I follow Tou-san out into the alley, and the moist air collects once more on my face. The night is now pitch black, though you wouldn't know it with all the city lights. I have yet to see a real street light in this area, the city planners probably deemed it unnecessary with the neon glow. Tou-san tells me this time he knows where he's going, though he grunts out a laugh and a cough when he sees my disbelieving expression. I ask him where, exactly, we are going, and he just repeats the phrase he had told me earlier in the day, "the famous jazz club". "Kobe," he says, "is quite famous for its jazz club." I am quite skeptical of this statement; Japan is known for its jazz about as much as I am known for my jazz. Kobe is more famous for its gangsters, and I tell him so. He laughs bruskly, but gives me a serious look and tells me to keep my voice down with those sorts of comments in this area; apparently the statement is more true than most would care to admit. I had only learned of this fact before from fellow foreigners who were willing to discuss it openly in english, and had heard the occasional gloss in private, hushed tones from natives. If there is a stereotype the Japanese truly embody, it is that they routinely prove their stereotypes wrong, but never talk about it in open tones. "Politically correct" is a term unheard of here, simply because there is no need for it.

I suddenly realize we've been walking for about ten minutes. Tou-san finally bites the bullet and dials his wife to ask for help. I can't tell if he is listening to her or just nodding his head. I have never seen a more peaceful marriage in my life, and it seems that is not just a surface observation. I wonder if his acquaintance with the act of nodding has less to do with his listening and more to do with the aforementioned calm in his marriage. He seems happy, walking around drunk and smiling, though he doesn't know where he's going any more than his wife does.

We are at a strange five-way intersection and Tou-san's eyes suddenly perk up. "Do you see that? There is a Christian dance club." This is the last thing I expected to hear tonight, but looking up, sure enough I can see a cross backlit by flashing lights in a window high atop a skinny building. Tou-san has changed expressions now, his eyes opening slightly from his earlier meandering smile. "Follow me!" he says and starts off down an arbitrary direction from the five way star we were previously standing in the middle of. I wipe my face and glasses with a towel and head after him. It seems to be a lot more humid than I had expected. It's always humid here.

"Ahhhh, ok, ok, ok, ok!" Tou-san smiles broadly, this time tightening his eyes completely shut. I can see the chirashi man, indicative of a night time club, passing out papers a block ahead. He is wearing sunglasses, and I nearly scoff at the impression this jazz club is building in my mind. We arrive at the door and this time Tou-san heads in first. I have never before seen him so happy to be somewhere, rather, I've never seen him act so excited at all. He had taken me to see the world's longest suspension bridge on the way to a tour of some whirlpools that are famous all across Japan, and not once on that journey was he anywhere as happy as this.

The front steps to the club are very large and very western. There is a twisted iron bar hand rail on the right side of them, something very similar to what I'd seen countless times growing up in my own town in America. Through the front oak door is a small, very "Japanese" entrance room. It seems extremely out of place to me, and the second large oak door to the entrance does nothing more than serve to accent the strangeness of this room, but when I open the door to the inside, I am awestruck.

I am back in Chicago. The black-suited maitre d' asks Tou-san in an incredibly superfluous and flowery manner where he would like to be seated. Tou-san returns an answer which I again can't make out, and a sudden look of recognition spreads across the maitre d's face. As we head through the place, no one even notices we're here. It's not that we're welcome or unwelcome, it's that they don't even see us as they stare through our moving bodies to the stage in the corner. The place is very dark, and very western. I wonder to myself if it's possible I have somehow transported back home. There are no kimonos in this room, only suits and slacks. The tables, packed closely among low-ceiling columns, are all of a western style. In fact, I could swear I've seen these exact tables before at a restaurant near my home. I cough from the swilling smoke as we weave our way through to the back corner, where I am left standing with a now apparently blind-from-smiling Tou-san in front of three middle aged men.

