Shinenkai

Tonight was the shinenkai (New Year's Enkai) for TJHS, the mountain school that I like so much. I was actually expecting to be at the nijikai about now, but it turned out that there wouldn't be one, so the English teacher gave me a ride back home around 9:30. Now I'm just chilling out for the rest of the evening.

Tonight's enkai was a little unusual in that only 9 teachers (including myself) attended. The entire staff is only about 15 people, but usually attendance is better. We were in a much smaller room than usual and it wasn't possible to move around, so there was basically one main conversation and no side conversations. Usually there are several conversations going on and you can move from group to group to talk to other people.

I felt like I understood a good amount of the conversation tonight, but group conversations are considerably more difficult for me than one-on-one conversations because the speaker changes so quickly, and I can't keep up well enough to contribute anything myself. It was still fun, but I'd been hoping I'd get a chance to talk to the math teacher, and there was no such opportunity despite the fact that there was only one person sitting between us.

The food was pretty typical enkai fare; sushi, sashimi, and nabe (hot pot soup) along with some tempura and a few other random dishes. I drank alcohol but didn't drink as quickly as usual since I didn't want to get drunk in front of my coworkers, though it wouldn't have been the first time. It was mostly a pleasant evening, though I got a nasty surprise when the vice principal (who is usually very nice to me) decided to do a rather unflattering imitation of me calling for a taxi at the end of the day. It was only a joke, and I could tell he didn't intend to be cruel, but it was pretty upsetting to me. The English teacher at that school has from the beginning insisted that I call my own taxi, but she never bothered to teach me what to say, so I've been going off a script I cobbled together using what little I know and a phrase I saw in a guidebook once. I know I sound strange, but I don't know how else to do it. So to be made fun of something I'm already self-conscious of made me angry and disappointed. But I just laughed and kept my thoughts to myself, so there wasn't any conflict.

Anyhow, nothing terribly exciting happened. It was satisfying to find that I'm understanding more of the conversation than I did at previous enkai, but it's a shame there was no afterparty. I'd been working on a couple of songs to sing in Japanese. I don't know when the next enkai will be, but it might not be until the end of the school year (April), after which I could very well be moved to another school. So I guess if I want to talk to the other teachers, I can't just wait until times when we're all drinking, because I might be running out of chances.