Gakko-Enkai

Gakko-Enkai is Japanese for "school drinking party," meaning that you go out and get smashed and stuff yourselves with your co-workers from school. I've been doing this for the last two days and man my liver is starting to hurt! Enkais are common culture with Japanese co-workers, especially at the "salaryman" level - they'll often go out with co-workers, clients, etc. on a weekly basis. Since school teachers are super busy, we only do ours about once every few months. It's a great time, because the teachers that never speak to me are super chatty after they get a few in them.

On Friday, I went out with my Junior High teachers, about 12 of us, to get "tabehodai" (all you can eat), and "nomihodai" (all you can drink for 90 minutes), at this yakiniku place. Yakiniku is Korean BBQ, but with a Japanese name. They have grills in the middle of the table and they bring out plate after plate of meat, veg, meat, meat, and more meat. It's awesome, it's like the 4th of July, but everything is bite sized and there are a bunch of small sauces to dip the meats into. Yum.

I sat across from Enoki Sensei, who I have never had a conversation with in my life... so, to break the ice I asked him how to read a Japanese character that was on the menu, and he responded in Engrish! Not only that, but we chatted throughout the entire meal, we talked about snowboarding (he's a bigtime skier), being married (he hates it), students (the kids are always talking shit), American beer (I explained that the big companies are crap, and that I would try to get some Newcastle for him), and other stuff that drunk people chat about. His favorite phrase was "Maikeru, speed up, speed up" as he pointed to my beer and then his watch, indicating that we should drink as much as possible during the nomihodai. I was like "Dude! I didn't know you spoke Angrish! We should'a been hanging out a long time ago!!" He and I are planning to go skiing/snowboarding together this winter. Cool, huh?

And... tonight, as I was walking back to the train station after frisbee practice, I ran into the principal of one of my Elementary schools and a couple of teachers - they were going to dinner and invited me along. This was a "special dinner - Kagoshima style," which is the prefecture that my principal is originally from. As we sat down in the restaurant, he explained that the house he grew up in also had a chicken farm on it, and that people from his neck of the woods eat every part of the chicken - from the rooter to the tooter! SO, I had my 2nd experience of raw chicken tonight, liver, heart, and a bunch of random parts that I couldn't identify but were super chewy and tasty occasionally. It was weird, but kinda fun. We had a bunch of other courses, chicken for the most part, and a special Japanese potato-liquor called "Sho-Chu," which is like whiskey, but not brown. It tastes like crap, to tell you the truth, but it was cool hanging out with this old Japanese dude hearing stories about back in the day.

Anyway, that's it for me. I gotta go, I think I got the runs from the chicken!