The Friday night that followed my caving and book-shelf-building
adventures was the night of my welcome party. In Japan, these are called “Enkai” and they
can get a little crazy. In my case, a little crazy is probably the
understatement of the year, perhaps even century but I’m working on being
humble so we’ll stick with year.
In Japan the legal limit for alcohol when driving is 0.00%
which means that no matter how iron one’s liver may be, you cannot have a
single drink and drive. Thus, at five o’clock the party bus arrived at the
office. That's right; I said PARTY BUS! This falls right after the epic Neko bus (studio Ghibli's cat bus) on the list of epic buses produced via Japan (so epic it has a list).
At the venue, everyone was given
hiragana name tags (I will forever love the people I work with for printing
these in hiragana rather than Kanji, because they are the only reason I got
several people’s names right [for those that don't know, hiragana is a phonetic alphabet like our ABC's whereas Kanji are indiscriminate shapes like the crop circles found in the farmer's corn field. We're told they all mean something but they all kind of just look like squiggles and circles.]).
After the name tags were handed out, we were seated. I sat down with the village
mayor, the Junior High school Principal, the head supervisor of the BoE (henceforth
referred to as BOSS-san [funnily enough this is what all my co-workers refer
to him as when he is not in the room. I use his real name but think this
is hilarious]). About thirty or forty of us were seated at two different long
tables. In the center was a third table that was capsizing under titanic proportions of food. There was every kind of sushi and sashimi imaginable, lots of curry (which is
very popular in this region of Japan), and lots, lots more. I briefly contemplated sumo as a new career path.
The night began with an opening speech made by Mr. Genki (I
don’t feel comfortable using people’s real names online so I have assigned everyone
specific nicknames). Mr. Genki likes to run marathons and hike and climb mountains. He giggles a lot. The speech
was in Japanese, and a very quick form of Japanese, but from what I gathered he
said that: I (Mollee sensei) was from Texas, that I spoke Japanese fairly well,
that I worked very hard, and that I smiled all the dang time. The last one made
me laugh. The smiling thing is something that everyone and their mother and
their mother’s mother’s mother feel the need to point out. If I’m every beamed
up into space, I could tell you that the aliens would discuss where/how they
caught me, whatever organ they intended on harvesting, and the fact that I
smile all the dang time. Also, maybe they'd tell me what the crop circles mean - who knows?![And that ye whipper snappers is how I learned me kanji.]
After he spoke, the mayor got up and stated that he
was happy to have a new ALT in town and looked forward to me working with the
children. BOSS-san then stood up and introduced me. Then, I got up and
introduced myself. I said I was from Texas and thus I also love Yuu Darvish
(yeaaaah Rangers!). I said that I studied English in college and that I was
very excited to be the new English teacher. I explained that I love sports and
that I was looking forward to teaching and playing with all the kids.
After my
speech, Mr. Genki got back up and re-introduced me in greater detail. This
consisted of a very long list of my hobbies and a joke about how everyone seems
to see me jogging (in a village of 4000 people this isn’t really a surprise)
everywhere. Then, we Konpai’d (toasted) and began our feast.
Oh, and during my speech, the playboy bunny (one of my
co-workers tried to explain to me in English that a fellow co-worker had a reputation as a player, but he definitely called him a
playboy bunny instead of a player. Thus, playboy bunny) presented me with flowers
that were a gift from the office. Here are my flowers:
After the initial toast, Playboy bunny and Silly-san (When I
first talked to him he explained that his likes were beer and alcohol, his
hobby was drinking, and he disliked not being able to drink at work. He’s also
very goofy and has the cutest daughter ever!) presented to me a platter with
six different shooters (alcohol + mixer) that they wanted me to try. I looked
at the mayor and Boss-san, who then explained that the previous ALT did not
drink and they were all VERY excited that I did. This made me realize that
explaining the Aggie Ring tradition at work may have been a bad choice (Also kids, peer pressure is bad-wrong.). As I
ate, I slowly finished these (all but one actually).
In addition, there is a
tradition very specific to my village where you take a sip from a giant glass
of souchu, bow to the person who handed it to you, and pass it to the next person
(in most of Japan this is viewed as a kiss – but everyone and their mother was
doing it here and they made a point of saying that it was okay in my village
but not anywhere in Japan). So, in addition to my shot platter, I also drank a
mystery amount of Souchu (maybe the aliens can fill me in on that too after they marvel at my iron liver...).
After this has all hit (and I have a poker face when
I’ve been drinking!), the mayor realized that there was a piano in the room (go
figure) and asked me to play for everyone. So I did. Let’s just say that while
everyone loved it and while I got a standing ovation (woo hoo!) I’m pretty glad
that there isn’t a recording of what happened there.
After the first Enkai stopped, we got back in the party bus
and dropped some of my co-workers off. Five of us, however, continued to the
ni-kai (the second party). We went to a Karaoke bar that had a set fee for all
you could drink for two hours. Japan is a wonderful country.
I slowly sipped on
Ginger Highballs (which if you ever find yourself in Japan you absolutely must
try) and watched my co-workers sing. Then they asked me to sing, so I did my
own rendition of Michael Jackson’s Beat it. This got me a lot of applause and I
was immediately asked to sing a Lady Gaga song. I chose Bad Romance. I got a
standing ovation throughout the bar. (I don’t know if I was just that good or
they were just that drunk. I have a feeling that the answer lies somewhere in
the middle.)
After this, I pawned off the microphone so that I could sit and
drink a little more. Then, an older man in a business suit approached and asked
if I would sing a song for his friends. I said yes. They started playing
Whitney Houston’s “I’ll Always Love You,” and I belted out those high notes
like a pro. - or at least it felt like I
was a pro. Afterwards, Happy-san’s (nickname assigned because this guy is HAPPY
all the time) wife picked us up and dropped me off at home.
I had felt like I had kept myself very under control but was
still a little nervous walking into work the following Monday. However,
everyone told me they had tons of fun and that they would like to party with me
again. In fact, the following week Mr. Genki invited me on an office hiking trip, my supervisor took me out with her friend, and I was invited to a fancy pantsy teachers party. I guess I did something right. ‘MERICA.
I've only read one account of an enkai before and I thought, "They aren't all like that, are they?" This is only the second recalling of it that I've read, but I guess they ARE all like that, haha.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you've already made a better impression than the previous ALT. That'll make working there easier I bet.
I think crazy is definitely a tradition here. As far as my predecessor, I definitely wouldn't say that. As far as I can tell all of the teachers and students absolutely loved her. I have some HUGE shoes to fill. Everyone I work with in the office seems to have really liked her too.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, drinking is a pretty big deal in Japan and the whole thing kind of reminds me when I pledged a frat (fun fact, yours truly was/is a frat brother [Alpha Phi Omega was coed]) my freshman year). I didn't drink at that point in my life because the few people I knew that did drink didn't seem to make good life choices, so I strived to be as dissimilar from them as possible.
There is a LOT of pressure here to drink (and drink a lot for that matter) and I do think that people that don't are viewed as "weird" even if the reason is that you are allergic to alcohol. In the stores, they sell alcohol free "beer" (definitely not beer). It, in my opinion, is one of the worst tasting things a person could ever choose to ingest, but people here drink it when they can't drink so that they at least look like they're taking part. I sometimes feel like I need to bust out one of those peer pressure videos that we were forced to watch in middle school. I think it has a lot to do with the collective mentality that people seem to have here.