Blizzard and Bon enkai

Yet another blizzard. This one's the strongest I've seen so far. The winds were so strong that it was just blowing snow hard against the windows and the snow stuck to the window panes so we could not see through them. The strong winds actually affected the power lines. Various parts of Niigata suffered blackouts (but not where I'm at) and the shinkansen actually stopped running. That was the news of the century. Everyone was walking around school going the shinkansen has stopped?!

You see, in Japan, the shinkansen never stops. Even if there is an earthquake, they will only suspend it to make sure that the tracks are ok before resuming service. In this case, due to the power outage, they had to stop the trains with no word on when service would be resumed. Many of my students live in Niigata City (40mins by shinkansen and 2hrs by car) and other faraway parts of Niigata and take the shinkansen to and from everyday. School ended 3 hours early so that parents could drive down to pick their kids up.

I had to spend 15 mins in class comforting a girl who was crying because she couldn't go to Niigata City for her favourite rock band's concert. She eventually burst into the staff room at 4+pm in smiles, happily telling me that the concert was postponed.


Bon Enkai (Year-end party)

That evening, the staff at my school was having its bon enkai (literally forget the year party). This is the largest party of the year. Unlike our usual parties, this was held in another town altogether - Yuzawa. The enkai was more formal than the previous ones too. The tables were arranged in long rows, with 2 rows facing each other and a wide gap between. Too wide for you to actually talk to the person sitting facing you, so you can effectively talk only to the persons beside you.



The food was really good too! Fine Japanese dining. This was how our individual spreads appeared at first. Oyster nabe, assorted tempura (to be dipped in salty green tea powder, not the usual soy sauce), mushrooms, the long plate of strange stuff (the dried persimmon with cheese in the centre was great, but I didn't like the salty fish eggs), and rice.

Then the waitresses brought in plate after plate of stuff, which mostly tasted good. There was sashimi, some type of root that was stewed, vegetables, apple mousse, fruits, etc. Many, many small dishes of food. At one point, there was no space on my tray to put the new dishes coming in!

At the end, there was a little quiz for everyone to complete. Patrick and I got a special quiz - a Japanese proficiency test. My knowledge of kanji (Chinese characters) greatly aided me, and I scored a 9 out of 10. I was among the 3 top scorers and we were all called out to the front. We had to balance on 1 leg while standing, with our eyes closed. The winner would get a grand prize. I finished second, which was a good thing cos the grand prize turned out to be a huge box of assorted coffee. I won a ceramic house that you can light candles in, which is equally useless to me. :(

After that dinner, we all went for a soak in the inn's outdoor onsen (males and females divided by a bamboo screen so you can still talk to the other side. It was really nice. There was a thick layer of snow all around the onsen and there were little ice sculptures around the onsen illuminated by candles.

After the onsen, we continued on with the second round of the enkai - karaoke. I was saved from singing by my sore throat, which was getting from bad to worse with all the talking I had to do at the enkai. The karaoke session was really funny because many of the teachers were so drunk that they were jumping around and doing all sorts of funny things. One observation: All Japanese can sing, just like all Taiwanese and all Filipinos can sing.

That night, we stayed overnight in the inn.