The Japanese Enkai 宴会

As I mentioned in my previous post, I finally, somehow, wangled an invite to not ONE but TWO of my school's end of year "enkais" , after 8 months of being totally left off of the invitation list. An enkai ressembles an office party in the UK to a certain extent I suppose, in that there is a meal and lots of alcohol and everyone attends, but in Japan there is (as always) a much greater sense of ceremony I think. There were many speeches, and everyone was wearing suits etc. In fact, it's possibly the smartest I've ever seen my teachers dress, that includes the all-important, over-rehearsed graduation ceremonies. The meal at both the enkais was incredible...sushi and sashimi (which is quite an expensive treat in Japan and not eaten by everyone, every day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as my pre-coming-coming-to-Japan dreams painted it), various other dishes, mostly seafood, mostly delish, both had a slightly questionable hot salty egg mousse thing which stank to high heavens and tasted just as bad, but all in all, let's say that having been to these two enkais, two days on the trot, I didn't need to eat again for at least another week and I can't believe this nation, that can make and enjoy such incredible food, puts up with SCHOOL LUNCH every other day!! I was also slightly bewildered to see that this huge delicious, expensive banquet received a similarly enthusiastic cry of "delicious" as the school lunch does every day, but nothing more. Did they really think that is was just as oishii (delicious) as school lunch?? I know which one I'd rather...

The only thing in more abundance than the food is the drink. Mostly beer only, with a little bit of Japanese sake going around. All the teachers pay a fixed fee for the meal and all-you-can-drink alcohol. Japanese people get drunk very quickly, which was very amusing for me. It didn't take me much longer though, as I was a bit nervous about the prospect of a whole night in Japanese, where I knew everybody would be watching me and fussing over me as the first ALT (and therefore foreigner) to be invited in this arsecrack town for years. Another reason for getting drunk so quickly, from my point of view at least, is the Japanese custom that you never pour your own drink, but you pour others and wait for them to pour yours. It's kind of a way to start a conversation with someone...you pick up a big bottle of beer from the middle of the table and offer it to the person you want to talk to. My glass was a fairly popular choice, even if it was already full to the brim. By observing others during my time here, I've noticed that most people who are offered drink when their glass is full, still don't say no, but just take a huge swig and let the other person refill it....I followed suit. I had no idea how much I had drunk, and that can be a recipe for disaster. Still, I wasn't as drunk as my Japanese couterparts, so all's well that ends well I suppose.

Each enkai seems to have a group of people who are the enkai organisers, the "kanji" 監事. They choose the restaurant and officially invite people etc. Even though one of my English teachers, who speaks very good English was a kanji for one of the events, he still didn't ask me, but luckily one of the other ones did (very brave of him too). At both of mine, the kanji also went round making sure they spoke to everyone over the course of the evening, which gave me some really interesting conversations with some lovely teachers I'd never spoken to before, and some incredibly awkward ones with teachers who had clearly been dreading coming to me all night. All in all, it was great fun and AMAZING for gossip, which is always a good thing.

After both of them, we went to karaoke...the same karaoke on both nights which was rather embarrassing and gave the staff a bit of foreigner shock/deja vu I think. When I arrived on the Friday with the primary school staff, two of my other three primary schools were also at the SAME karoke place...this shows how lively the next city to the arsecrack (the arsecheek if you will) is. All enkai fun happened in the arsecheek, as there is officially no fun to be had whatsoever in my town, the arsecrack. I think arsecrack fun might even be illegal, if you'll pardon the pun. Anyway, karaoke was all Japanese songs, so I used the time to get more goss and to drink myself silly, as opposed to listening or joining in. I was forced to sing twice at both parties in English, which mainly got the response of "wow, your English is so good", which I think is typical Japanese politeness for "wow, I will compliment you on being able to speak your native language, as a distraction from the fact that your singing sounds like a cat being suffocated by a school-lunch choco-bread." Oddly enough, but unsuprising in Japan, is that in the second enkai, they chose an ABBA song for me AND a Beatles song for me, and I didn;t know either of them!! I thought I knew every song by both of those artists...but not the ones that hit it big in Japan. I was honest with the Beatles one, which came first (they could not believe it...possibly the biggest gossip of the night) but for the ABBA one I just couldn't cope with seeing their shock again and so I just sang along and hoped that they would admire how well I could pronounce the words again!

All in all, the enkais were wicked! It was a great way to get to know my colleagues outside of class and with a bit of help in the form of beer. PLease keep your fingers crossed for me that I am now in the loop and that I will be asked again!!