Japan-tastic!

Monday, December 18, 2006

The last couple weekends have been pretty busy. For a while there I was still recouping from the flu, but I have finally been up for venturing out again!

The weekend before last: Friday I had my first enkai and Saturday was a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity thrown by some JETs.

First, the enkai. ‘Enkai’ are the employee office parties that celebrate finishing a project or- for school- the end of the term. They usually involve lots of drinking and then acting like nothing happened the next day. They are a way people can get away with saying all kinds of things they normally wouldn’t. Like you could kinda tell off your boss and it would still be forgotten and forgiven on Monday because drinking was involved. Drinking= amnesia in Japanese society! This enkai was the “bon- enkai” or end-of-the-year party. I went by train with my supervisor. Steve, since he’s only a spouse and doesn’t actually work at the school (although he *did* help with one of the lessons…), wasn’t allowed to come.
Typically, the enkai are at Japanese-style restaurants, where you sit at low, long tables and the seating is *very* important (all according to seniority). Ours, however, was at a banquet room at a hotel and at Western-style round tables and random seating by drawing numbers. I got to sit next to my supervisor and some other teachers I knew, so it worked out well! The food was supposed to be a fusion between Japanese and Western style, but it was pretty damn Japanese if you ask me. Most of the time I had no idea what I was eating, and I’m sure that was for the best! (Were the red-grey lumps crab innards? Was that gooey ‘broth’ egg whites? We’ll never know…) I could tell everything was fresh and high-quality, though, even when I didn’t care for some of it. Most of the dishes were very fancy and the presentations were lovely.




This was the first platter of food. I forget the Japanese term for fancy, traditional dishes like this- sorry! Since its fall, it was garished with actual leaves. This platter included some kind of seaweed and shredded crab, salmon ryo (eggs), daikon (Japanese radish), and a little, clear gelatin cube with carrots cut like autumn leaves and what I think was some kind of fish along the bottom. Keep in mind I’m guessing at most of this! Other platters included: steak with peanut sauce and a tiny piece of eggplant and a potato croquette, a bowl of yellow viscous liquid with small mushroom floating in it and an almost lasagna-style cube of cabbage and cooked salmon (this tasted way better than it sounds), raw spiky crab legs (I did not like- imagine the after taste you get in your mouth when you can’t brush your teeth for a few days and there you have it), miso soup, another soup I *thought* was miso, but which I discovered had a bizarre broth made of tiny white floaty things, and a plate of sashimi (various raw fish). It just goes to show how far I’ve come that I was *relieved* to see the platter of sashimi! I mean, it doesn’t have strong flavors and what you see is what you get! It sounds like a lot of food, but it was all in tiny little portions, so it left me hungry. I've also just been uber-hungry girl lately. The cold weather always double my appetite and since I'm biking to work everyday and working long hours, I just need lots of fuel. A couple nights when I went to bed a little hungry, I ended up waking up in the middle of the night and having to eat to get back to sleep! Yeah, I'm weird...
On to dessert, which was wonderful! Rather than everyone getting a piece of the same cake, we all got our own little, special cake!


Mine was a cheesecake moose with fruit on top and a buttery crust.







My supervisor’s was a (pumpkin-like) roll cake with whipped cream filling. I wish I could’ve tried more!






[As a side note, I just adore Japanese pastries and cakes- so much higher quality than in the States (but more expensive too). This is my favorite pastry from the bakery that visits my school.]





After eating, there was a raffle for electronic appliances. Everyone got something. I won a mixer. Through the ‘dinner’, everyone was talking and visiting other tables and socializing. I had to ask special for water, the table was mostly stocked with huge bottles of Japanese beer. For non-drinkers, there was oolong tea (which is, curiously, always served cold in Japan). No one ever poured their own glass and even if your glass was filled to the brim, you were offered more (your expected to take a long swing and then get a refill). Everyone grabbed bottles and went to other tables to offer refills. I think it’s a way to get around and talk with other people not at your table. The custom of filling each other’s glasses was something I was familiar with, but it practice it took some getting used to. Although the principle and vice-principle came around to fill my glass, I still felt oddly subservient when I picked up a bottle and visited tables to fill drinks.
Some people got tipsy and everyone was jovial, but I didn’t really see anyone going wild or saying crazy things like you sometimes hear about. During the raffle, some teachers put on reindeer and santa hats and took pictures and that was pretty damn funny, though! (Sorry, no pics cuz I was having issues with my keitai (cellphone) camera.) You also hear of people going out to places after the initial party- usually to karaoke and then izakaya (like a restaurant, but serves only appetizer-like dishes and is mainly functions like a bar with food), but I think most teachers, like me and my supervisor, just went home. It was pretty fun, weird crab legs and all!

Saturday was the fundraiser. A JET from England, Lizzy, (who I went to the koto performance with) arranged it. She’s big into languages, so she recruited some multilingual JETs to set up ‘language lab’ thing, where there were various tables where you could learn about anything from sign language to Korean, to Dutch, to (for the Japanese visitors) Southern drawl. You gave a donation at the door and got to wander around. It was held at a local café and Steve played music for atmosphere. I was starving by the time I got there, so I pretty much spent most of my time outside the room in the dining area eating curry. It was a fun night, though, since I got to see a lot of people I hadn’t in a while and Steve and I invited a lot of people, so the various circles of relations were all gathered in one place- which was interesting to say the least! Our Japanese teacher was there and spent a lot of time at the French table (she was studying it with my predecessor), Keiko was there (eying the tall American men), and Kati too! It was Kati’s 18th birthday, which is a big deal in Estonia and it was just fantastic to spend the special day with her!
Keiko took some pics.



