kampai!! [8/26/2007]

This past Friday (8/24) the Saikai City Board of Education hosted a Welcoming Party for the new ALTs that had arrived.  Unfortunately Dino, although he is a new ALT in Oshima, is employed by the Nagasaki Prefectural BOE and not the Saikai City BOE, thus he was not invited.  This means that "new ALTs" were myself, Jyoti, and Wendy.  They also invited the veteran ALTs, so Ellen was there along with Elizabeth, her husband Elliot, and their new baby Sam.  Ellen lives on Sakito, an island off the west coast of Oshima connected by a bridge, and Elizabeth and company are in western Saikai City.  Claudia, another ALT who lives near Wendy, is currently in Tokyo doing an internship with the Canadian Embassy and obviously couldn't make it.

The "kampai!!" ("cheers", more or less) in my subject is a little misleading, because unusually for an enkai (party), there was no alcohol.  Usually an enkai will be all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink, but the place we went to was simply two hours of all-you-can-eat, which was completely fine by me, to be honest.  I love food!!  Even though there was no endless beer, the kampai is still quite important; no one is supposed to eat or drink anything until after the most senior / important / respected person has made a toast and given the kampai!  I ALMOST slipped and drank from my water while we were waiting but I caught myself at the last second.  Phew!  I think I rather like the kampai custom, it's very energetic and just sounds really cool when everyone else echoes it.

There were maybe twenty or so people there, perhaps a little more, and we all sat at a long, traditional-style table, that is to say about a foot and a half / two feet off the ground with cushions ("zabuton") surrounding it.  Oh man and the food!  Overall it was very delightful.  I took advantage of the plentiful fruit, especially the apples in yogurt (apples!!), but also made sure to try and sample as much of the other dishes as I could, topping it all off with some Japanese shaved ice with fruity syrup and condensed milk.  So good, jiminy.  It's a good thing I don't know anywhere to get that in Oshima.

The enkai gave me a good opportunity to talk to the other ALTs in the area and get to know them.  They seem to be pretty cool people and we are planning on meeting for dinner sometime during the week and getting together after Claudia gets back from Tokyo, so it's shaping up to be some good times here in Saikai City.  I also spent some time talking to a few of the Japanese teachers there, two who were English teachers but one gentleman who favored the sciences.  We went back in forth in the best fashion that we could, he trying with the English and I with the Japanese.  And it worked out pretty well, surprisingly enough.  Incremental improvements!

We had a conference of the English teachers and ALTs in Saikai City right before the enkai, but that is going to have to wait.  It's off to Nagasaki City tomorrow for our Prefectural Orientation!  Things are starting to ramp up a bit..

gluttonous future love,

-greg.