Japan's Next Generation : one last Japan retrospective...

Well my plan to party and be a beach bum is paying off splendidly...I've just escaped our beach paradise for the party town of Haad Rin where they're gearing up for a full moon party in a few days.  We've intercepted Mere's cousin Kylie & her friend Emma who I'll be joining for the big event as it happens on Monday which is a school night for Mere so she's not allowed out...actually now that she's older and wiser and has contributed enough brain cells to the cause of partying on the beach in her 20's, Mere's not much interested.
Anyhow, I wanted to make one final blog about a night out we had in Japan as it was to say the least a unique experience I thought worth sharing so you folks at home get a sense of what the next generation of Japanese youth are up to in terms of the night life....so here we go:

Although it was crazy expensive to go out on the town in Japan, by the time we hit Kyoto we were ready for a night out.  I had connected with someone who teaches English in Kyoto through http://www.couchsurfing.org/ and she'd told me of a couchsurfing get together on a Friday night when we'd be there.  As you may remember from a previous blog, Kyoto is a city of temples so we spent the day checking out the fall colours at some spectacular temples, hunted for geisha in the downtown district they're know to frequent, and made our way to the pub where we'd meet other couchsurfers who either lived in Kyoto or were just travelling through like us.  We got to the "Bar Monte Bello" with beer "only" 500 yen (~$13 cdn) but we were early and hungry and the place was incredibly small and very empty.  Since it was too small for a kitchen we headed out for food and found a very great little restaurant that served organic whole foods which would healthfully compensate for all the beer we'd be drinking later.  Arriving back to the Bar Monte Bello we found a table full of "geijin" or "outsiders" like us who welcomed us to join them.  We sat down looking forward to conversing in English for a change but we quickly befriended Annie & Christophe from France and of course, I was determined to use what little I could remember from high school's French 12.class.  A few over priced beers later, I found myself incredibly fluent in a strange hybrid of newly learned Japanese and very old broken Quebecois.  But the place was getting packed and although closing time was 3am, we were all ready for a change of scene and there was some strange sounding "Anime Toro" happening at one of Kyoto's few nightclubs called "The Metro".  So we settled our bills and headed into the cool brisk evening in the hopes of getting some dancing under our belts.
We walked up this large canal that runs through the city and with the help of those in our small group who knew the city found our way to a nondescript basement with the familiar night club sound dull thudding bass.
Encouraged by music that sounded danceable and curious about the stipulation that anyone coming dressed as your favourite anime*  character got in free, we headed down the stairs to check it out.
*anime is a cool form of Japanese comic books that are incredibly popular in Japan
We were quickly wishing we'd dressed up as the cover charge was about $30 cdn but with few options and a sense of adventure we paid the guys at the door and entered into the dark, loud, subterranean concrete bunker that is the Metro.  I was immediately shaking hands with a young Japanese guy who looked really high and introduced himself as some kind of real estate sales person.  He was very welcoming with pretty good English but whatever drugs he was taking were making him annoying so I thanked him in Japanese and plunged deeper towards the stage where the dj was playing. 
We'd only just gotten our free beers that came with the cover charge when suddenly the dj finished his set and a band started to set up.  We later found out that to cover their bets and appeal to as many tastes as possible, most clubs only have bands & dj's play for a half hour so if you don't like what's playing you're less likely to leave. 
As to be expected, the crowd was mostly Japanese, some in very cool & kooky anime get ups.  The place was getting packed and seemed like mostly a university aged crowd with it's usual percentage of  people stumbling around wrecked.   Despite us not exactly "fitting in" and starting to feel tired, we waited for the band to come on in the hopes of getting some bang for our yen.  5 guys finally took the stage which was tiny but that didn't stop them from immediately jumping and bouncing around and hanging from the ceiling.  It was a sight to behold as all of them were only partially clothed, some wearing masks that looked like they'd just warped a roll of packing tape around their head ( would hate to see them remove it ).  The music was loud , full of non stop yelling which of course was in Japanese so totally incomprehensible.
With my jaw wide open in awe, I turned to Mere and said "Is that bass player naked?" to which she merely nodded and said, "Yeah I think so" with her jaw wide open in awe.  Half way through their set the lead singer, wearing only a jock strap and packing tape mask, came out into the audience and did sort of a pole dance while hanging from the ceiling right beside us.  It was all kind of amazing and disturbing at the same time.  Fortunately, it was over all too soon and we decided to stick it out to continue getting a fuller experience of what the youth of Japan was producing for entertainment these days.  Somehow the crowd had seemed into it even though I couldn't hear anything worth dancing too.
So with our minds firmly open, the next act was a guy with a lot of keyboards & electronic equipment and a big screen behind him.  His set was this bizarre collage of video game theme music that spanned the history of arcade games from Frogger to Mario Bros.  Sadly, the novelty and nostalgia wore off in seconds and just when I started to force my body to move to some of the catchier themes that sounded familiar, it changed to something less cathcy and left us disappointed.
By now it was late and we started feeling our age and admitted defeat despite the fact we could've stayed and continued exploring Japanese youth culture first hand.  Good things may come to those who wait, but going to bed is even better.
With little encouragement, Annie & Christophe from France were ready to go as well so we split a cab as we were staying close to each other.  They were great to meet and we ran into them a few more times while exploring Kyoto over the next few days so the evening wasn't a complete write off!
In retrospect, the Kyoto night scene we saw reminded me all too much of going out when I first went to College:  Lots of wrecked people in dark, loud, overpriced venues, drinks you can't afford and randomly bad bands trying to push the edge with music designed for hearing loss.  The more things change, the more they stay the same,  or as they say here in Thaland: "Same same but different".