Undokai Aftermath

So after the sweatiness of Undokai comes the messiness of the Enkai – the drinking party. I had been forewarned about the bizarreness that is an Enkai but hadn’t really expected too much from my oh so nice but oh so tame teachers. I was greeted at the (sliding) door of the tatami room we were eating in with a pint of beer – a stammered question from someone who’s never spoken English to me before about whether I drink beer was quickly answered. Then we get down to the business of eating – such a large amount of food for so many small people. I was sitting opposite Kocho-sensei (the principal) – the seating plan was drawn out of a hat – so some polite him speaking Japanese and smiling and me speaking English and smiling ensued.

Then from what I thought was out of nowhere I was ushered up to the top of the room with one of the teachers who sits at the 1st grade teachers desk with me. We were handed a small glass of coke and two straws – then other pairs of teachers joined us and I realised it was a drinking game – only minus the drink. The teachers divided themselves up into their year groups (teachers here only teach one subject and one year group) and I was told we must do a performance. Everybody had decided to try a section of the traditional military exercise performed by the boys earlier that day. This involved them climbing on top of each other to form pyramids. My bloody camera was of course on the far side of the room while the 2nd year teachers formed a three tiered pyramid on their hands and knees before all straightening out and falling in a pile to the floor – the pictures below show the boys doing it which was all well and good but when a gang of drunk teachers were at the same it was almost too much for me.

I was innocently polishing off my beer (yes Japan has turned me into a beer lover – I can’t believe it – I like beer) when the very shy female English teacher who when I have tried to talk to her in English has responded in Japanese (which she knows I can’t speak)) came over and asked me if I would Irish dance for them. Japan is like an Irish village in many ways – they all know everything about each other and they pass on stuff about you that they have heard. I was watching the girls practice for their dance performance during the week and one of the teachers was telling me about it – traditional Japanese etc. She asked me if Ireland had any traditional dancing so I said yes. She then asked me if it was very slow and after I establishing she had never heard of Riverdance I risked a couple of 1-2-3s to show her. This is what led to my embarrassingly bad on the spot performance. Definitely a case of dance Monkey, dance.

I was rescued by my favourite teacher – Karakawa-sensei who has great English, is obsessed with the Beatles and Western rock in general and who collects swear words – he was very happy when I was able to expand his vocabulary. I stopped dancing and he got up insisting that he was going to dance with me. I then decided it was time for my revenge told all the teachers to get up – I was going to teach them Irish dancing. Oh how easy the 1-2-3s are when you slow it down – oh how foolish all my teachers looked when they tried to speed it up. Who’s the monkey now?

After two hours of eating and drinking it seemed time for most of my teachers to go home – which most of them did but the die hards kept going – of course me among them. I thought we’d end up at a bar but no we landed in another restaurant where they proceeded to order more food – what the hell? You’re all so little and you’re eating so much. By now I had discovered that a lot of my teachers spoke a lot more English than they ever let on in school (I thought that after the enkai when they had long conversations with me that they might repeat the performance in school – but I was wrong) and so I was having a great time chatting with (we got onto what names mean) Mr. Lives beside the Beach, Mr. Forrest, Mr. River and Mr. Happy in the Paddy Field. Two more hours pass and by now most of my teachers are very well on so its time for us all to go home.

I was not happy at this fading – it was only 10.30pm and I was just ready to get going. So lucky that I got a text from my friend – we’re heading to the club (yes that’s The club because there is only one club in this – the Leitrim of Japan) …