Sports Days, Chibi-ko sumo, and other adventures in drunkenness

Let it be known, just so that there are no surprises, that Japan is a society profoundly rooted in the consumption of alcohol. So much so that I would comfortably say that most Japanese social gatherings are some form of excuse to consume said alcohol. I've finally, after a comfortable stretch in Tokyo and my two months in taste-like-paint-thinner-goes-down-like-water Shochu land, managed to find a comfortable way to participate in these shenanigans without having to curl up into a ball and die at the end of the night...and then go to work the next morning dead. So while I have been drinking since...4 pm? I am by no means what one would call "drunk". Oh Japan, where to begin?

My office is fond of ambushes. Usually social, occasionally military-tactical. The mother of all ambushes was sprung on me this Sunday. It had been casually passed around that there was going to be "a relay race" of some kind and that I "would be running in it!" which was all fine and dandy. I like running. I'm fast, somehow, despite the fact that I spent the last 4 years pretending it was either too hot or cold to go running. What they didn't tell me, was that the entire island would be attending this event, which would take the better part of the entire day, and the partying afterward would extend well into the night. The whole town must have been in on this one.

For those of you in Japan, you are well aware of the unique Japanese "sports day" phenomenon, which is the deranged offspring of a track-meet and a Japanese festival (discussed previously). A series of races are run, cheering is elaborate and well choreographed, and other strange events crop up all over the place. The race where they tie 8-10 kids together and make them all run in unison comes to mind. As does the 1920s stick-and-metal-hoop race. I really can't find a way to describe it beyond that. Go google images of children playing before the depression. Normally these sports festivals occur at a school—the Wan Elementary School Sports Festival! etc. But Kikai has never been satisfied with doing what is normal. We're a special breed of loonies. We need to divide the island into administrative blocks, and then make everyone on the entire island compete for the better part of 8 hours. I only had to run in the one race, but I managed to increase my gaijin-cred significantly. I think some people are actually beginning to suspect that I am infallible, but I won't be satisfied until I reach the point of ineffable. Not because I have anything to prove, I just think it's a fantastic word. Adam the Ineffable...

After the awards ceremonies, and the tear-down, and the green tea kampai (like cheers...but cheerless), I was informed that the board of education was going to be going and having dinner together. My well honed ambush-sense began tingling.

It is surprisingly hard to avoid drinking to excess when the cultural norm for drinking is to pour other people's drinks. I think it is the vaguely depressionesque clean-plate dynamic clashing profoundly with the Japanese hospitality imperative. What am I supposed to do? NOT drink it? It will get warm, and that's just wasteful. But I've found that the relatively low alcohol content of Japanese beer means as long as I pace myself I can avoid undue trips to the trauma center. Usually. Unless after the first party, and its 6 different kampais, I am whisked into an unmarked car, and driven to a second party for the winning neighborhood, and am subjected to a further 3-4 kampais. And then another neighborhood...and another. Thankfully, I managed to lose my party somewhere around this point, and ended up with a group of teachers from the high school. It didn't stop the drinking, but at least it stopped the alcohol IV the Board of Ed guys seemed to have me running on.

The rest of the night was spent jumping from izakaya, to bar, to coffee shop...serving alcohol. I kind of hit a new people saturation point around the 8th round of introductions, right about when I ended up alone in a room with a 50-60 year old guy who was drunk beyond all possible rationality, and who kept talking not so much with me but at me in very fast Japanese while insisting on shaking my hand literally every 20 seconds. No really. No hyperbole what so ever. He shook my hand every 20 seconds for about 15 solid minutes of "conversation".

Celebrating in Japan can be...dangerous. The night ended well though, and I made some new friends, assuming I can ever remember exactly which random Kanji in my phone book represents each of them.

There's a part 2 to this story, because unless I that celebration managed to run from Sunday evening through Tuesday evening, logically I am talking separate events here. I'm tired though. For now lets just say that a) every time I think that nothing could be cuter than (something adorable the kids did) they surprise me by finding something cuter, like elementary kid sumo wrestling, and b) being good with kids in Japan apparently is defined as "being able to carry on a conversation while holding a beer in your hand, and 2 kindergartners on your back".

I'll pick out some of the choice photos of little kids throwing each other around a ring, and get back to you some time later this week.