Bonenkai

Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning was the Nisui High School bonenkai. Bonenkai literally means "Forget the Year Party" and every office in Japan has them. They are big parties, sometimes held in hotels overnight, where every eats, drinks and is merry and tries to forget the last year. Nisui's bonenkai was held at a ryokan (Japanese style inn) in Kanazawa. We arrived around 4:30 and most people headed straight to the onsen for some public bathing. Bathing nude with your co-workers.... sounds like fun, eh (might be an idea for Corp Care's holiday party next year, Dad). Anyway, I avoided it. I have been to the onsen before and it is nice but the idea of disrobing in front of my supervisor just gave me the heeby jeebies so I stayed in my room and chatted with other teachers. At 6 pm everyone headed to this huge room in the hotel and the eating and drinking began. There was more food than I have ever seen before! It was all Japanese style food so, as you can imagine, some of it was pretty odd but there is so much of it that it is definitely possible to get away with not eating something. With the eating began the drinking and honestly before I could blink half of the teachers in the room were drunk. I kid you not, some of these teachers were drunk at just the smell of beer and at about 6:20 the teacher that sits across from me came running over to me and said "Alexis! I am three sheets to the wind! I am plastered!" Anyway, the eating and drinking continued til about 8:30. The time was filled with games (passing beans from one bowl to another using chopsticks, bingo and some others), one of the young teacher fake proposed to another young teacher. My supervisor told me that I needed to be as drunk as her and encouraged me to quickly drink some sake. At one point my supervisor asked me when my parents got divorced and when I told her that my mom had passed away, she started to cry!!!! Oh man, it was an interesting evening.

After the first party, people went to their rooms to go to sleep (at 9 PM!!) or to the onsen or to other people's rooms to continue to drink. I went back to my room and ate some cakes with some of the ladies in my room. Then I went to another room to hang out with some of the teachers. The young teacher who fake proposed was puking (at 9:30 PM- poor form, if you ask me!). I stayed up chatting with other teachers late into the night and was very impressed that I could communicate in Japanese (well, at least I tried to).

The next morning, everyone got up early for breakfast and then headed home. And today is just like any other day..... except there are a few teachers who said that they are still hurting from that night. Looking back on the evening, it was a lot of fun but also VERY strange.