The Infamous Office Party

Japan is a "high stress" culture, some Japanese will tell you. Mostly this is because they place a lot of stress on themselves when they really don't have to. For example, teachers get forty days of paid leave a year. I have yet to meet a teacher who has taken more than one day off from work, even in the summer.
Office workers would rather shower you in bacteria-filled mucus deluges than take their disease-ridden bodies back home two hours early on a day when business is so slack, they've sat at their desks chatting through their surgical masks with coworkers. No one goes home early, unless you're the slacker foreign assistant English teacher who literally has no work to do once classes finish for the day, and often before classes start for the day.

One of the by-products of this way of life is the full acceptance of alcohol being the only answer.

Kochi prides itself on its drinking culture, its drinking games and the funny little ill-balancing cups they produce in pottery sheds across the prefectures, and on their ability to drink like fish and not get wobbly (unlike the cups):

Famous Kochi bekuhai drinking cups - ugly as sin, but that doesn't matter since you won't
remember it tomorrow anyway.

The office party becomes that moment when you are able to finally relax, let your hair down, and tell people what you really think of them. For instance, at our party this week, one of my coworkers was routinely told that he was getting fat while another had written on his hand "don't talk" as a way of reminding himself not to get carried away (he is known for being much too blatantly honest at these sort of events, even for a drinking party). 

It always starts awkwardly, especially if you happen to sit next to a stranger who pales at the thought of communicating with a foreigner. I was late to this party, even though I live closest to the establishment, and so through a process of eliminated seats, ended up next to two dudes from my office and one very young nervous fellow, who tried to avoid eye contact all night long. 

For the first twenty minutes or so (after the speeches, which were pretty funny since my town's Board of Education hosted and we are known for being painfully tight with our money and very entertaining), everybody looks around anxiously, piteously helping neighbors with food and drink and politely declining anybody helping them. 

Then you're on your third round (this is Kochi - most sparsely populated region in Japan; number three for drinking beer, outside of Tokyo, which wins by volume, and Okinawa which is inhabited solely by surfing drunks), and all the asian faces turn bright red. They can't help it, that's how it goes when they drink.  

Suddenly, your neighbor is happily arguing with you about cooking shows and proper etiquette for farting in public, and the coworker who sits across from you at the office and never says three words, is arguing that you're the one who never talks to him and when are you going to come play basketball with the community team? Your boss's boss plunks down next to you with his potato-sake and after they spend five minutes telling you "potato, Merry, not rice!" he orders a hot sake pot and you begin the endless cycle of pouring each other drinks. 

This year was especially fun because last year when my boss's boss tried to talk to me, somebody had to interpret. This year, we got along without help, although everyone around us threw in as many irrelevant Engrish words as they possibly could to better facilitate understanding, except for the new father at the end of the table who looked like he was going to fall asleep at any moment. 

When I got compliments on my Japanese, I explained it was because I was drinking. Moshi nondara, nihongo ga jouzu naru yo! Which may not be correct, but was comprehendible. 

It's unfortunate we can't drink at the office itself. We would get a hell of a lot more done and be much less stressed.