Leaving Party

When you leave a teaching job in Japan, your students will organize a leaving party for you. There are a mandatory rules to follow at these events, the important ones being eat like a pig and drink like a fish. I was happy to comply with these demands. My most raucous leaving party was hosted by my all-male business class who worked on the 'weapons making' facility. One member of this class, Masahi, offered to pick me up outside my apartment and drive me to a local restaurant where the party was taking place on Saturday night.
On that evening, I was in Masahi's giant Land Rover as we drove to the restaurant. He told me that some of the other members of the party had arrived early at the restaurant and were in the process of aggressively depleting the proprietor of his alcohol stock.
"They are, how you say, wibbly wobbly," Masashi said.
"Yeah, that's what we say alright," I said, to humour him.
To divert the conversation away from the reprehensible gang that was sure to meet us, I drew Masashi's attention to the ungodly amount of lanterns adorning all the houses we passed. I asked why people hung these lights outside their houses.
Masashi informed me that it was to celebrate an annual festival called Obon.
I couldn't quite hear him when he said this because we hit a bump in the road making the car bump up and down loudly.
"Obama?" I asked
"What?!" he shouted over honking horns directed at him as he continued to riskily drive over man-holes adorning the road.
"Did you say it's called Obama?"
"Yes, I said Obon. It's Obon day," he continued, above the squawking chicken coup he nearly ploughed into on an adjacent farm.
"Obama day?” I said, still failing to hear him. “I didn't know Barak Obama had a festival named after him in Japan."
"No, not Obama Day! Obon!"
"Oh."
He then told me this festival celebrated the life of a family member who had died in the last year and to commemorate the deceased a family relation will hang up a lantern outside their house.
As we sped through the rural landscape of Iida whilst the sun was setting, I counted an innumerable amount of lanterns swinging outside the houses of the town.
I playfully nudged Masashi with my elbow. "Looks as though the life expectancy in Iida is pretty bad, eh?" I said and gave a small chuckle.
He stared ahead with an expressionless face.
To break the awkward silence I asked what he did at the weekend.
"I went to my grandmother's funeral," he said.
Shit.
We eventually arrived at a small Yakiniku restaurant. I didn't need to ask Masashi if this was the restaurant we were going to because I could already hear rowdy noises from inside. Masashi and I entered the private room reserved for our party and were met with joyous cries of, "Yaaaaaaaaaaa!!!"


I was immediately offered a seat by the now ridiculously pissed members of the party.
As soon as I sat down, a huge beer jug was placed in front of me. Everyone raised their jugs and clinked each others with exaggerated swooshing motions and booming “Kampais!”
I was slugging on my jug in order to catch up with my students, but before I could make any headway, a gigantic plate of raw meat was placed in front of me.
"Eat! Drink! Eat!" a red-faced Yukinori pleaded with me.
"Make up your mind, buddy," I said.
I pointed out I wasn't in the habit of chewing on raw meat on account of wanting to live.
Yukinori looked with an askance face and picked up my plate of raw meat and threw it on a small cauldron embedded in the centre of the table. As soon as the meat hit the base of this indented groove in the table, flames shot up as if our table was directly above hell.
"What the...?!" I shouted, as I leapt back from the flames.
"Yakiniku restaurant! We cook the meat ourselves. Yummy Yummy," Yukinori said.
My students served me generous helpings of all the meat that was on offer throughout the evening. My jaw never stopped chewing or drinking making the night a feat of endurance.
After chugging down five jumbo jugs of beer and chowing on an unethical amount of meat, my stomach was beginning to make squelching sounds. I loosened my belt and made a clamorous burp.
The eldest member of the group, Tomio, leaned towards me. "Sam!! What do you think of Japanese girls?" he shouted into my ear.
"Very beautiful," I said, trying to face away from his stinking breath.
Everyone was happy with this statement and they all went "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
Tomio leaned forward again. "Sam! What do you think of English girls?"
"Very beautiful."
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
The internal functions of my stomach began to disintegrate and I needed to abort immediately.
"Er, excuse me everyone. I have to go to the toilet."
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
I emerged from the toilet to find the group in a horny mood. They were comparing girls from different countries. I sat down and heard the toothless Kazahito suddenly explain the advantages and disadvantages of Thai girls to me.
"You see," he frothed, "many girls in Thailand are beautiful. But many have diseases. So I have to choose beauty or disease. It's a tough choice."
I assumed he had already made the choice judging by his foul face.
When everyone had finished their drinks we departed. My student's paid for my meal so I thanked everyone during an impromptu burping attack. They were all blitzed out of their brains so they couldn't hear me anyway.


The group loitered outside the restaurant as we waited for Hiroshi to finish his business in the toilet. He emerged with his shirt poking through his zipper. "Let's go to Karaoke!" he slured.
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" was the unanimous verdict to this suggestion.
The karaoke room we went to stuffy and musty but that didn't stop the high-spirits.
I was touched by the decision that every member of the group should sing in English with the aim of making me feel more at home. I thanked them for their generosity, but I was so drunk at this point that my English singing probably sounded Japanese.
It was unfortunate that the Yuua decided to kick things off with a Radiohead song.
Looking around the room whilst Yuua sang the verse: "I'm a creep/ I’m a weirdo/ What the hell am I doing here.." was like staring at a number of colourful balloons being deflated. Everyone was slumped in their chairs and staring at the floor.
Masashi snatched the microphone from the naval-gazing Yuua and decided to inject some life into the evening with the song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
The guy was a pro. He knew every beat and warble that accompanies the song. All the other guys began to sing along with the chorus as if this was the best song they had ever heard.
At the end of this song, Masahi handed me the microphone and it was my turn to rock the joint. I needed an easy tune that could involve everyone. Ideally, a call-and-response song which had a killer beat.
I made my choice and punched the information into the karaoke remote control.
The instantly recognizable opening bars crashed through the speakers and had everyone clapping along and singing: "Who you gonna call, GHOSTBUSTERS!!"