The men casually regard me and greet Tou-san, who immediately and less than politely introduces me. "Hey," "How's it going?" "Nice to meet you." These are the responses I might expect from someone my age, but they are coming to me from bald, smoking, fifty-something business men. I sit at a seat appropriated for me by Tou-san, and suddenly reflect on just how nice sitting is after a night of drinking and walking. "So you're the home-stay man, are you?" "Ah... yes." I reply, carefully choosing the most formal words I can. I had been taught to never, ever address someone of his age difference with anything but the utmost humbleness. "Hey, it's ok to use normal language here! We're all friends." "Yeah, but you're the bucho!" I recall that Bucho is the term for boss. The man across the table laughs quite loudly then looks at me to explain, "He's our bucho, we all work for him." "Ah, ye.. I mean, ok," I reply, attempting to fit their language style. "That's the spirit!" Bucho is looking at me rather energetically. "You like whiskey, right?" I start to reply, "Well..." "Of course you do!" Bucho interrupts, and slams a noticeably tall glass in front of me, quickly filling it to the top with straight whiskey. He adds a few hand cut ice cubes and I suddenly realize there's no getting out of it. "It's pretty rude to refuse a drink," everyone had previously told me, "so get used to it."

"So do you like jazz? This singer is quite good," the man in between Bucho and the laughing man looks at me. Unlike the other two, he has a full head of hair. He seems to be quite a bit younger than the others, and he is wearing clothes that are plainly more comfortable than theirs as well. "She used to be a opera singer, that woman. She's very famous in jazz circles, what do you think of her?" The way these men talk, I'm starting to think everything in Japan is famous. The woman's tone is perfect- she has a beautiful voice, and she seems very, very absorbed in the music. I can tell she's singing in english, but I can't understand her. This is so common to me by now, I don't think twice. Time goes by and I listen to her sing. I'm becoming increasingly drunk thanks to the whiskey in front of me and I plan to leave as soon as I finish it.

Tou-san pulls out his electronic dictionary, and another thing at the table suddenly becomes famous. The men confer over the dictionary for a while and Bucho takes an inebriated stab at asking me, in english, who my favorite singer is. I first answer "Frank Sinatra" in english, then prompted by their quizzical looks, try again with "Furankku Shi nattora". "Oooooh!" they all answer, nodding knowingly. They confer again with the dictionary and Bucho tries again, asking what my favorite song is. I tell him it's Fly Me to the Moon, and they all do the same nod again. As I finish my whiskey I suddenly realize how much I am enjoying myself. I can't decide if it's the atmosphere or the alcohol, but I also realize how much trouble I'll be in if I drink any more, so I start to get ready to leave.

I start to put some things into my pockets that I had put on the table, and I look up to my empty glass. No, my now refilled glass. When did that happen? Looks like I'm staying a little longer. Suddenly, the singer of the night announces her last song and I catch the words "Frank Sinatra" in skewed english. She launches into a very, very slow version of what is now "Fry Me to the Moon". I laugh out loud as I realize I'm loving this rendition for all the wrong reasons. I try my best to relate this in an unintentional drunken fashion to the other men at the table, and after failing miserably for several minutes, Tou-san catches the meaning and explains it to the others in japanese. They laugh uncontrollably for several minutes, and I'm not sure who does and doesn't take offense at this in the club. I can't really focus on them anyway.

The singer has long since left, and after countless jokes lost to a swirl of memoryless haze, I finally finish my whiskey. I remember that I must immediately stand up after finishing the glass. This is all I remember, and I wing it from there. The other men seem to understand my own actions better than I do as they take it as the note for everyone to leave. As we head for the door, I ask Tou-san if I can help pay for the whiskey that I now realize is in excess of a hundred dollars. He immediately says no, "It's on the company tonight!" and they all laugh as we head out into the street. We wait for the younger man of the three to return from paying the bill at the entrance, and he joins us carrying a large painting-shaped package. I have absolutely no clue what it is or how he got it, nor do I care.

