Bounenkai: Goodbye, 2010! I hardly knew ye!

Bounenkai: a word made of the kanji 忘 to forget, 年 year, and 会 meeting. It literally is a "meeting to forget the year" and is normally celebrated by going out drinking with your co-workers/club members/fellows. Most, if not all office places have these drinking parties, and thus, the city office is not immune to this tradition.

Best quotes from the night:

"you are almighty girl" (in english)

"Old man spit hit me in the eye, and so as not to be rude, I wiped it away as he poured me a drink.... ABUNAI!" (in Japanese)

"you said "there is a pay slip in the museum" instead of "there are dinosaurs in the museum" (in Japanese)

Considering that the beginning of that bounenkai was rather awkward (as most drinking parties usually start out)... it turned out to be pretty fun. Yeah, I had to pay 7000 yen for it, but I got some detergent and some cute gloves from the prize drawing, and I got to talk to Nat-chan and a bunch of other people from the office (once they were drunk) as well as eat AMAZING food and drink disgusting amounts of Asahi beer.

Nat-chan was in charge of the main event of the evening, which was a giant jan-ken match for the top prizes. Enough prizes were bought so that everyone got something, but the top 10 prizes were actually good prizes: a bike, a bread maker, a mixer, and some expensive sports-wear to name a few. Like I said, I lost terribly and got a low-ranked prize that included gloves and some soy joy bars. One of the people who sits near me in the BOE gave me the detergent he won because it was flowery and girly scented. Luckily! It's the kind I usually buy so now I won't have to do detergent-shopping for awhile. Haha~

I also got invited to go karaoke with Ayashi guy from my office, and the temp girl Sano-san, as well as a few other people from the office. It was nice being invited to something for a change. Being one of the only two foreigners in the office, I can't help but feel like everyone somehow dislikes me... but getting invited along lessened that fear at least a little. I'm always the one who sings the most at karaoke, but it was nice to actually be wanted there, hear other people sing, and talk to people I don't usually say a word to while enjoying the songs. I know things like this don't happen often with the people in my office, but I hope little things like this will let them know that I'm not a scary foreign-monster or something. I think the mere fact that I showed up to this bounenkai gave me some serious brownie points. ALT's usually go on winter vacation by this point.