How to get to know your co-workers 1. Drink with them 2. drink with them

Today I had my first enkai (after work party) with my Thursday office. It was the welcome/farewell party for the people who had been shifted around during the section changes at the beginning of the month.

We met at a small restaurant not too far from city hall. At every enkai I face the same difficult decision…what to wear (gosh I'm such a girl). I get off work at least an hour before the rest of my colleagues so I get to go home before going to the enkai. They all go straight from work so are still wearing their work clothes. So I can either wear my work clothes and fit in, or wear more casual clothes which would seem strange since I have already gone home….

I tend to choose to go casual, as in nice jeans, nice top, heels, etc. This time I showed up and I was again the least dressed up…until the new young guy showed up and he was in jeans too, which made me feel a lot better.

I have wanted to talk to this guy since he started in my office. He just graduated college so he is right around my age and people like that are rare around here…or at least I don’t know many of them aside from Atsushi (the guy my boss went all Yente on me with). So I was happy when he ended up sitting just one person away from me.

At every welcome/farewell party I have been to (now 2), they begin with speeches from the people leaving and then speeches from the people joining the division. Then we kanpai and eat. All the while everyone moves around and pours each other more and more beer.

This is when things really get interesting. People who work in a different section than me, who have never spoken to me before, suddenly become quite talkative. There is a guy who I see every week but have never said more than 2 words to, who talked my ear off this time…which is good because I have wanted to talk to them since I met them. I even finally learned his name…Ueda.

The girl next to me eventually made her way around the table to pay her respects to the new people and the leaving people so I ended up next to new young guy, Nakagawa. He scoots over and pours some more beer into my almost full glass and begins by saying… “so I hear you play taiko.” Now, Shigeno-san from my taiko group had called the office earlier in the day to tell them of our upcoming performance so I figured Kojima-san had passed along the message…but when I asked him how he knew that I play taiko even though we have never met he told me that Old Man River (he’s this older guy in my taiko group who’s name in Japanese I thought was Hurukawa which means old river), is his father!!! And one of the girls is his little sister!

Nakagawa-san just graduated from Kansai University in Osaka and actually used to live in the same town I lived in when I was in Osaka 2 years ago (holy crap it’s been 2 years already!!!!!)

After a while we began talking about English and Japanese borrowed words and I taught them how to properly pronounce McDonalds, Starbucks, Vodka, etc. Though when you try to teach someone to properly pronounce your native language, and they repeat after you, sometimes you begin to wonder if you really sound like that. McDonalds became MacDaaaanalds with a very nasally tone whenever they tried to pronounce it.

The other section is called the Kodomo Mura, or Children’s Village. As far as I know they spend a lot of time outside working with kids, educating them about nature and other such things. It sounds like a lot of fun and they all seem to be some of the happiest Japanese people I know.

So because they all work with kids they have nicknames. I have forgotten what Ueda-san’s is but Nakagawa and the other new girl did not have one yet so they asked me to help….

They started talking about things and said that Nakagawa is really good at basketball. So Kojima-san suggest it be something basketball related. So they started naming off basketball related words…I’m sorry to say that they came up with

Ball

Hoop

Basket

And that was about it…so I figured I should help them out a bit, being American and therefore well versed in basketball terminology (笑). I was just playing around when I suggested Slam Dunk, which none of the older ones understood…so I had to explain it to them with a lot of gestures (apparently when they play basketball they don’t dunk)…but that’s what they chose. So thanks to me he is now Slam Dunk Nakagawa. (I call him that whenever I see him now and he turns bright red).

They tried to nickname the girl too. Apparently she hates bugs and being outside so working with the Kodomo Mura is not ideal for her. So they tried to nickname her Mukade (centipede…well a Japanese centipede which is very large and it hurts if it bites you).

So, we have now established a relationship. We have a little inside joke. One thing I have learned is that Japanese people take more time to warm up to you than maybe an American would, but once they do warm up to you it is worth the wait. Generally relationships start out at a distance and over time you get closer. That can be said of any relationship really…you rarely meet people and become close immediately, but I feel like it takes longer her…though perhaps that is only from a foreigner’s perspective. I guess when I really think about it, many of the Japanese people I have met were extremely welcoming, just a bit shy. Which of course, I am as well….

I’ll have to think about that some more.