Bonenkai Season
December tis the season of the annual “bonenkai,” or “end-of-year-party.” Any group that can even remotely call themselves a group has a bonenkai. For more formal groups, like my school (vs. a ‘ 5-friends from high school’ group), the bonenkai is held at a restaurant. It is your typical “enkai” (dinner party where people eat and drink a lot), but there might be games involved at the bonenkai, whereas at regular enkais they usually aren’t. The organizers of my junior high school’s teachers’ bonenkai decided that we would play a team quiz game with multiple challenges, both mental and physical. Hmmm.
For the team quiz games, upon arrival at the bonenkai, we all had to draw a tag with a picture of an animal on it indicating what team we were on. I believe I was a raccoon. Halfway through the meal, the games started (enkais are usually held for a set amount of time). The first game involved the entire team standing together at the front of the room. The “quiz game hosts” poised a question for us and everyone on the team had to shout an answer at the same time without prior discussion about the answer. If everyone on the team gave the same answer, the team received a high number of points. If there were 2 different answers, the team received a mediocre number of points. If there were 3 or more different answers, the team received the lowest number of points. Our team was NOT on the same wavelength, and not just because of me! Our first question was, name the smallest insect. I know some insect names in Japanese, but generally because they are big and disgusting and difficult not to notice. So I said “ant,” which is actually sometimes said in Japanese-English the same way we say it in English. But there were a million different names of tiny insects flying out of the mouths of our team-members, so apparently it didn’t matter that I didn’t know how to answer in Japanese. Needless to say, not very many points for us! Unfortunately the other two teams before us had been in perfect unison, so we were at the bottom of the ladder right from the beginning! The second question was the funniest though, because it was about the Principal, who happened to be a member of our team. The question was, “What does the Principal like the most from the following three choices.” I don’t know what one of the choices was, but the other two were women and sake. I thought the women answer was a joke, because the Principal is a kind, goofy, almost-retiree. Now, it is WIDELY known that the Principal LOVES Japanese alcohol. It looked like everyone was poised for a unison answer, because as soon as the question was asked, everyone on our team, including me, was nodding knowingly. The quiz hosts gave us the “1, 2, 3, GO!” and we all shouted “SAKE!”…..except for the Principal, who shouted, “WOMEN!” The laughter that ensued held-up the game for a good 3-5 minutes.
I might not have been able to contribute much to the verbal aspects of the quiz game, but my team chose me as the challenger for the “newspaper grab” game, and I earned my stripes there. Basically, one sheet from a newspaper is laid flat on the floor, and one member from each of the three teams sits around the paper, and grabs part of the edge between their forefinger and thumb. When the quiz hosts says, “GO!” we were supposed to try to tear away a larger section of the paper than our competitors, and whoever comes away with the largest piece gets the most points. Purely by accident I discovered that if you have a decent enough grip and let your opponents do the ripping, you’ll come away with the largest piece of the newspaper without really having done anything. The Principal represented our team after me, and I still remember him rolling around on the ground (in a 3-piece suit), eventually settling onto his stomach, holding the tiniest piece of newspaper ever between his forefinger and thumb, after he’d taken his shot at glory (and failed miserably). By the way, just so you can get a better picture in your head of this scene, the Principal is shorter than me, almost 60-years old with thinning gray-black hair, and a smile and chuckle that remind me of a leprechaun.
Amongst other games, the last game was probably the most riotous- the ping-pong ball toss game. One member of the team is given a very long piece of packing tape, one end of which they attach to the bottom of their sock, the other end they hold taut at shoulder-level. The rest of the team arranges themselves around a large plastic bin full of orange ping-pong balls. The object is to get as many balls to stick to the tape as possible in 30 seconds. There are 2 highly entertaining parts to this game. The first is the tossing of the balls, which is not delicately done. Rather, everyone digs their arms into the plastic bin up to their elbows, and when the host shouts, “GO!” tosses as many balls in the general direction of the tape as possible (of course a lot of the balls end up in the face, bouncing off glasses and such). The second entertaining part is when everyone (mostly drunk) tries to chase down the ping-pong balls to refill the plastic bin. Ping-pong balls are quite slippery on tatami mat flooring.
You’ll all be happy to know that by some profound miracle, in spite of our best efforts to the contrary, my team won the evening’s team competition, which really just meant that we had first choice of prizes which were all the same. This year was a good prize year though! Usually prizes are things like tissues, hand soap or baking oil. This year was cakes and dried fruit! Whoohoo!
