5 bars where to get wasted this Saturday

1. Rock Bar Mother, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan

A tiny bar with larger than life character. The bar functions on two principles: darkness and songs on demand. Here's how it works: Every time you order a drink, you get to order two songs from the eclectic and oh so amusing music catalog. As the bar is kept pitch black, it is impossible to read the song lists, so to get your order you have to use a light pointer pen to browse through the catalog. The cheepest way to get drunk is to drink white house wine but if you are not a big fan of vinegar, you might like to stick to Asahi.

Extra bonus: Hanoi Rocks posters in the tiny bathroom.

2. Schwarzes Cafe, Berlin

This bar's claim to fame are its opening hours: it's open 24 hours a day. After once researching the bar's extensive drinks menu for 14 hours, I can say without any hesitation that Warsteiner definitely is a decent beer.

3. Malay Tubay, El Nido, Palawan, Philippines

My favourite bar in the whole world. Cover bands that don't make you itch and Red Horse beer that never runs out, served in a homey environment. I'm sure that not everyone gets the greatness of this bar but I simply love it. Perfect after a day of snorkelling and island hopping. Second street from the beach, Western end, off the main drag. Praised earlier here.

4. Loekie's, Arambol, Goa, India

The good old Loekie's! After going there for both breakfast and lunch you might as well get hammered at dinner - where else would you really want to go in stuffy Arambol? After the first day's initiation routine is performed, beers will appear magically on your favorite table as soon as you enter the bar again. Upon leaving Arambol the friendly Loekie's guys might be wiling to give you a free lift to the bus stop on the main road.

5. Kallion Kulma, Exodus and Kallion hovi, Helsinki, Finland

If you've always wanted to know how drunk is it humanly possible to get and still get served alcohol then Kallio, the nowadays trendy neighborhood of Helsinki, is the right address. These days Kallio hosts a range of loungy fish bowl bars but fortunately they have not put the cheapies out of business. All the above mentioned bars sell pints for 3 euros or under and there are many more, regocnizable by people passed out or throwing up near the entrance. Here's what happened last night:

A) In Kallion Kulma a plumpy mother of four asked me for directions to Exodus, a reggae bar on the other side of the street, best known for the coppers raiding it monthly for drugs. Fortunately she was in no hurry to get there so I had the pleasure of being let in on her son's collar bone injury, which put an end to his glorious future as an Olympic gold medalist in javelin.

B) I found some rare raw talent in a guy who sneezed so heavily that the table in front of him got wet. And he repeated it ten times! Thunder!

C) A dude so drunk he was falling all over the place attacked a contributing author to this blog for absolutely no reason. Of course the drunk got smashed.

D) A toughened ex-convict, also extremely drunk, gave me a lesson on how hard it must be for a young woman to be considered male.

E) A drunk woman sitting at Kallion Kulma's terrace offered entertainment money can't buy by first puking, then dropping her pack of cigs to the fresh pool and then finally picking up the vomit dripping cigs as nothing had happened.

F) Getting to experience all this only cost me about 18 euros. What a bargain!

What to do in Kyoto? 5+5 do's

Kyoto is visited by a staggering 50 million Japanese tourists a year. If you manage to fit in, here's what I'd do if I had a week in Kyoto.

1. Get your hands on a rather modest looking copied brochure which has maps for walking tours of Kyoto. I just can't recommend this enough. I spent three days exploring Kyoto's temples by foot and guided by this little brochure, found my way through little paths, bamboo forests and pretty little back lanes, all of which led to another temple or shrine (pic on the left). I picked the brochure up from a fellow traveler who got it from TIC (Japan National Tourist Organization).

2. Saturday is a great day for visiting temples even if they can be jam packed with Japanese tourists. The reason is that the local students give free guided tours in some of the temple grounds. They get to practice English and you might get to know a little more about the temple and well, at least practice understanding Japanese accent. I was guided by a a friendly glam rocker dude in Kinkaku-ji, the golden Zen pavillion (pic left).

3. Try sampling a dinner in one of the red-windowed, modestly priced yakitori restaurants located along the smaller streets few blocks North from the main train station. They serve meat skewers of all kinds, though usually chicken, grilled to perfection over hot charcoals. I particularly liked the liver skewers - bone marrow was a little too chewy for my taste. I had a different type of skewer with every order of beer which ended up being quite a few - and then some more the next day.

A yakitori place usually has small red lanterns hanging out front. If they are not enough of a cue then try following the smell of smoke.

4. Even if you feel templed out after a few days in Kyoto, a side trip to Nara is a nice way to spend one day. I would not go there for the Todaiji temple, even though it is one the most famous temples in the country, the home of Japan's largest statue of Buddha, and, Yippii, the largest wooden building in the world. After Kyoto, Todajii is just okay. What I liked in Nara were the deer! Visitors to Nara hand feed these little animals oozing Japanese cuteness with specific deer crackers. It's simply adorable.

5. If you have the Japan Rail Pass then this crazy seeming day trip idea is indeed doable: Take an early morning bullet train and speed it to Himeiji. Visit the samurai castle, which you might have already seen in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice or in the gloomy Tom Cruise movie Last Samurai. After a visit to the white castle head back to the train station and take the next bullet train South. Descend in Hiroshima and spend hours in the mind-boggling A-bomb museum and memorial. Head back to Kyoto and you'll get there just in time for dinner. The trip involves 600 kilometers of travel in a day but with the speedy trains it's not a problem. You'll get two very different perspectives on Japanese history in one single day.

Further recommendations:

6. Best temples: Ginkaku-ji (the silver pavillion), Kinkaku-ji (the golden pavillion and Kiyomizu-dera (for great views, the amount of Japanese tourists can be slightly overwhelming, pic left). Worst dissappoinment: The famous zen rock garden in Ryoan-ji just wasn't worth the rather expensive entry ticket.

7. Gion in dusk. This is were one goes to spot a maiko, a geisha apprentice.

8. The awesome Sanjusangen-do, home to 1001 Kannon statues. (Kannon is the Buddhist goddess of mercy.) The prohibition of photography is extremely annoying though - you are in Japan after all.

9. Read Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. Cheesy and lacking in depth as the story line is, the novel still manages to offer an interesting insight into 30's and 40's Kyoto.

10. Bathe! There seems to be a sento in every other street corner. Blissful way to relax after a day of templing. Extra bonus: Beer never tastes better than after two hours of pool swapping from hot to cold. Ask your guesthouse directions to the nearest one.