End of the Year Party

The absolute biggest occasion of the year for teachers in Japan is the End of the Year Party, occurring in late December just before the break between second and third semester begins. Community is important in Japan, as you know, and the work place is one of the most important in-groups to which people must conform. Therefore, you would have to be dead or dying to not show up at the End of the Year Party. And you would have to be very clever indeed to escape the social pressure to get utterly trashed and make a fool of yourself while at the party. Ginowan High is no exception to the rules. I had the good fortune of a good excuse for not drinking myself silly: a plane trip to Vietnam the next day. And from a sober perspective, the party was all the more entertaining. Above you see us all looking very stately (who knew what was in store?!) And below you can see bits of the glorious feast that was laid out for our dinner.
I had been asked earlier in the year if I was interested in participating in the dance performance at this party, but I had envisioned something like folk dance, or ball room dance, or I don't know what... so I had graciously turned them down. What a surprise it was, then, when several teachers disappeared in their suits and ties and returned to loud blaring pop music wearing these outfits:



WOAH! Super Mario, the Terminator, a drag queen, 3 santas, and... a man in pink plastic with socks stuffed in his drawers. I immediately regretted my decision not to be involved.Who knows what they would have dressed me as?

Now, actually I got ahead of myself. The Terminator was the first performance that was truly bizarre. The curtain rolled aside, and a large cardboard box began to inch itself across the stage. I furrowed my brow and risked a quick glance from side to side at my fellow viewers. Everyone was sipping away on wine, perfectly at ease in their official suits and fancy dresses as the creepy notes of the Terminator theme song began. And the Japanese version of Arnold Schwarzenegger (by this I mean that he is wearing fluorescent pink panties... Japanese people can't have any kind of festival without putting the men in drag) emerges. It's actually quite funny that this particular teacher performed this piece, because he is the Discipline Teacher. That's right, we have a teacher whose only job is to discipline bad kids. He shakes them in the teachers' room, yells at them in the courtyard, walks the corridors menacingly during class and enters any and everyone's room in order to bop a sleeping student upside the head, shoot dagger-eyes at paper-airplane throwers, or generally speaking scare the bejesus out of Wrong Doers. I myself was quite frightened of him before the party. Now I just have to call up the image of the fluorescent pink panties.

Here, you see a member of yet another dance performance. This is a kendo (sword fighting)/PE teacher dressed as one of Ginowan High's female students. Those white bunchy socks he's wearing went out of style on mainland Japan like 5 years ago, but unfortunately still seem to be in full-swing at my school.

After the performances, everyone started bustling around in a serious manner. I thought it might be time to go, but I was wrong... it was time for BINGO!!!!!

Wow, yeah. Apparently Japanese people, unlike Americans, love bingo (and Disneyland) at all ages. So a very competitive and rowdy game of drunken bingo followed. I won a calculator. I came in like 20th, but I blame this on the fact that I couldn't process the numbers being called out in Japanese fast enough to punch my holes.

After that, it was time to move on to the Second Party. The second and third or fourth parties are important concepts in Japanese, because many teacher or company official parties are followed up by another, and another, and another party... the crowd thinning out to hardcore drinkers as the night and locale progress. The Second Party was Karaoke. There are some very funny pictures of karaoke but I don't have them yet... check back to this article at the end of the week to see if I've gotten them!