Another bonenkai was with my tennis club. This was the first party I’ve attended with this group. The organizer decided to have the party at an Italian restaurant, which, especially for older Japanese in the group, apparently seemed like a bit of a crazy idea because people kept talking about “the bonenkai at the ITALIAN restaurant (bonenkais are usually at traditional Japanese restaurants, I guess). But, the organizer had been adamant about the Italian restaurant, and thus it was. I do have to admit, that it wasn’t quite the same. The food was fantastic, but at Japanese-style restaurants, we usually sit on tatami mat floors in large, private rooms. The style of the rooms and the way the low tables are situated makes it easy for people to move around, chat with whomever wherever, and make sure everyone has enough alcohol. The Italian restaurant was open (no private rooms), which was highly unfortunate for the other patrons, especially when our group started playing an extraordinarily loud round of bingo. And the western-style table and chairs set-up (for which we were in one very long row of tables) was not conducive for easily moving around to talk to people without displacing others. It was good enough times though, until the older guy sitting across from me really started feeling the effects of all the alcohol he’d been drinking and decided it was a good time to tell me I was stirring my tea the wrong way. And then something about my cake. Hint number one that someone needed to keep an eye on him from there on out.
My tennis group is basically made up of 50-70 year-olds, so I figured it would be an early evening. Boy was I wrong! I didn’t make it home until close to 2am. This bonenkai was easily the longest and the latest bonenkai I’d gone to in my 4 years in Japan. Not only did the dinner part of the evening last 1-2 hours longer than these sorts of dinner parties normally do, but there was also a karaoke episode after dinner for which no end time was given at check-in. This should have been my warning. Usually when renting a karaoke room, you tell the reception people how long you want to stay. If there aren’t millions of people waiting when your time is coming to an end, at that point, if you want to stay longer, you can add increments of time for however long you want to stay. Never go to a karaoke party where no initial end-time is given. If you do, consider yourself a hostage if you didn’t drive yourself.
We were given a room for 7-8 people. We ended up with 14-16. When we first sat down in the room, smuggled-in bags of drinks and snacks started appearing out of thin air, as if someone had a Mary Poppins bag with them. The friend who got me into the tennis group way back when had driven someone back to their house after dinner, then came back to do karaoke. When she arrived at the karaoke place, she took cake-bread and apples out of her bag, including 2 kitchen knives and a serving tray from her house. She nonchalantly started peeling and cutting the apples right there in the karaoke room. The guy sitting on the other side of me seamlessly picked up the other knife, sliced the cake-bread, started passing it around, then went for the apples as well. At that point I must have looked around me and thought, “Who ARE these people?!” If I didn’t, I should have! And the guy who at dinner was telling me I was stirring my tea the wrong way? Yeah….he became one of those “issue” drunks, with whom we had to keep playing musical chairs, primarily to keep him out of reach of the females.
And the MOST entertaining thing about bonenkais? Once the New Year starts, they do it all over again under the guise of “beginning of the new year” parties.
For the team quiz games, upon arrival at the bonenkai, we all had to draw a tag with a picture of an animal on it indicating what team we were on. I believe I was a raccoon. Halfway through the meal, the games started (enkais are usually held for a set amount of time). The first game involved the entire team standing together at the front of the room. The “quiz game hosts” poised a question for us and everyone on the team had to shout an answer at the same time without prior discussion about the answer. If everyone on the team gave the same answer, the team received a high number of points. If there were 2 different answers, the team received a mediocre number of points. If there were 3 or more different answers, the team received the lowest number of points. Our team was NOT on the same wavelength, and not just because of me! Our first question was, name the smallest insect. I know some insect names in Japanese, but generally because they are big and disgusting and difficult not to notice. So I said “ant,” which is actually sometimes said in Japanese-English the same way we say it in English. But there were a million different names of tiny insects flying out of the mouths of our team-members, so apparently it didn’t matter that I didn’t know how to answer in Japanese. Needless to say, not very many points for us! Unfortunately the other two teams before us had been in perfect unison, so we were at the bottom of the ladder right from the beginning! The second question was the funniest though, because it was about the Principal, who happened to be a member of our team. The question was, “What does the Principal like the most from the following three choices.” I don’t know what one of the choices was, but the other two were women and sake. I thought the women answer was a joke, because the Principal is a kind, goofy, almost-retiree. Now, it is WIDELY known that the Principal LOVES Japanese alcohol. It looked like everyone was poised for a unison answer, because as soon as the question was asked, everyone on our team, including me, was nodding knowingly. The quiz hosts gave us the “1, 2, 3, GO!” and we all shouted “SAKE!”…..except for the Principal, who shouted, “WOMEN!” The laughter that ensued held-up the game for a good 3-5 minutes.
