Last night was my welcoming party/ back-to-school party. It was really strange, I thought. It wasn't really much of a welcome for me. I think I got to go for free instead of having to pay, which is nice. But I'm not really sure if that is even the case because someone could still come up to me and ask me to pay. The fee is around $50. The teachers pay it automatically each month, but I don't. So it is more of a shocker for me when one of these things happened.

I arrived at the hotel at around 6:30 and picked up a random seat number. We were seated according to our Sports Day team. So I was seated at the blue table, next to some teachers who didn't really speak English well. Why they went for a random seating assignment with me I'll never know. I guess they just didn't think about it. After some speeches, we started pouring drinks. The tradition is to not pour yourself any drinks, but instead to go around pouring drinks for other people as a sign of respect. Luckily Sarah had an enkai on Saturday and explained this to me beforehand. So I had to keep telling everyone that I didn't want any beer since I don't drink alcohol. Most of them were quite willing to pour me an orange soda instead. This was just fine with me, and I drank about three-fourths of a liter of soda.

Then we started eating food, all of which was very expensive. They had many kinds of fancy sushi and sashimi. My favorite dish was tomatoes and eggplants topped with raw tuna chunks. It was delicious. They also had beef, which never tasted so good. I guess after not eating beef for a month I had forgotten how it tasted. Much of the food went uneaten because we started playing games soon after dinner started. We had a mini-sports day with games for the teachers. It had a funny opening ceremony making fun of the students. There was also a big scorecard on the wall. The first game involved team members drinking beer then running around a bat to get dizzy and running around the room. It was funny, but I couldn't really participate. The second and third games were both Japanese word games which involved rhyming and music. It was interesting to watch, but I didn't know the words. I learned some vocabulary though. The fourth game was supposed to be something I could participate in, but they canceled it because it was too late.

Then they had an awards ceremony with funny gifts. My team got second so we all got chewing gum. They also had a special award for me. It was a stuffed shark. It is quite cute, but I don't know why they gave it to me. It was about the only thing they did for me during the ceremony. Also there was a poster with the words Happy 56th Sports Day! on it or something similar. In the corner someone drew a picture of Snoopy and wrote the words "Welcome Brian" in Japanese kana. Hardly a great welcome, but I don't really want anything big anyway. The English teachers want to take me out some other time also. That should hopefully be better. However they often do not speak in English around me, so maybe that won't be any better.

I'm not disappointed I went to the enkai, but I just wish I had felt more included. I think many teachers at my school make an effort to talk to me, which is great. Some of my friends say their teachers don't even talk to them hardly ever. I think once many of them started drinking they kind of forgot that I didn't understand anything that was going on.

A particularly humorous moment during the enkai was half-way through when my supervisor came over to talk to me. He said it was not good for people to drink too much soda, so it is not good for people to not drink at enkais. He has made it clear before that he would prefer I drink at the parties. This particular excuse was laughable. I asked him if he meant Japanese people do not like to drink sweet things, and he said it was bad for all humans to drink so many sweet drinks. I thought it was really funny that he was telling me how dangerous it is to drink soda instead of lots of alcohol! I did manage to convince him that drinking alcohol was probably more dangerous. I don't know if he was kidding or just had a really lame excuse to try to get me to drink.