2001-08-28 - 5:56 p.m.
No, I am not still recovering from my enkai. It just took me a while to get to a computer. Hopefully, by early September I'll have internet access in my "aparto," so my diary entries will be more frequent and my phone bill will be higher.
Friday night's enkai (welcome party) was a lot of fun. It was held in a private room at a traditional Japanese restaurant, and about 15 people (14 of them men) from the Kimitsu City Board of Education attended. After leaving our shoes at the entrance way, we sat on cushions on the floor around a long narrow table. About a half dozen little dishes of food were set up at each place. I could tell that my supervisor had taken great care to ensure that all of my dishes were vegetarian. There was a salad, a plate of pickles, some beans, eggplant with miso paste, and vegetable tempura. Before we started eating, the highest boss present gave a speech about me and Lynn (other new JET) in Japanese. He made sure to mention that I was vegetarian. Then Lynn and I introduced ourselves and gave short thank-you speeches which Andrew (JET who speaks Japanese) translated. Then we all filled each others' glasses and made the traditional Japanese toast, "Kampai!"
The dinner was wonderful, and after a while I made my way around the room, bottle of beer in hand, pouring drinks for my superiors and engaging in small talk along the way. At one point, one of the guests handed envelopes to me and Lynn. We opened them, and pulled out beige plasic objects, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. The man shoved a piece of paper at me. On it, he had written, "We lend you noisemakers." Lynn and I looked at each other in confusion. The man took the object from my hand and pulled on the chain dangling from it. Immediately, the object let forth a horrible, deafening and shrill sound. Everyone covered their ears and the man replaced the chain. Finally, we understood. The Board of Ed. was lending us personal safety alarms. We thanked them profusely, and someone made a joke about needing the alarm to protect himself from ME, because of my karate experience.
As the dinner progressed, everyone got significantly drunker, and consequently, many people's English improved. After dinner snacks of onigiri (rice balls) and Japanese apple-pear slices were passed around. The boss stood up to announce the "second welcome party" at a nearby bar. He then lead us in a traditional after-party custom -- clapping en mass in certain pattern. This seemed a good outlet for the distinctly rowdy energy that had progressively taken hold over the course of the evening.
We walked to a nearby bar, where we outnumbered the other patrons by 3 to 1. One of the drunkest members of the party stood up and gave a short speech in English (which was pretty good by this point), and encouraged us all to "please enjoy and have pleasure time!" After kampai, the karaoke book was kindly passed my way, and I was strongly encouraged to make a selection. Conversation between me and my boss:
Boss: Sarah-san, please sing! Which song?
Me: Ah, this one.
Boss: Ah, so! Madonna! Sarah-san, you look like Madonna!
I choose to take this statement as a compliment at face value, despite the fact that probably has more to do with race (and alcohol) than actual resemblance. The night progressed from there -- here is one supervisor singing a Japanese song and doing a wobbley moonwalk; here is another demurely imitating a Japanese fan dance; here is another offering a unique interpretation of the lyrics to some Beatles song. At about 10:45 (the drinking started at 6) the party drew to a close, and everyone stumbled out of the bar.
Vice-boss, who was sober, offered to drive us ALTs back to our apartment. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, the speech-maker from earlier in the night knocked on the window. I rolled it down. "Sarah," he said to me, with a big grin, "did you have pleasure time?" Yes indeed. I had pleasure time.
