The School Enkai

I have decided to interrupt the account of my trip to write about the school enkai last night. It might seem a little strange that I have the sudden desire to write about such an event in great detail after being in Japan 20 months already and because most people who read my blog probably live in Japan and so blatantly already know about the goings on at an enkai.

But anyway ....

Last night we had our school's enkai (eating/drinking party I guess?) for the leaving and new teachers at Wadakin (Matsusaka's, if not Mie's, most famous and probably expensive restaurant), I had planned my trip around this event so that I could make it I thought I'd best make the effort after missing the end of year party in December.

I've been to several enkais before but last nights was the first time I'd really experienced one ... all due to the fact it's the first time I've ever drank at one.


So I'd planned my trip around this party so I was a little perplexed when by the end of the day nobody had told me; how much it was going to cost, where it was, what time it started etc. I'm used to this, it always happens but I was a little agitated as they knew how much I wanted to go and I started to think maybe they'd forgotten to put my name down whilst I was away and were now hoping I'd forgotten all about it.


My friend who lives in the same apartment block though offered me a lift down and filled me in on all the details, which I was very relieved about ... but thinking about it the English teachers still hadn't mentioned anything to me. I have to wonder what they would have done if I'd just not turned up.

It turned out they had completely forgotten about me, that was completely evident when at the start of the evening two of the teachers looked at each other, looked at me and more or less said in Japanese "Shit, Helen, how did she get here? I forgot to tell her."

At enkais, you're all given a number and that's where you have to sit, I hate these things, I know I'm going end up sat next to some teachers who don't speak English and have no desire to speak with the intruding foreigner all night. This year they had an elaborate bingo type machine to pick our numbers, which I guess was amusing. The best thing was Suzuki sensei was sat a couple of places away from me and in a not very Japanese way decided to switch the numbers on the table so he could sit next to me. To be honest, that was the nicest thing anyone did all night and I happily sat attempting to speak Japanese to him while he told everyone how great I am at Japanese!!

After eating spiders and frogs in Cambodia I decided it was really time for me to get past my sashimi (raw fish) thing and vowed to eat everything during the course of the evening. Which I did. I'm proud of myself. But I still think it's disgusting.

All in all the whole thing was a lot of fun, I spoke to lots of people, was able to hang out with Kobayashi sensei, the speeches were short, at the end they threw the teachers who are leaving in the air, there was a couple of songs sang on the karaoke. All good.

However I was also told ... that I'd definitely got fat whilst I was in Cambodia ... that I hold chopsticks like a small child ... and that my Japanese is in fact crap. Sigh.

I ended up going to an infamous after party, now this probably only occurred because I was with Yumi as I've never been invited along to one of these before.

So the men are trying to think of somewhere we can all go to drink whilst we wander around the red light district area of Matsusaka, it took about 15 minutes before they realised 'you know maybe there isn't anyway for us all to go around here'. You know as over half the group is female, you're probably onto something there. It took me to mutter a few times that we should go to Paradise karaoke before they decided 'Lets go to Paradise karaoke' - all their own idea of course.

Karaoke was fun, I realised that it's the first time I've ever been to karaoke with only Japanese people (yeah, I know, after 20 months). I sang a Queen song which everyone apparently thought was great and I ordered a round of drinks which absolutely astounded them (you know even after I've been speaking Japanese half the night).

We then have to walk all the way back to Wadakin to get Yumi's car, but the car park had been locked up so we couldn't get to her car.

Let's all ten of us stand around in the road for like ... FOREVER ... while we discuss what to do. It all ends up that we're to get a taxi all the way back to Ohka. But first we're going to walk the whole way back to near where we were to get the damn thing. I'm really done with the walking thing by this point and am really wishing I was back in Carlisle and could get some chips from the Warwick.

The taxi wasn't that expensive, which surprised me and so I decided it would be nice if I paid for it. I've decided they must be a gaijin surcharge for whenever we usually step into a taxi because it was about 2000 yen cheaper than I anticipated. We've all got out of the taxi and he's pulling away and his back wheels fall down into the gaijin trap (gutter kind of thing that runs along all roads and serves no other purpose than to trip people up). Now this was funny. The situation was easily remedied as Yumi and the other teacher pushed the back wheels out.

I had to be in school as usual this morning, now it seems most teachers have had the sense and taken the day off but I on the other hand have the whole day of sitting here doing nothing to look forward to and with a hangover. Plus, the Japanese thing of not mentioning anything about the previous night is going to really irritate me. I've already seen Yumi as I wanted to see if she needed a lift to get her car and she apologised profusely and bowed a lot but apart from that I know nobody will say a word about it. I wonder what the Japanese for 'well that was great craic wasn't it?! Isn't it funny to get drunk and sing karaoke?!' is? I wish.

So that's that, all the boring details of probably my first and my last real experience of a Japanese enkai.

Akemi (Kobayashi sensei) and me