Vignettes from an enkai

Last week, I went to my first sober enkai. A sober enkai, by the way, is almost as bad as sober karaoke. I don't recommend it. For my American readership, an enkai is a Japanese drinking party done with one's co-workers. It's meant to bring you closer and build communication, because the only time Japanese people communicate is when they're so drunk they can't stand up. There's even a Japanese word for communication through drinking.

While it may be an overstatement to say that Japanese people don't communicate with each other unless they're drunk, it's certainly true that most of them aren't willing to communicate with me until they're three sheets to the wind. This means that over the past three years, a lot of my interactions with Japanese people have been with inebriated middle-aged teachers. This may explain why I have some of the views of them that I do.

The following is a description of two interactions I had at my recent enkai. Keep in mind that it was my first time talking with both of the teachers involved.

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Eyeing my Chinese purse, a drunk woman in her 50s or 60s came over to me.

"Wow, your bag is suteki. Neat. Look at my bag. It's make of kimono material. Do you know what a kimono is?" she asked.

I replied that yes, I had heard of kimonos. Then she started taking stuff out of her bag. She told me that she wanted me to have her bag. I tried to protest by suggesting that she needed her bag to hold her stuff. In response, she produced a plastic bag into which she started placing the former contents of her purse.

"This kind of material is used for kimonos. Have you heard of a kimono?" she asked again, though not for the last time.

"Um yes, I have," I replied, growing uneasy.

The Japanese English teacher sitting next to me must have picked up on my discomfort and said, "It's ok. Sometimes when Japanese people are drunk they want to give people things." I guess that's what years of giving omiyage will do to a person. The woman then went on to explain that her purse was made of kimono fabric and asked if I knew what a kimono was. I replied in the affirmative.

"I want you to have this as a memory of today," she said, handing me her purse.

I took the purse hesitantly and promised to keep it as a memory of that day.

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I was sitting alone when a drunk man in his 50s or 60s came over and sat next to me.

This was his opening line: "So does your boyfriend sometimes come visit you from Australia?"

At this point, this man should have exactly one piece of information about me: I am from America. I had just stood up and announced it to the room in Japanese not an hour before. He does not know the following things: (1) if I have a boyfriend; (2) if I have a boyfriend, where he lives; or (3) the nationality of my hypothetical boyfriend. Thus, I didn't know where to begin when answering his question. As it turned out, he wasn't particularly interested in what I had to say. Anything I said was followed by a question based on what he assumed to be true.

"Um, I'm American," I said.

"OK then, is your boyfriend in town from America?" he continued.

"I didn't actually mention whether or not I had a boyfriend..."

"Do you have a date with him after this?"

"...but...umm..."

"Where are you going on your date?"

Luckily, the conversation turned to our hobbies. I said that mine were soccer, traveling, reading, and studying Japanese. He said that he had only two: climbing mountains and "watching beautiful women." Just at that moment, a younger female teacher came over and rescued me. I am eternally grateful to her.