More from the Farewell Party

I made it back safe and sound from my little trip to Kyoto. I've got hundreds of photos, so I'm trying to whittle it down to a magageble number so you don't have to sit for hours viewing them :)

Here is another photo from our enkai last week. In this photo you see the people who were honored at the party, and in this particular activity, each person steps to the middle to receive a special, personal cheer. They did this for me when I first arrived at this school, and I remember being a little frightened when all of a sudden I was shuffled on stage (& left alone) and my slightly intoxicated supervisor stood in front of me on the floor and started doing weird hand and body movements accompanied by loud shouting. I was only slightly relieved when everyone else suddenly started chanting and clapping. Now, of course, I know that they were actually welcoming me in their own way, but at the time I was really scared!

Some of our delicious food...(yeah - don't ask me - I'm not really sure what it is!) In typical Japanese enkai style - we had many many little dishes of small portions of curious things. My best guess about these things - (top) kamaboko (steamed fish paste) & sashimi, (middle bowl) seeweed (I actually gave this one away to someone who LOVES it), (bottom) ~escargot(?) & breaded squid. And...umm...The menu sounds much better in Japanese...

LOBSTER???!!! They actually told me this was shrimp. It was filled with a mashed potato-shrimp mixture (think - twice baked potatoes). The embellishment was a grain that tasted like popcorn!

AND...after ALL that eating - the people who were leaving each got cheered and tossed up into the air!

ich, ni, san!

Right.  So my life isn't all black party dresses and men in uniform (none of them were even smart enough to get my phone number - sigh.).  ANYWAY, I was flipping through the images on my phone and found this one.  I just wanted to show that, for one night a year, it seems, my colleagues shake loose a little.  This is a shot from our end of the school year enkai (dinner party) back in March.  Apparently it is a tradition to toss the transferring teachers up in the air after they've been feasting for 2 hours.  Don't worry - there was a mound of pillows underneath.  I just thought this little tradition - following the group rendition of the school song and several individual cheers for the folks that were moving on - was...kind of...charming.  

And for the record - as I may have mentioned before - I really think the secret to such harmonious work relations may well have to do with enkai...We have several parties (at about $50 a pop) - several times a year.  We have them for the opening and closing of school years, the end and then again in the beginning of the calendar year, before the seniors take their entrance exams, after/before major school-wide and prefecture-wide sports events.  Many of these are basically in triplicate, since there are different parties for the whole staff, the grade level teachers (I'm with the teachers who teach first years), and then each of the subject areas, too.  Oh, wait - we had one at a fantastic tofu restaurant for all the women on staff, too (I can only imagine where the men's party was!). Whew.  It's expensive, and kind of annoying because it's 'all you can drink' - but that only means beer and sake (neither of which appeal to me).  It's also difficult because - well, it's a party, and who wants to try to speak English?  Well, the beer DOES make some folks much more apt to have a go at English, and I know I need to practice my Japanese, but it's sometimes a little exhausting. 

BUT, at the end of the day, I'm usually happy to attend.  What other school events provide fish so fresh it's still twitching?