This Is What An Enkai Looks Like...

Hanami + Enkais = The Official Start Of Spring

Another lengthy gap between posts for two reasons - a general lack of me doing anything vaguely interesting over the school holidays besides keeping irregular hours at work and taking over the school's music facilities to add guitars to my demo recordings, and the fact that immediately after I actually did some stuff, I somehow never found the time to write any of it down. So, what stuff did I do?

First off, hanami - a noble tradition here in Japan whereby the entire population becomes inordinately excited at the appearance of blossom on cherry trees. The media breathlessly covers this national obsession as warm fronts sweep across the country, the ephemeral nature of it all adding something special to the occasion - they're around for maybe two weeks in any given area, tops, before they disappear.

The really good thing about all this though is the hanami tradition associated with it - essentially very boozey picnics, hanamis simply involve getting together with friends, family or work colleagues and lolling under some nearby cherry trees while consuming a large amount of food (traditionally fish) and alcohol (traditionally sake), singing songs, dancing and generally getting battered.

If the book I read is to be believed, this apparently all stems from an ancient tradition dating back countless centuries, in which people would give thanks to the gods of the day for the appearance of said blossoms by leaving offerings of sake and fish beneath the trees. Coming back the next days to find the goodies exactly where they'd left them (oddly enough) the general feeling was "Well, it'd be a shame to see this lot go to waste, eh lads?" (I'm paraphrasing here), and promptly devoured the lot, since which time they've been doing it annually ever since.

And who am I to argue? Me and around half a dozen other JETs got together a couple of weeks back to have a hanami of our own in the grounds of Wakayama City's castle, with lashings of lager, wine, sake, fish-based snacks and entertainment in the form of two guitars, a ropey old keyboard, a frisbee and an American football - needless to say, overcast though it was, a very good time was had by all...once again, cheers to Mercedes for the guitar pic...

The other item of interest was the works bash held at a swanky hotel that I attended the following day with the teachers at Wakayama High. In addition to the academic year running from October to March, the other oddity of the Japanese school system is the fact that major changes are made to the teaching staff and various other aspects of the school organisation. Anywhere between 5-10 members of staff are transferred, people often switch desks in the staffroom, move to different offices or are moved sideways into different departments. The do that I went to (or enkai as they're called) was in honour of those staffmembers leaving, of whom two I was very sorry to see leave. Nakano Sensei was a young English teacher I taught a couple of weekly classes with, while Yamamoto sensei was science teacher a little older than me, who I spent loads of time chatting to in the staff room, as well exchanging lots of movies, games and cigarettes with.

The event itself consisted of a pleasant and no doubt hugely expensive meal which was a curious mix of Japanese and European cuisine (sushi with chopsticks I can handle - using them to rip apart a large pork cutlet is something else entirely), interspersed with speeches, occasional bursts of karaoke and some very peculiar staff bonding rituals at the end.

Yamamoto and I foolishly hit the free whiskey-serving bar a little harder than perhaps we ought to have done once the food was over, and hijacked the karaoke machine just as everything was winding down and the hotel staff began trying to get us all to leave - his chosen weapon was YMCA, mine was a spirited and tone-deaf rendition of 'Jealous Guy'.

As you can see from one of the pictures, the last hurrah came in the form of everyone forming a circle and repeating something that sounded like 'yarrgh!' while a PE teacher stood in the middle pumping his fist into the air. After that, everyone sang the school song that I still don't know the words to, and finished off by forming a human chain a little like the 'Oranges and Lemons' party game every Brit does at a birthday party when they're about 5, through which scuttled the teachers that were leaving. Most odd, but arguably far better than just getting mindlessly pissed and attempting to make a painfully embarassing move on the colleague from accounts you've had your eye on all year...