Bono's Tokyo: A Typical Night After Class

When your schedule is set up so that you only have one class per day, and it meets from 6:30pm - 9:30pm, it's almost a given, that in a city like Tokyo, you're going to find some things to do to occupy your free time.

While most days are spent sightseeing, people-watching, shopping, and eating, nighttime is definitely reserved for two things: unwinding and partying. Tokyo is in not in short supply of outlets for either of those things.

Here's what a typical weeknight looks like for me:

Let's say it's a Tuesday. It's about 9:35pm and I've just wrapped up 3 hours of Comparative Immigration, taught by an attorney who deals strictly with immigration matters for U.S. citizens in Japan, and with issues arising out of the U.S. Embassy here. It's long, and it's tedious. But it's definitely worthwhile, since these are classes you can't get anywhere else in the world.

However, once the bell rings, that classroom is the last place any of us want to be.

Tokyo is unique because it really is two different cities. By day, restaurants and stores open for business and the streets are packed with businesspeople heading to and from work, and with your average Joe running errands, shopping, and going about his life. But at 6pm, those stores slowly start to close, and store-fronts that look abandoned during the day, light up at night. There are still just as many people out; college students going out on the town, the same businesspeople either relaxing after a long day, or taking a few hours to unwind before either going back to work, or sleeping at the office.

And there has to be some place to handle that kind of market. Enter the Yakitoriya. Yakitori (literally "meat on a stick") is a great late-night snack, and these small bar-restaurants that serve the food are everywhere. Down every alley and on every corner.

This night, we stopped in and helped ourselves to the entire menu. I ate chicken thigh (grilled and on a stick), duck (also on a stick), and beef (you guessed it...on a stick). The portions are small, but cheap, and a cold Kirin washes them down nicely. But the menu doesn't end there. Our group ordered some vegetables, and then decided to get a variety of sashimi. Unlike sushi (raw meat, usually fish, served with rice, sashimi is just the meat). That night was the first time I ate horse.

...Yeah, I said it, horse. Ba-Sashii is just that, raw horse meat. It looks like raw red meat...and it tastes what I imagined raw red meat tastes like. But, like everything else I've willed myself to just stick in my mouth...it wasn't that bad.