I might not have been able to contribute much to the verbal aspects of the quiz game, but my team chose me as the challenger for the “newspaper grab” game, and I earned my stripes there. Basically, one sheet from a newspaper is laid flat on the floor, and one member from each of the three teams sits around the paper, and grabs part of the edge between their forefinger and thumb. When the quiz hosts says, “GO!” we were supposed to try to tear away a larger section of the paper than our competitors, and whoever comes away with the largest piece gets the most points. Purely by accident I discovered that if you have a decent enough grip and let your opponents do the ripping, you’ll come away with the largest piece of the newspaper without really having done anything. The Principal represented our team after me, and I still remember him rolling around on the ground (in a 3-piece suit), eventually settling onto his stomach, holding the tiniest piece of newspaper ever between his forefinger and thumb, after he’d taken his shot at glory (and failed miserably). By the way, just so you can get a better picture in your head of this scene, the Principal is shorter than me, almost 60-years old with thinning gray-black hair, and a smile and chuckle that remind me of a leprechaun.
Amongst other games, the last game was probably the most riotous- the ping-pong ball toss game. One member of the team is given a very long piece of packing tape, one end of which they attach to the bottom of their sock, the other end they hold taut at shoulder-level. The rest of the team arranges themselves around a large plastic bin full of orange ping-pong balls. The object is to get as many balls to stick to the tape as possible in 30 seconds. There are 2 highly entertaining parts to this game. The first is the tossing of the balls, which is not delicately done. Rather, everyone digs their arms into the plastic bin up to their elbows, and when the host shouts, “GO!” tosses as many balls in the general direction of the tape as possible (of course a lot of the balls end up in the face, bouncing off glasses and such). The second entertaining part is when everyone (mostly drunk) tries to chase down the ping-pong balls to refill the plastic bin. Ping-pong balls are quite slippery on tatami mat flooring.
You’ll all be happy to know that by some profound miracle, in spite of our best efforts to the contrary, my team won the evening’s team competition, which really just meant that we had first choice of prizes which were all the same. This year was a good prize year though! Usually prizes are things like tissues, hand soap or baking oil. This year was cakes and dried fruit! Whoohoo!
Another bonenkai was with my tennis club. This was the first party I’ve attended with this group. The organizer decided to have the party at an Italian restaurant, which, especially for older Japanese in the group, apparently seemed like a bit of a crazy idea because people kept talking about “the bonenkai at the ITALIAN restaurant (bonenkais are usually at traditional Japanese restaurants, I guess). But, the organizer had been adamant about the Italian restaurant, and thus it was. I do have to admit, that it wasn’t quite the same. The food was fantastic, but at Japanese-style restaurants, we usually sit on tatami mat floors in large, private rooms. The style of the rooms and the way the low tables are situated makes it easy for people to move around, chat with whomever wherever, and make sure everyone has enough alcohol. The Italian restaurant was open (no private rooms), which was highly unfortunate for the other patrons, especially when our group started playing an extraordinarily loud round of bingo. And the western-style table and chairs set-up (for which we were in one very long row of tables) was not conducive for easily moving around to talk to people without displacing others. It was good enough times though, until the older guy sitting across from me really started feeling the effects of all the alcohol he’d been drinking and decided it was a good time to tell me I was stirring my tea the wrong way. And then something about my cake. Hint number one that someone needed to keep an eye on him from there on out.
My tennis group is basically made up of 50-70 year-olds, so I figured it would be an early evening. Boy was I wrong! I didn’t make it home until close to 2am. This bonenkai was easily the longest and the latest bonenkai I’d gone to in my 4 years in Japan. Not only did the dinner part of the evening last 1-2 hours longer than these sorts of dinner parties normally do, but there was also a karaoke episode after dinner for which no end time was given at check-in. This should have been my warning. Usually when renting a karaoke room, you tell the reception people how long you want to stay. If there aren’t millions of people waiting when your time is coming to an end, at that point, if you want to stay longer, you can add increments of time for however long you want to stay. Never go to a karaoke party where no initial end-time is given. If you do, consider yourself a hostage if you didn’t drive yourself.
We were given a room for 7-8 people. We ended up with 14-16. When we first sat down in the room, smuggled-in bags of drinks and snacks started appearing out of thin air, as if someone had a Mary Poppins bag with them. The friend who got me into the tennis group way back when had driven someone back to their house after dinner, then came back to do karaoke. When she arrived at the karaoke place, she took cake-bread and apples out of her bag, including 2 kitchen knives and a serving tray from her house. She nonchalantly started peeling and cutting the apples right there in the karaoke room. The guy sitting on the other side of me seamlessly picked up the other knife, sliced the cake-bread, started passing it around, then went for the apples as well. At that point I must have looked around me and thought, “Who ARE these people?!” If I didn’t, I should have! And the guy who at dinner was telling me I was stirring my tea the wrong way? Yeah….he became one of those “issue” drunks, with whom we had to keep playing musical chairs, primarily to keep him out of reach of the females.
And the MOST entertaining thing about bonenkais? Once the New Year starts, they do it all over again under the guise of “beginning of the new year” parties.
posted by Mandy | 12:00 PM
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