Another Fantastic Night To Remember

As I mentioned yesterday, in my previous blog entry, I was feeling a bit under the weather. I spent the majority of the day inside, studying a bit of Japanese and really just relaxing. By nightfall, I got cleaned up, went out for some dinner, and by the time I got home I was feeling pretty charged up; it was fantastic to feel alive and able to function again! Ray, who is a close friend of Luke (and who I am now rather fond of), has been living here for the past two years teaching english. Unfortunately, Ray will moving back home to Australia in two days, so we had a going away bash which started at JK's Bird (the local watering hole for the big group of Australian and American english teachers). The notion of going out for another night on the town didn't sit quite well with me, in theory, but once I got out there I was having a killer time. on the top level of the bar, in the lounge, there was an amazing jazz jam-session going on. There were three guitar amps, a bass amp, two drum kits, a couple key boards, plenty of microphones set up for both vocalists and brass/wind. Basically the entire floor was filled with musicians and each group would trade off, on the stage, after each song. These musicians were amazingly talented and it was probably one of my luckiest happy-accidents to stumble across, throughout my entire holiday!
After the performance was over, we moved back downstairs to the main floor and mingled with the rest of the new-class of Australian english teachers. Within an hour of being back downstairs, Ray put out the objective of moving on to a local Karaoke bar; no one objected, and within minutes we were on our way. About 10 of us, in total, made the move to karaoke and we had a blast! I'm normally not too keen on singing in front of other people but the vibe was super mellow and I ended up having an absolutely amazing time. I've only just met Ray, but it truly is a bummer to see him go; I've had nothing but classic times spent on the town with him, thus far, and I can only imagine what else we would've gotten into if he had more time here!

When all was said and done, we got out around 5:30am and made it back home just before the sun-rise. Sometimes the best times in life are the complete opposite of what you plan for!