this weekend has been a nice breath of fresh air - but i suppose that metaphor only works if we assume my normal days are filled with the stuffy stale air of loneliness, and that this weekend was filled with the cool refreshing air of actually being able to have real conversations with real people. ahhh, and how refreshing it was - even if it was for just a brief instant..
friday night i was fortunate enough to experience my first enkai (宴会), or after-work party. these are infamous events here in japan. they usually involve all the coworkers going out for food and drinks after work, getting very very drunk together, bonding with each other, and then pretending it never happened when they see each other at work the next day.
my particular experience was pretty tame compared to the stories ive heard from other JETs. since my town is apparently too small to have a decent public place to throw a 20-person party, we all had to pile into multiple cars and drive to owase (尾鷲), which is the closest "big" city to us (please note: in this particular case, owase is considered a "big" city when compared to my small town of kihoku (紀北町) because it has about 20,000 people. trust me - after living in my town for almost two months, owase feels like a freaking metropolis!). for two hours we sat on tatami (畳), ate appetizers, drank beer (ビール), plum wine (梅酒), and japanese sake (日本酒), and attempted to talk to each other in english and/or japanese with very mixed results of understanding. please see also: confusion. please see also: frustration. anyways, after exactly two hours, everyone got up, piled into their respective designated drivers' cars, and went home.
saturday night was awesome because i actually got to hang out with people my own age and partake in full-on enlgish conversations. oh, how i do miss those things dearly. a bunch of mie JETs went down to kumano (熊野) to celebrate a friend's birthday. we rented out a karaoke room / house for the night and drank, sang, talked, shared funny stories, played games, etc.. not only was it nice to feel like a social person again - even if it was just for a night - but it was also great to hang out with so many really cool and interesting people.
a few of us brave/awesome/crazy souls decided not to go to sleep at all that night. instead, we continued to party until about 4:30am and caught the first train back up north to our respective lonely towns.
friday night i was fortunate enough to experience my first enkai (宴会), or after-work party. these are infamous events here in japan. they usually involve all the coworkers going out for food and drinks after work, getting very very drunk together, bonding with each other, and then pretending it never happened when they see each other at work the next day.
my particular experience was pretty tame compared to the stories ive heard from other JETs. since my town is apparently too small to have a decent public place to throw a 20-person party, we all had to pile into multiple cars and drive to owase (尾鷲), which is the closest "big" city to us (please note: in this particular case, owase is considered a "big" city when compared to my small town of kihoku (紀北町) because it has about 20,000 people. trust me - after living in my town for almost two months, owase feels like a freaking metropolis!). for two hours we sat on tatami (畳), ate appetizers, drank beer (ビール), plum wine (梅酒), and japanese sake (日本酒), and attempted to talk to each other in english and/or japanese with very mixed results of understanding. please see also: confusion. please see also: frustration. anyways, after exactly two hours, everyone got up, piled into their respective designated drivers' cars, and went home.
saturday night was awesome because i actually got to hang out with people my own age and partake in full-on enlgish conversations. oh, how i do miss those things dearly. a bunch of mie JETs went down to kumano (熊野) to celebrate a friend's birthday. we rented out a karaoke room / house for the night and drank, sang, talked, shared funny stories, played games, etc.. not only was it nice to feel like a social person again - even if it was just for a night - but it was also great to hang out with so many really cool and interesting people.
a few of us brave/awesome/crazy souls decided not to go to sleep at all that night. instead, we continued to party until about 4:30am and caught the first train back up north to our respective lonely towns.
Sunday, October 03, 2010 |
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If it was anything like our Enpocket enkais, there was a girl that was all about you, and you left drunk.
hahaha, oh those were the days. unfortunately for your imagination, no one here is "all about me"...
Hey Nicky wicky... what an adventure. It's refreshing to hear about a place that has some semblance of culture, unlike us Philistine Americans whose idea of culture is driving to the local strip mall and eating at Chili's.