The Pirate Ship

Despite being several hundred kilometres from the ocean, Shirakawa apparently has some resident pirates. We discovered this when we went out for Liz’s birthday to a place called the Pirate Ship.

There didn’t seem to be too much pirate – type food around (although this is probably a good thing, given that I’m not a huge fan of salt beef, ship’s biscuits and sauerkraut). Instead there was lots of fried food. On sticks. Including several types of cheese. Weird. But very Japanese.

There was however, plentiful booze and inevitably, everyone got drunk. Almost as inevitable was the savage bashing I received, (with bruises on my arm to prove it – thankfully these have since faded, though the painful memories linger). You may also be unsurprised to read that this bashing was courtesy of a member of the fairer sex.

As these pictures show, it appeared that everyone had a good time. Especially Timmy. Doesn’t he look like a special boy on his day out. (Perhaps somebody mentioned the Cleveland steamer, which understandably sent him into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Who knows.)

The plan after dinner was to head to karaoke. But none of us were in a state to wait an hour for a room to become available so we headed to the “Yakuza pub” next door, where some of the boys tried out their Japanese on some local girls. Sadly, all of the girls said that they already had boyfriends…