Last New Years I gave you my heart...

So my friend Mel (who will forthwith be referred to as "my gf" due to a personal joke) and I recently bought tickets to go to New Zealand for New Years this year. This purchase has made me think of last New Years that boyfy and I spent in Kyoto and how awesome it was. The whole four week trip was an insane amount of awesome that we've talked about almost every single day since we got back, but still, let's micro focus on New Years Eve in particular.

We were staying at a really great hostel in Kyoto, Khaosan, and up until the day we arrived there from Kochi on the 29th we had been planning to attend a traditional bell ringing ceremony. Something very culturally rich and rewarding. However, the front desk at Khaosan was advertising a NYE pub crawl. We are Australian. It was a no brainer. (That's not entirely true, we didn't really fully commit until like 5pm on NYE.) But it was run by Japanese hosts! So we were still experiencing Japanese culture. Just modern culture.

Anyway, we met up in our hostel lobby at about 6pm, I think it was, and awkwardly smiled at the other people in our hostel who were coming along. We made friends with one lady who was also from Australia who I mistakenly referred to as Helen-san for the WHOLE night before she corrected me after midnight that her name was actually Hailey. We chatted to Helen-san and our two Japanese guides, Yuki and Roki (I believe) on our walk to our first bar.

I have no idea what the name of the bar was but as part of the crawl we got two drinks and two shots in like one hour so needless to say the early awkwardness had worn off.

I'll tell you what, those Japanese guides certainly know their customers. Roki instantly had our attention when he walked to the middle of the dance floor holding up a bottle of vodka and announcing "SHOTS! SHOTS!" The crowd formed.

After shots we were herded out of the bar to make our way to the club, our final stop for the evening. I know. It was a short pub crawl but it was NYE and Roki had explained that it was just too busy everywhere else to do more.

On the way to the club one of our new Australian friends, Mia, was trying to confirm with one of our new Japanese friends about where we were going. She interpreted his probably very good English poorly and from then on we were headed "to the CRAB!"

At the crab we danced and drank the night away.

Our "I can't believe you're wearing the same shirt" photo. We could believe it. It was planned.

That's "Helen-san" in the middle.

At almost midnight, Shan must have glanced across at the bar and decided "hey, there's no line, what a perfect opportunity to get a drink."

Try as I might to drag him away for the countdown, he was adamant that he needed to get his drink right at the moment. So I counted down and celebrated with my new friends instead. For some reason after we counted down to the first midnight, they rewound the timer so that we had another hour to count down again. I don't know.

Being pacmanned. Definition: when you go to kiss but the other person purposely opens their mouth wider.

We didn't make it to then anyway. We are weak and we were drunk. And we hadn't had dinner.

We left the crab and somehow in his blurred state Shan was able to guide us back to the hostel (skills like a turtle), with a much needed pit stop at Macca's on the way, where we lectured the Japanese people at the table next to us on the correct use of past and present tense "thank you" in Japanese. Honestly, you'd think they'd know.