Slumber Party

Last Friday, the eighth grade teachers at school had an overnight enkai. An enkai is a formal staff party - I've been on several dinner/drinking/karaoke enkais with the teachers at my last school, but never overnight. So I was very curious about this overnight enkai.

We piled into a couple of teachers' cars and drove to Mt Rokko near Kobe (about an hour away). We arrived at 7pm, checked into our rooms. I shared a room with two other female teachers.

It was a traditional Japanese room with tatami mats, a low table and chairs without legs. And at bedtime, we simply pulled these out of the way, and pulled three futons out of the closet!

Of course, the bathroom had toilet slippers to change into. Can anyone who speaks French tell me if these say what I think they say!!!

Dinner was also in a traditional room. And unfortunately, it was a lot of traditional Japanese food.

This first course was sashimi (raw fish), and whole baby squid (those brownish-purple things), and "the reproductive shoot of the horsetail plant" in a bamboo cone. The next day hiking, we saw a reproductive shoot of the horsetail plant.

Next was a "soup" with little broth, but plenty of octopus and bamboo shoots and very slimy seaweed.

After that was a serving of baked red snapper.

Then the waiters came around to light our little table top cookers which contained Kobe beef. Yes, that is a huge scoop of butter on top of the famously "marbled" Kobe beef!

The next course was taro (a potato like tuber). And then tempura (two prawns, fiddler fern, and broccoli).

Finally soup (fish cake and clam) and rice.

Dessert was mochi (surprise, surprise) around red bean paste (surprise, surprise, again).

By the time dinner was over, it was late. We went into another teacher's hotel room and hung out for a bit. I asked what we would do the next day. The English teacher said "biking". The next morning we went down for a breakfast buffet (hooray, they had scrambled eggs and toast, as well as "normal" Japanese breakfast food). I asked what time we would be biking, and got a confused look in return. After a little more back and forth (me asking if we were renting bikes, if everyone was going biking, etc.), I realized that the teacher had been saying "viking", as in viking-style (all you can eat) breakfast, not biking (Japanese people have a hard time pronouncing "v"). We had a good laugh over that!

What we did end up doing was visiting a botanical garden (it was a bit too early for many flowers, so I didn't take any great photos). After the botanical garden, we went to the "Hall of Halls". That turned out to be a music box museum!

Then lunch and a bit of time for souvenir shopping, then back to Himeji.

It was really interesting to experience this overnight trip. Japanese people are famous for their devotion to the company, and I think these sort of trips really encourage teamwork (although at the expense of time with the family).