Wain Wain for Wii

In our Insider's Guide to Beijing, there's an article about the Japanese businessman scene in which they describe a bar called Wain Wain, where you can drink beer and play Nintendo Wii. This sounded like quite possibly the best place in the entire world to us, so we bundled into a cab and set off for Wain Wain. It's in a complex of buildings called Soho, so we got dropped off by the cab and had to wander around looking for building A. Once we found it, we got off on the 35th floor (35!!) and found the place. It's very small, with a bar and two rooms for Wii (with traditional tatami mats and low tables, although they did have the sink well underneath for your feet. The cost was 100RMB per hour in the room and you can order drinks and food.

It was so much fun. We had an amazing view of the city from that height (although the windows in the room opened two ways, a wide way that you could DEFINITELY fall out of and a narrow way that was safe--we opened them the narrow way of course) and had a great time playing Wii sports.

The place closed at 2 so they very politely asked us to leave, but not before we used their Japanese style toilet, with heated seats (very odd and slightly uncomfortable, I felt as though I were sitting on a griddle) and mysterious buttons with unknown functions, such as bidet (designated by a picture of a butt with water spraying on it) and a warm air fan to dry your bum (picture of air blowing). I found it hilarious. Jess used it too and took forever; when she came out she explained that she couldn't figure out how to turn off the bidet function and had to wait it out (she could have pressed the button again).

We cabbed it back to the Mariott and hit the sack; Panos and Ben went back to the FX area in Haidian. Panos managed to leave his phone in the cab and some guy named Luca picked it up. He found this out when his girlfriend called him and got Luca instead. I then texted Luca and got his number. Panos called him, but he lives way in the southeast corner of the city so Panos probably won't get the phone back before he leaves tomorrow. He bought it in Saudi Arabia (his parents work for Aramco) so it's not a huge loss.

I wish we had discovered this place earlier! What fun! Oh, I forgot to mention the Wii was set to Japanese, so we had fun guessing what the buttons meant. There were some inadvertently hilarious moments.