honestly, I would say it had the consistency of slightly thicker water, and tasted a bit the same.. That's what i noticed about all the drinks I had tonight,none of them had the alcohol taste that vodka, tequila, scotch etc all have (so no "vodka face" from me tonight!). Anyway, apparently that last drink is quite potent, so hopefully I'm not hungover tomorrow (i have to work in about 10 hours haha).

Then we went to a bar around the corner - this was an English pub.. oh, all this was in Gyotoku, the suburb next to Minami Gyotoku (maybe 20 mins walk from my home, or 2 mins by train). and oh yeah, someone bought me a beer there as well...
Anyway, all the people I met from the the Gyotoku office were so friendly, there were 2 Aussies, a guy from NZ, a Scottish girl, an American and a very very gay British guy (I was so excited, the only other gay guy I've met here so far). So anyway, I think they want me to come out with them in a couple of weeks time - woot!

And I got to know one of my housemates a bit better tonight as well - we hadn't really chatted much, he arrived about three weeks before I did, so we're both in the same situation. Anyway, we had a couple of good chats, he's a pretty cool guy.

Anyway, these guys sound like they go out drinking quite often, so I could see how it would be easy not to save any money, but I'm not really a huge drinker, I don't like doing it every night/every weekend... but we'll see if that changes during my time here.


Oh, a few things I found out about Tokyo/Chiba (the prefecture I live in):
1. Tokyo has The John Lennon Museum, which has been approved and endorsed by Yoko Ono (actually I found out about that on the first day I arrived here, but I kept forgetting to tell everyone - we got a flyer with John Lennon's face on it the first day we arrived, they handed it to us at the airport).
2. The world's largest (at the time this book was printed, a few years back) indoor ski slope is located in Urayasu City, the close to Tokyo Disney and also close to me!
3. Chiba is the site of the Snore Museum and Research Center - I'm sure it's helps you get 8 hours of sleep a day, one way or another. If you want to take a tour, you have to ring to enquire (for some reason the museum isn't popular enough to warrant regularly scheduled tour times, who'da thunkit?)

Currently listening: Portishead - Pedestal