Me and Keiko.



Here’s the French dude (he’s not a JET, but an engineer and was just helping out for Lizzy) on the left and on the right is our friend Doc. Doc is a great guy and Steve and I helped him bake cookies for his ESS club last Thursday. He had Christmas music playing and it was a good time! He also introduced me to the world of‘ Para-Para’ dancing. Apparently, the big dance clubs in Japan create their own dances and hire dancers to teach them there. Everyone learns specific dances for specific songs and then you go dancing and everyone is doing the same routine! They put out DVDs so you can learn all the latest dances and keep up to speed. Also, a lot of European techno music (Eurobeat) is created specifically for the Japanese Para-Para market. Go figure! Doc’s made a few friends who are in the Para-Para scene, but he’s a bit behind in his dances. You need to know about 350 to go out on the town and have a good chance of knowing all the dances for the songs played, but poor Doc only knows a little over 200 and a lot of them are older. (Yeah, *only* 200!!)

Last week we also had a end-of-the-year party for ESS.



It was also a farewell party for Kati, so we bought her a cake.








Everyone had to get a pic of her with the cake, so there was this crowd of us around her with our keitai! It took a looong time to serve this cake. First, we had to take the fruit off, but to be fair everyone took a turn choosing one little piece and plucking it off until there were none left. Then Kati cut the little cake into 10 pieces and carefully served each. It all just seemed very Japanese because of the attention to detail and patience of everyone involved! No way would it have been like that with teenagers in the US! We watched a little of Charlie And the Chocolate Factory (we were supposed to be reading the book for club), but mostly we just chatted. It was a good time!

So, that was the last couple weeks. It's been good overall, but I did have a few rough days. I had a couple meetings with the teachers I work with about the next lesson and even though they all know English, they discussed everything I said in Japanese- for, like 5 minutes at a time. So I was left there like... uh, someone wanna let me in on this? And every little thing took so much time to mull over and if there was a problem, they'd wait ten minutes to bring it up (after much 'hmm'-ing and head nodding). Also, my attempt to have a letter exchange with one of Sasha's classes back home is just about dead in the water. Since she has way less students than I do, I figured I could just take the best 3-4 letters from each of my classes to mail overseas. Being American, I thought "if only a few can be selected, then that should be an incentive for them to try harder, right?", but, of course, the Japanese (group-oriented) school system just doesn't work that way. First, the teachers didn't want to tell the students only some would be selected, and now that the letters are written, they don't want to only give some kids replies, etc. etc. Also, the letters written in my class were only supposed to be rough drafts, but my supervisor told me the kids can't rewrite them over break because 'some students can't afford paper', which is the Japanese way of saying the students are too lazy to get around to writing it on their own over break. *sigh* Frustrating as hell.

I also had a bit of a spaz-out day last week, where I fell off my bike, almost ran someone down later on my bike, and then tripped on my way down from the ladder in the apartment and cut my finger open- all in the same day. I felt like it must have been National Idiot Day and I was showing my colors.

As for this past weekend. On Saturday I met with Miyamoto-sensei, a professor of mine back at DePaul whose originally from Hiroshima and was visiting for the holidays. It was great to see her and chat about culture shock. She's the first person that Steve and I have seen from home since we got here! Sunday I hung out with Elaine, the JEt from England whose the same age as me, so we're on the same page with a lot of things. (Most JETs are just out of college.) She was off to India for a couple weeks on Monday, so it was nice to get together before she left. She showed my around Nara city (where she lives) a bit and took me to this awesome Indian restaurant that serves organic food and even will tailor meals for vegans! Elaine is vegetarian, so she knows a lot of great veggie-friendly places. The atmosphere of the place was awesome too. The table was practically on the ground and it was filled with Indian tapeteries and very small and warm. A great place with great food!

Steve and I are still wondering what we're going to do for this upcoming Christmas weekend. We'll see. ^_^

I still need to mail my Christmas packages. Hopefully they’ll arrive by New Years. *sigh*

I promise I’ll get the pics up of the shrine-carrying weekend soon! But for now I gotta run. I want to read my knitting book. I’m trying to learn it while I’m here because they have the most kick*ss patterns here! Plus, sometimes I get home and don’t want to think, but don’t have anything light to read and need something to do to wind down. If I can knit, then I can chill out and still be productive.

Another interesting little note that I just have to mention before I sign off… I was asking another teacher if there were any onsen (hot springs) she’d recommend nearby and somehow in the process of talking we got onto food and she asked if I’d ever eaten sparrow. (Yes, the birds!) Although she doesn’t like them much herself, apparently her mother loves to eat sparrow! She told me about how whenever she sees a sparrow singing, she’s like, “oh, how pretty!” and her mother is like, “oh, how delicious!” I couldn’t help but think of that one scene in Gigi (the movie based on the book by Colette), where she’s being groomed in etiquette and has to eat this tiny little roasted bird. She has to eat it whole- bones and all- and you can hear this horrible crunching as she eats!

I wonder if that’s how you eat sparrow??