As I mentioned before, today and tomorrow are a company trip. Apparently it is the norm for companies here in Japan to have more than just meals out at a fancy restaurant, they have to go on proper overnight trips and have a hell of a good time somewhere. In this case, it was a company sports festival, like the sports days back in secondary school, only with Japanese games, and actually fun.
And so I got up early, headed to the office to meet with everyone, and then get onto a bus and travel for 2/3 hours to Tsumagoi in Shizuoka (not sure if thats the name of the town or just the hotel/centre where we stayed). Upon arriving we had to dump our bags somewhere, then change into sports kit before having a quick lunch of curry rice (I know, I thought that was odd to have before doing sports as well). We then headed over to the main sports field and were split into two teams. After some introductions, pep talks, and speeches given by the newest members of the office (not including me) there was a very Japanese tradition of doing group stretches and warm ups to a strange musical song - kind of like ring around the rosie but with much toe touching. We then began doing all kinds of sports that were somewhere between school sports, and just plain craziness. To list them all would take forever, but the ones I was a part in were a ball tossing game where the teams had to get all their balls into a mid air bucket first, a rock-paper-scissors relay, tug-of-war, caterpillar races and finally a relay race where every next person had to run a little further each time (but I got to start on the smallest distance, score).
Then it was back to the hotel and a chance to change and use the open air hot spring bathes they had. Now there is no possible way I can explain the concept of the public baths to the readers unless you properly understand Japanese culture and history, at least not without it coming off as gay to those of juvenile minds. So I'll skip ahead.
In the evening we changed into the yukata provided by the hotel and headed for a huge, Japanese style room for the evening party. The large part of this was a massive feast of all kinds of foods, and a large amount of beer going round the room. There is also a tradition/custom where people went around and poured a glass with the boss and other company members, then had their glass filled in turn, then shared a drink. Of course I did this with the company president, and several people came and chatted with me. But I feel I may need to read up on this a lot more before next time, because I probably should have gone round more and spoken to more people.
After a couple of hours, we then had to move to a new room for more drinks and a company games like quizzes and sharades and russian roulette (with spice drinks). Unfortunately my Japanese is not that good yet so a large part of this time was spent just going with the flow, chatting to the people on my table, and laughing at the guy dressed as Jack Sparrow doing the narrating.
After a couple more hours everybody headed back to the rooms. Unfortunately this was the part where I didn't have as much fun because one of the higher ups came to our room (there were 4 to a room, and I was lucky and got the 3 english speakers). This guy felt like chatting to me for a while and talking to me at great length - which wasn't a great Idea because I was already hoarse and shattered and my Japanese skills were out the window at this point. I ended up having to talk to him mostly through the other room mates. But I also had to contend with the room across the hall holding a second after party and having more drinks. This I found out because they came and kidnaped me at one point, sticking my head into a tiger wrestlers mask and leading my across the hall with no glasses. Luckily I managed to duck at quickly but with the other people in the room still talking and people going in and out all night, I was able to get maybe 4 hours sleep.
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