'Tis the Season To Be Yopparai

I managed to go to two Christmas Parties this year. The first, in Aobadai, I wasn't expecting to be any good. Aobadai is the kind of place where young people settle down to start their families. It's very residential so as you can gather, my expectations were quite low.

One of my regular students kept pestering me to come along to the school parties, so seeing that I didn't have any alternative plans, I decided to stick around.. for three and a half hours! I was considering having a sleep in the kids classroom but somehow I stayed awake until party time.

There was a good mix of people. About half and half guys and girls and even another two teachers came along as well! It just goes to show that if you give us an incentive to be at work unpaid for our troubles we might actually show up!

There was another school's party I planned to go to. Especially when I saw their memo in the teacher's room. I don't know about you, but "On The House" in my language usually means "my treat/shout". Apparently in Japanese it means 3,000 yen? When I showed them the poster, they said it was a mistake. It was up for about 3 weeks. Pass. No, thank you.

Anyway, the one that I most look forward to each year is the Yokohama Christmas party.

I was also asked to go to the Shinjuku party on the same night enticed by free alcohol and no cost to teachers, but I'd have to backtrack and I also thought I'd go straight to Yokohama instead of going home to change.

I arrived a little earlier so I had a drink or two in the teacher's room. I was surprised looking out that quite a few students had shown up filling out the foyer in no time. It was strange to be stared at, but with a little push from the SD I went out to mingle.

For some reason tonight lacked a certain something that I had felt in previous years. I still had a great time and had a lot of fun conversation and drinking with my peers and students.
The after party was going to be at another bar but somehow between closing time and the bathroom, I found myself heading home on one of the final trains. I had other plans for tomorrow.