Drinking on a Weekday

I moved to Hiroshima straight out of University and had already experienced four years of rowdy fun and parties on random days when school and work allowed. But I settled in to my island home of Ondo and grew into my role as an ALT.

My first breakfast at my new apartment in Ondo (August 2006)

As a teacher, on a small island where everything closes at 8pm, I quickly associated drinking with the city (Kure City) and I only went there on weekends. Also, being a social creature, buying beer at drinking at my house never occurred to me, and I think I had a total of one beer by myself the entire year I lived in that apartment, which hardly qualifies for "drinking alone".

Drinks on the pier in Kure

Anyway, my point is, drinking was a "weekends only" thing for me, and has been, with few exceptions, for the my first three and a half years here. Once, I even recall hearing of "Hump Day Drinks" and chuckling! Oh! The immaturity!

What happened to make this clean-living boy crack? A violent break-up? Death in the family? Intolerable STRESS?!?
NOPE!
My friends opened a new bar.

When I say "friends", I mean, they are my friends now. back then one of the guys just owned a smaller bar I would go to maybe once a month on a weekend, and when it first opened, things were the same for Southern Cross. But being a new bar, they wanted to get a clientele and steady business, so one of the things they did was start a Wednesday night Pub Quiz. This is something I HAD NEVER DONE BEFORE, and had only seen ONE reference, in an episode of the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Not only was the quiz free to play, everyone got 100 yen off all drinks, and the winning team gets FREE DRINKS at the next quiz! That's how they sucked me in. This has been going on for almost one year now, and of course, I don't go every week, but even when I don't go I think about it, and every once in a while I volunteer to host the quiz (think of the questions, MC, and score the answer sheets), a task which also comes with free drinks and is a lot of fun.

Normally I don't get drunk or anything, it's just a fun night out. The "problem", if you choose to call it that, is that there are a few very intelligent ex-pats who usually win, so I have won a total of maybe 2 or 3 times, but 1 of those times was last week! So last night I went to play the quiz again, and enjoyed my free drinks, perhaps a little too thoroughly, and waking up this morning was... not so easy. No big deal, but next week some Japanese people will be hosting the quiz for the first time and on top of being curious as to what kind of questions they ask, etc., it is also a charity benefiting the victims of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, so weekday or not:
I will drink to that.