On Sunday, I went down to the Tamagawa River for a BBQ with my friends Watanabe and Tokuda. I’ve been to maybe three or four of these: Watanaba lives at Saginuma on the Den-en-toshi line, so Futago Shin-chi is fairly close. It is also very close to where I live, and there is a big space down by the river where people do BBQs.

A BBQ is a little tough for me, because I sunburn very easily. I took precautions and used lot of sunscreen. I survived with only a bit of a red face, which I consider a complete victory.

I always like these BBQs. The food is very different from the stuff that we have back in America. There are usually lots of vegetables (mushrooms, onions, pumpkin, peppers) and fish, both whole (like Shishyamo) and fillets. There is also thinly sliced meats, some sausages, and usually by the end yakisoba. There is always plenty of beer, but I only had one and then because of the crazy heat (like 32 degrees Celsius) I drank lots and lots of tea.

I was there for about four hours, and basically had minor variations on this conversation fifty times:

Person: “My … name … is … X”.
Me: “Oh, hi X. I’m Dave. What brings you to this BBQ?”
Person: “Hey, you can talk!”
Me: “…”
Person: “Where did you learn Japanese?”

Then we went one to job stuff, how it is hot, etc., etc. I kid a little, but it is always tough meeting new people because first they are shocked that you can speak Japanese, then they go on for quite a while about how well you speak, when in actuality I’ve got a long way to go. But I can hold my own in conversations. You don’t start noticing my deficiencies until you start getting into complicated stuff, like tax codes and social policy. Those topics don’t come up at BBQs in the first hour or so of conversation.

So, onto the more amusing things. The group next to ours had a few guys who kept getting naked and horsing around. First they took some pictures in the flowers nearby, then got dressed again, and a while later got naked for some swimming. They were a mixed group, but none of the girls seemed too bothered or interested. My best guess is that they were playing drinking games and just got carried away.

I was surprised at how many people were going into the river. I should have worn a swimsuit. It was really hot, and I wanted to go and try to cool off a bit. A lot of people weren’t prepared for swimming, wearing normal clothes. A lot more people weren’t planning on going in, but their friends made plans for them and people got dunked.

Also not too far from our group was a large group of tattooed men. They had tattoos that are typical of Japanese gangsters. They also were getting naked, but this was more of a sempai – kouhai sort of thing. They’d tell one guy to get naked and then go over to the DJ area and dance with some people for a bit, then come back. Just fooling around. They also at one point had a bunch of roman candles and were shooting them off at each other. When some of the shots went stray, and came close to other groups of people, those groups tried pretty hard to just … pretend that nothing was happening. Crazy.

I know I’m talking a lot of about naked guys, but it really seems like the social sensibility in Japan with regards to nudity is very different from America. If you were at some sort of summer river or beach type thing that was not specifically specified as a nudist area, I do not think people would put up with guys getting naked and running around. I also don’t think that you would see as many guys getting naked because in my experience, guys don’t often want to get naked around each other in social situations. It just doesn’t seem to be as big of a deal around here – see Onsen for another good example.

Anyway, it was really nice getting out in the sun. I feel like I’ve had a whole month’s worth of sunshine in one day. I’ve lifted the tag of hikkikomori for another month.