Cinquecento, the 500 yen End-Up

Every town has a bar where people end up at the end of the evening.
In San Francisco the bar is called "The End Up." In Osaka, Japan
this honor has rotated between The Shanghai, Glens, Rakan and now it
goes to a place called B-Boy Trip, where the action starts aroung 5 am
and goes until noon. But since I am advanced in my years and incapable
of going that late/early, my end up is a novel establishment called
Cinquecento (500 in Italian).

This is a marvelous place, a small street level shop with one, U-shaped
bar which allows you to sit across from other patrons, and a glass door
in front. This is rare as most places are in high-rises in Japan, but here
you can peek in and get an idea of the crowd. It's packed after midnight when
bar hostesses get off work and the last-train crowd has packed up and gone.
The bar's original theme was 500 yen martinis of all kinds, but this has
been adapted to swank cocktails. I cannot bring myself to order a beer here,
as there are other places for that. I lean towards Manhattans or that poisonous
concoction known as an Old-Fashioned. The 500 yen price means you can have four
drinks for 2000 yen, a nice round number and buying a round is easier. Also,
a fatal fact for me, this place lets me run a tab, thus ensuring my continued
patronage.

On Monday there was a to-do celebrating the end of university term, starting at the Canopy Bar in Umeda, with a good number of the usual suspects. I insisted on going to the Owl's Nest the Canadian Bar (as Canada had just voted out the Liberals) but it was empty except for us. I did find a pair of mukluks hanging on the coat rack, which I waved around like a happy anthropologist. Then on to Blarney Stone, where we met an interesting Egyptian journalist, some foreigners working for J. corporations, and a lady named Michiko. I then mounted my bike, hit the bank, and made my way to CQ. There at the end of the bar was one of my favorite people in the world, Sachiko, an accomplished DJ I had not seen in a long time. We actually met at Burning Man in 2001 but lost each quickly(her camp was at 1100 am and mine was at 430pm, miles apart). Another young lady, in her cups staggered over to greet me but I could not place her in my mental catalog by then. Rusty, the original manager was there, and I toasted him. I must have toasted everyone, in fact. The Cinquecento is my personal rubber room, and, as usual, all memory of actually leaving the establishment was rubbed out. I awoke the next day, refreshed, minus 3500 yen. It is almost like an out-of-body experience, flight and teleportation achieved chemically. And, as this is Japan, you are always welcomed back to the establishment. Cheers!