Kanpai!

Laments and apologies to all. I know that I have taken quite the hiatus amidst promises of updating regularly, and have received a number of complaints re the quality and quantity of the blog. Therefore, I'm coming back to it full steam with a few new posts delivered at rapid-fire pace. The next few will go in descending chronological order however, so raise too many eyebrows at seeing a post for Valentine's day in the middle of March. I'll start with a topic that's fresh in me mind as I experienced it just 12 hours ago.

Japanese cultural lesson for today: Enkai - 宴会

This roughly translates as a banquet, but it boils down to being a work party. You know how sometimes you and a few friends get together after for a drink or two to unwind? Well, an enkai is basically the same thing except that you more or less have to go. And the few friends is all the teachers in the faculty/grade/school. And a drink or two is several or more. That's enkai in a very small nutshell.

There are more serious and formal enkai that follow the important events at school, such as start/end of the school year ceremonies, graduation, end of the term, end of the year, and so on. Rule of thumb is that if there's a ceremony of sorts at school, or a long vacation is about to start, then there's going to be an enkai that night. These usually include the entire school, including the principal, vice-principals, all teachers, office and grounds staff, and sometimes even PTA representatives or members of the school board. Beyond that, there are any number of smaller enkai that can be held for any number of reasons by any number of people. If the third year teachers prep for a month for a demonstration class for the school board and it's now over, enkai. If the science teachers finish a very large and important unit that required them to work more than usual, enkai. All the first year teachers want to get together right after the new year to have a mini pep rally, enkai. So on and so forth. These can range in size, but anything smaller than maybe five or six might just be considered dinner. Also, attendance isn't mandatory at any of them. However most everyone goes. They're more often than not quite fun, and it's a good way to foster good relationships with your fellow teachers.

Enkai begins with sitting in your assigned seat, or drawing a table or seat number from a hat. The principal or next highest up will make a short speech to commemorate whatever it is we may be celebrating and then a toast follows, "Kanpai!" We are then fed... everything. Plate after plate after plate of the most interesting foods you'll ever see. Mostly fish. It looks like each plate was storyboarded by Da Vinci, cooked by Wolfgang Puck, and sculpted on the plate by Michelangelo. In this manner, maybe five or six (or more) plates will meet you over the course of the evening, though only perhaps three or four will be fully devoured (I'll explain why in a minute).

And after that first cheers, that's when the drinking starts... These enkai are nearly always all you can drink, in that we don't have to order - the bottles are just brought out as fast as we can drink them. Therefore there's no need to baby a drink for a long time, or worry about the next round costing an arm and a leg. I've got to explain something about Japanese drinking. The glass is never half empty or half full here because it's always full. Customs here is that when you're out not by yourself, you pour the other person's drink. So if I notice that my friend beside me's cup is getting empty, I have to jump and top it off lest I be seen as rude. If someone fills their own drink the whole table we all @ the table realize it and collectively sigh in realizing that we've failed another of life's little tests. So after every bite it seems, you take a notice of everyone's class, and if even a sip is missing (a pseudo-exaggeration), or even if it's someone across the table, you get up, walk around there and pour in the 5 millilitres that are missing.

Eating and drinking continue for a while until people decide to take a bottle in hand and go visit other teachers to shoot the breeze. During said shooting, everyone seems to stop eating amidst the delicacies surreptitiously placed in front of us as the night goes on. Topping and polishing off bottles at Olympic marathon speeds, things quickly move from being a quiet dinner to raucously loud and open conversations about nearly everything under the sun. This gets louder and bawdier until about two hours have passed when, on the stroke of the minute, everyone promptly gets up and departs. But oh no, the fun doesn't end here. More often than not, a second (or several distinct second) brew ha ha will informally convene with a smaller group of friends at a nearby establishment to basically keep the party going. Third parties are rare, but do happen amongst the saucier teachers.

That is the short and skinny of what an enkai is. It ends not here, though, for what blog update would be complete without demonstrating how this vainly relates to me own life. Especially since I attended an enkai last night and thus can offer first-hand application details.

After the bottles really start to be popped with alacrity, we move to the stage that I like to call "Partytime" but like to think of in my head as "Let's Practice English Time". It's around here that I discovered that - lo and behold - quite a number of my teachers can not only understand but can quite skillfully speak English. Someone will sit down beside me with a bottle in hand to top me off, and then bust out a, "So? You enjoy beer? So do I. What kind of things do you drink in Canada?". As my eyes retreat back into my head, my response will then foster a rather coherent and lengthy conversation about everything under the sun, invariably looking and Canada and/or Japan in some way. The interesting thing about "Partytime" is that teachers whom I never speak to, or who will rarely even acknowledge that I come to their school will all of a sudden find the (liquid) courage to not only approach me for a conversation, but will also do so in English. Going beyond that now, their English is frequently much more better than my feeble Japanese. In theory, I could pass a whole day @ school with hearing 50/50 Japanese/English if everyone all of a sudden developed a "We Love English" attitude.

The only downtime to "Partytime" is that being the ALT seems to act as a bullseye for teachers with bottle in hand. You're targeted and prompty approached for a topoff, which you CAN refuse in theory, but seldom do in practice as to be polite. And a topoff itself isn't so much a detriment to one's state of being, but several rapid topoffs, by several people, over several minutes, over the course of the party will rapidly accumulate to several pints being consumed with realtive easy. And this is before even mentionning sake or several other Japanese alcohols (If you're discovered to be able to drink Japanese alcohol, you may as well just take an instant-hangover pill and go home right then and there).

"Partytime" also rocks because it affords a glimpse into a seldom-viewed world. You'll often see some certain coworkers @ their desks Mon-Fri 9-5 (More like 8-7) doing nothing but work, often not saying more than a few words, and being in all ways unassuming. And by the end of an enkai, those same busybees are talking ears off and becoming the life of the party. And odder still is seeing them back to their quiet, hardworking ways the very next morning as though nothing happened. It's refreshing to know that there is life beyond the office. Which brings me to the next point: The next day at work, we all act as though nothing happened. No matter how crazy or awesome or scary things get, no matter what is said or done, who's insulted or startled or amazed, it's out of sight and mind by 8 AM. Truly, what happens at enkai stays at enkai.

So that's a work party in a nutshell. We hope that you've enjoyed this cultural lesson. We do hope that you'll give this a try yourself as on any given night in Japan, somewhere, someone is having an enkai. Well, there are probably any number of thousands each night across the country, so find one today and crush a cup of sake!