We stumble precariously down the sidewalk, and this time it's apparent one of the men actually knows where he's going, though he's taking a rather roundabout and windy path down the road to get there. The laughing man keeps on laughing, and Bucho tells me I need to find a Japanese girl, because they love guys like me. "They like guys like you. Foreign guys, you know! I don't know. You're young! Japanese girls will love guys like you." Suddenly I am standing in front of the bus stop to my host family's house with Tou-san. The three are walking away, screaming into the night, now supporting the laughing man. "It was great meeting you! Come out with us next time!" Their voices trail off as I board the bus that had approached with perfect timing.

As I barely hang on to the support rings hanging from the ceiling of the bus, I reflect on my goals and activities, and get mad at myself. Hadn't I come here for culture? Wasn't I supposed to do things I would only have one chance in lifetime to do, to see things I could never see again? But as I watch Tou-san somehow drift off to sleep while standing unsupported in the middle of the bus, a smile spreads across my face, and the anger fades.

The man with whom I'm walking is the father of the host family I'm staying with. He's so skinny you can see his ribs through his shirt; he seems worn, and talks with a gruff short voice hoarsened by years of smoking. "Maybe it's this way?" He looks at me as if I had a clue in the world about where we were headed. I can hear the loud noises emanating from the arcades a few blocks away. I had frequented them during my stay, though they were more a quick distraction than anything else. Culture, I had told myself, was the real reason I was here. But tonight was a night Tou-san had requested I accompany him.

"Aaaaagh, no, it was back the other way..." I laugh as he takes me through the winding, tiny roads of downtown Kobe. It's summer here, and though the humidity is almost oppressive during the day, the night is pleasantly warm, although you wouldn't want to walk far. It occurs to me that far seems to be where we're headed. After a while of walking, Tou-san says, "Ah! Got it! Got it. It's here." All I can see is a kouban, or police box, with a tiny set of stairs set adjacent. There is a festival on the left side of the building, it leads back up a path, with a set of stairs leading up a hill to a temple. The lights in the kouban are off, and I suspect the police chose rather to enjoy the evening with their family at their own local festivals. It wouldn't matter anyway, walking alone through the back alleys at night, talking to complete strangers in a language I didn't totally understand, I had still never felt any danger. As I looked at the festival and its food vendors, my stomach growled, and we headed through the tiny entrance.

"Ok, ok, this way..." As Tou-san led me up the narrow staircase, I could see small spiderwebs in the corners, a half burnt-out fluorescent light flickering above. At the top, the entrance to the restaurant was a dramatic change of scenery, a storefront straight out of the Meiji era. "Sorry, excuse me!", Tou-san half-yelled as he opened the door. It was a phrase one would normally expect to hear when visiting a friend's house. As the staff inside greet him, I close the sliding door behind me and notice that it is real rice paper, not a farce containing hardened plastic or glass to keep out intruders like so many of the other restaurants I had seen.

Tou-san says something to the waitress I can't quite make out, and she bustles to take us to our seats at a wrap-around bar close to the floor. She seats us on a side that is as of yet unoccupied. I suddenly feel very self-conscious, I am very aware that I am the only foreigner in the room. No one is looking at me, not even reacting strangely to my presence, but perhaps that is why I feel uncomfortable. Everywhere else I am a commodity, a new toy to be passed around and seen, but in this room there are only people, regarding me as a person. There are two middle aged men, presumably business partners, or perhaps boss and worker, sitting to my left and drinking silently. In the back on a raised tatami floor there are normal floor-seated style tables; there is a family there, two children, a father and a mother. For some reason the mother is wearing a summer yukata, but the others are dressed in normal attire. Behind me are some vacant western style tables.

