Situations Situations Situations.

Every time I travel out of the country (sometimes even in the country) I find myself, at least once, in a situation where I'm think "how on earth did I get myself into this situation?" It's not usually a bad situation, like, when I was accidentally involved in that bank robbery in Senegal. Just kidding (heh-heh). It's actually never the situations that you think either it's situations like this...

So all week for the first week I was at school the principal was all "How strong are you with alcohol? HAH. HAH. HAH." The principal is this shortish serious Japanese man that everyone says looks a bit like a tanuki. This is a tanuki.


This is what Japanese people perceive tanukis to look like...



it's kind of like a raccoon without it's bank robber mask on. (Bank robberies TWICE in one story? Heh-heh...uh oh.) Anyway, I'm not completely sure I understand why people think he look like that. Either way, he was SUPER psyched for my welcome party. I was kiiiiinda excited and kiiiinda nervous. The one thing I'm not a huge fan of is Japanese business etiquette. I'm fine with being polite to people and buying gifts, I'm a nice dude. But I'm not a fan of ultra cautious politeness to upper people, you can totally ruin your life and other people's if you use the wrong word for "Good afternoon, Principal." (You laugh, but many JETs have died this way.) And the other thing I'm not a huge fan of is the college-style drink-a-thon work parties. I'm all about having a beer or some wine with people to celebrate. But...not the whole business men getting sloppy drunk and then walking home.

So Thursday after school I get driven to a restaurant, or should I say "the restaurant" since there is only one restaurant in my town. (I'm kidding, there are three...and two are Italian food.) We went to a Japanese place. Do you still call it Japanese food if you're IN Japan? Answer: Yes. I walk into our private dining room, a decently sized room with a long table on the tatami mat floor surrounded by pillows. The principal is just sitting there by himself. I walked in with another teacher who immediately dives for a phone in the room to call downstairs to order beer and edamame for the three of us. Eventually two more teachers come. Nice.

So here I am, 23 year old Mike, sitting in a room with five 50+ year old Japanese men for the welcome party (I think most of the teachers forgot or couldn't come... or something.) More food is brought to us we had sashimi, pig stomach in some type of sauce, some veggies, edamame and fried chicken nugget things. It was all good. The principal did the honors of ordering a giant bottle of rice wine, sake. Niigata is famous for sake so I was excited to try it. We had Hakkaisan Sake which was significantly better than I thought. In fact, I liked it. I didn't really think I was too into sake, but this was good. Really really good. Hakkaisan is the name of a mountain in Niigata, I can see it from my school, actually. Nice.

So I was playing it safe, I sipped my sake nice and slow, I took my time. Over the course of two hours I had, maybe, 4 cups of sake. These are small small cups, by the way, each cup holds maybe two shots. So I was in pretty good shape, I wouldn't have driven, but I was totally cool. Really cool. The other gentlemen, I can't speak for. After we (they) finished two bottles of sake they ordered another one. This time served warm instead of cold. I had another two cups (baby cups) of this over an hour. Like I said, I was good, it sounds like a lot when I say it in how many cups I had, but it was really like sipping a shot glass, I'm not even kidding. I looked around and realized I'd been conversing entirely in Japanese with these old drunk men for three hours straight and I thought to myself, how did I get in this situation? They loved me. The principal thought my name, Michael, was pronounced "Mic-hah-yale" and I explained "no, it's my-kuhl" he was blown away and asked if Michael Jackson spells it the same way. I said "Yes" and, naturally, he called me "Michael Jackson." For the rest of the night. He thought it was so funny.

This wasn't the "moment" though. The "moment" came later. I was walking back to my hotel with all the teachers and each one eventually went their own way. At the end it was just the principal and I. We were being very chatty about my girlfriend, in fact they offered her a job if I decide to stay for two years... we'll see, Hilary. He asked if she was tall, and explained that American women are so tall that it scares him. He was pretty cool. He was also pretty drunk. Then he's like "let's go to 7-11" So in we went. A 65 year old drunk Japanese raccoon high school principal and a tall slightly buzzed white stick-like american discussing my girlfriend completely in Japanese. It was one of the most bizarre situations I've ever found myself in. I bought melon-bread and a pocari sweat (the gatorade of Japan). He bought a big bowl of curry, raisin bread and a tea. I'm pretty sure we're best friends now. Even though he probably won't talk to my at school for the rest of my stay here.