Obama ruined Japanese bars.

No, I’m joking. Well, mostly. I like Obama a lot. But Japanese people picked up on his “yes we can” phrase and won’t let go of it.

An “Izakaya” is a Japanese-style bar/restaurant. They’re popular because people in Japan don’t usually have house parties and prefer going to these places in large groups. Izakaya usually have closed rooms where you can sit with your friends and nobody else in the building can see you. I think Izakaya are fun. I like Izakaya, but I don't go to bars or Irish pubs in Japan. (Actually, I don’t like going to Irish pubs in any country. Ha. You can probably already guess that.) Now I’m going to tell you why I don’t like regular bars / pubs in Japan.

Let me tell you a story.

When I was nineteen year old, I stayed at a YMCA youth hostel in Italy with some friends for three nights. On the first night, when we were walking around the hostel, we heard some guy with a guitar playing the YMCA song (you know what song I mean) and everyone around him was singing it and sort of laughing. My friends and I were laughing, too. We did the YMCA actions with our hands. It was funny. The second night, though, a new group of people came to the YMCA and they thought it was funny to keep singing the YMCA song, too. On the second night, it wasn’t so funny and was getting old fast. On the third night, the same thing happened and we were almost ready to murder the drunken fools who kept singing the stupid YMCA song again and again. Ha.

I guess that’s the same way most foreign people living in Japan feel about having "yes we can!” yelled at them by strangers and I’m sure the feeling multiplies itself by 100 for foreign people who aren’t even American. If a non-Japanese person goes to a pub-style bar in Japan, There is 99% chance that they are going to hear, “yes we can!!” at least once. It's always just yelled out by drunk men who think it's funny. If a black foreign person goes to a bar in Japan (especially if he’s African-American, but it happens to anyone, even Indian people) he’s going to get his “yes we can!!” accompanied by a lot of high fives and even some hugs from the really drunk people. I've seen it. Again, this isn’t meant to be rude or annoying. In some cases, it’s probably even meant to be welcoming. But nothing kills the night for me than meeting my Japanese friends and speaking in Japanese and then having some drunken stranger see me, come over and yell, “yes we can!!” followed by, “you come from?” That’s one reason why I don’t like going to bars.

I like my friends and I know my friends, so I know I’ll like my friends when they drink alcohol, even if they make stupid jokes, turn as red as a beet, ask to feel my hair or suddenly decide to start practicing random English words on me. They’re my friends. But I don’t want to deal with drunken strangers doing the same.