While I am busy looking around, Tou-san orders something of which I am unaware. The waitress looks at me expectantly, and I order a beer. "What kind?", she asks, and I am unable to answer. I look to Tou-san for help and explain that I want "a Japanese style" beer. He laughs, tells her to bring an Asahi, and she bustles off again. "This is robata", he says, and looks at me. "What's robata?" I ask, and he coughs a smoker's cough and mulls it over for a minute. Upon deciding better of it, he pulls out an electronic dictionary and starts punching buttons. He laughs and gives me a characteristic smile which pulls his eyes nearly completely shut. "I've been waiting a while to use this, you know." All of my previous host family's members had been able to speak some english, but this man could speak next to none. I suppose I had been lucky, to be able to use my previous hosts as a dictionary in mid conversation, but now it was better to be forced to learn things through experience. I peer at the dictionary, he had apparently been able to appropriate the term: "robata - by the fireside". I suddenly notice the relevance of where we are sitting.

The stove, which the bar I am currently sitting at is wrapped around, is not a stove at all, but rather a giant fire pit covered by a metal mesh. There is a woman sitting at the stove, looking very haggard with her hair tied back behind her head, sweat dripping down her face. It is hot where I am, but she is directly over the coals. Tou-san asks me what I want and presents me with a menu almost, but not entirely unreadable. I pride myself in my reading and writing abilities, but this hand written menu looks like nothing more than scribbles to me. "Hah! Only kidding," he says gruffly, and turns it over to reveal an even more poorly written English menu. Poorly written English, however, I have experience with. Tou-san looks on with that familiar smile, "Anything is fine! Get anything you want at all!" I nod in confirmation and look from him to the menu, but I know I won't order anything expensive.

The menu consists entirely of ingredients only, which would have surprised me had I not been living here for a few weeks. There were many theme-style restaurants here that had the same type of menu. The items are all cheap, but I have no way of knowing how much I will get for my money. Rather, we will probably wind up buying a few of everything on the menu before we are done. I tell Tou-san that I love shiitake mushrooms, and that I'd like to try the beef. Instead of asking the waitress who is now returning with our drinks, he directs the order to the woman sitting at the stove, who nods and picks up a peculiarly long paddle. The wooden paddle is about five feet in length and looks heavy. The woman hefts it with ease and reaches it across the fire pit to pick up the ingredients we ordered, currently raw and sitting in containers on the edge of the bar closest to us. She cooks them with water and a little lemon juice on the grill, perfectly arranges them on a plate, and passes them expertly back across the grill on her paddle.

The food is delicious, and I tell Tou-san so. We haven't said much to each other, but over drinks and food, he is starting to open up and talk freely to me. I can smell the alcohol on his breath, and I'm reminded that we're both on our second beer and halfway through a shared bottle of sake. We laugh and enjoy the rest of our food. The cook changes with a different woman, relieving both me and the previous cook, though for my part it's only out of concern. We order seconds, and finish our sake, start working on the third beer. The conversation is flirting past my ears and I am talking a mile a minute. For some reason I speak with more rhythm and fluency when I've had a few. Perhaps it's because I stop thinking about the words, and more the meaning behind them. He tells me about jazz, how he works too much, and how he likes sushi. We have exchanged more words in the last 30 minutes than we have in the last two weeks. It feels good to know the man behind the face with which I had been living.

We finish our food, but there is no bill. Tou-san tells me we pay at the front. I laugh, though I don't know why- everything seems funny now. I suddenly realize the place has filled up, and people are laughing and talking as loudly as we are. The family is gone, replaced by a new family, all members of which are my senior. Still, no one is staring, and I go to use the restroom while he pays. The restroom only contains a Japanese style toilet, but I don't seem to mind anymore. After I come out and we start to leave, I thank him profusely for the dinner. It is more than he should have done, it was a great thing to do. I'm repeating myself, and realize I'm finished drinking for the night. Tou-san asks me if I'm going home, and I tell him yes. He tells me no, and insists I follow him. After being treated to the meal, there is nothing I can do but agree. "I've been treated to a great meal!", we yell as we open the door to leave. We are both still fairly light on our feet as we stumble down the now much brighter stairs and back out into the night.