Japanese Dance Club

On Friday we went out for “Taw’s last night out in Japan”. To celebrate we went to a club. There were some major differences between this club and club’s in America. One of the key components Japanese culture is that the sexes are pretty segregated. If you walk into a Japanese classroom (any grade level) the students naturally sit with members of their own sex. If you look at a Japanese playground (any grade level) students generally sit and are grouped by their own sex. It was no different in this club. The males dance with the males. The females dance with the females. There was only one male I saw dancing with a female. This was Tim (a fellow teacher at Taw’s school from Los Angeles) and his girlfriend, Yukari. Just so you understand this is now how all clubs work in Japan. There are clubs that are more sexual. But this type of club where heterosexual men dance with one another and heterosexual women dance with one another are not uncommon.

Initially I was thrown off by this. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to dance but not with a bunch of other dudes. But soon a realization crossed my mind “when in rome…”. I then went to dancing. At one point one of the other males turned my way and started doing the dance where they wave their two fingers (in a peace format) across their eyes. He then pointed at me. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do as he was a little bit close for complete comfort. He clearly wasn’t coming on to me. He was simply having a good time. But I didn’t know what to do. Do I get closer? Do I step back? Do I develop my own move? Do I mimic his move? I opted to mimic his move. This apparently was a good decision as he continued to come back my way for some dance action at various times over the next hour.

Another humorous thing happened while in this situation. There were 5 of us at the club: Myself, Taw, Kana, Tim, and Yukari. Tim and Yukari were dancing together. At some point in the night I wanted to dance with a female. It was clear that kana enjoyed dancing as she was dancing. I wanted to dance with her yet I didn’t know if it was okay. She is Japanese. I didn’t know if it would be offensive to her. I sat there dancing (slightly off rhythm) with this game of tug ‘o’ war happening in my head. Do I ask her? Do I just dance with her? Is that offensive? What if she doesn’t feel comfortable saying no? Am I hungry? Do I feel like dancing? In the end, I opted not to dance with her because I didn’t want to offend her. The next day the whole situation made me smile because of the cultural struggle I went through.