Can you eat raw fish and sing The Beatles too?!

I find myself in the perpetual welcome party. I am being welcomed by schools, and welcomed by clubs and welcomed by friends. Everyone wants me to feel welcome in Japan, but haven’t I already been living here for over three months??? Haven’t I learned to drive here, and eat here and go shopping? No matter, the longer I can drag out this welcome party thing, the longer the free food lasts! ;)

This particular entry however, is about my welcome party for Koga First Senior High School. The English teachers wanted to take me out to dinner. So, as I have come to expect, one of the teachers, Kaneko-san, picked me up from my apartment in the evening and took me to the traditional Japanese restaurant they had chosen. When we arrived, they had a little room reserved just for us, and the teachers began, in a bit of a frenzy, to peruse the menu and decided to order the same meal for everyone. This meal had a little bit of everything; as with most of the teachers I meet, they want to see how far they can stretch my stomach and what weird things they can watch me eat/drink.

So, the food came in about 5 courses and to begin, they started me off with a beer. The I was one of three woman at this little get together, and I was the only one drinking with the 3 other men! The conversation surrounded my life in Japan thus far and how I liked my apartment. They asked if I cooked dinner for myself every night and I sheepishly said not every night, but I try sometimes. Then the first course came, it was pickled vegetables of all sorts – the Japanese really like to pickle everything. I don’t mind the pickled veggies at all, so I ate them down. Next came a plate of sashimi and wasabi. Surprisingly one of the Japanese teacher’s just can’t bring herself to eat raw fish, so they slide her plate over to me, and I gladly partook of the raw tuna!

Next we jumped into some fish-like something that was a bit coagulated and cold. It tasted like the ocean and my eating it, got a reaction. After that came fresh tofu with a bit of a ginger sauce to go with it, and then the main course of kameshi came. Kameshi is rice, with vegetables, or meat, or really anything on top. It is brought to the table in an iron pot and you let it sit for about 3 minutes. After that you can open the lid and you stir the whole thing. They even bring hot water, so you can turn it into a soup if you want to. They opted for the seafood kameshi and it was so good! Oh how I love Japanese food!! During the course of the meal, they are asking me about my family and tangenting off to different topics like, “Have you ever had Japanese sake?” or “Do you think Japanese boys are cute?” or “How long will you stay in Japan?” I have had Japanese sake, but I let them buy some for me anyway. They decided on a kind of cold sake call kobota. It was a little sweet and not as strong with the rubbing alcohol flavor as previous cold sakes I had tasted.

One of the Japanese teachers, turns to me once he is about three beers and a sake deep and says, “Do you like karaoke?” I smile and say, “Yes, I love karaoke!” He says, “Then we will do tonight, okay?!” And so it was that the group of us would next head to karaoke after dinner. We had decided during the end of dinner that The Beatles were a nice common ground of music that everyone knew, so that is what we should sing all night long.

We rented a booth at the karaoke place for two hours and then proceeded to order more drinks and food. I had two grapefruit sours in the two hours we were there, and I think everyone else had three – except for Kaneko, who was the driver that night. They have over 200 Beatles songs in the computer for the karaoke machine. We just started going through them, we’d each take a turn singing a song with the microphone, while everyone else would just sing the words in the background. After about an hour and 20 minutes we got tired of The Beatles and started venturing out to other things, like Carole King, and other old songs that the teachers knew, and were surprised when I also knew them! I even sang my standard Japanese song, Sukiyaki.

All in all, they thought I was great and I thought the same about them. We had a good time and I hope they invite me out for karaoke again soon!