School's Out...Teachers Party!

On Thursday I had my final lessons for the semester at Tokamachi Koko, which came as a big relief when I'd finished them. No frantic lesson planning for four weeks! To make things official, yesterday we had our closing ceremony and in teh evening the teachers had an enkai (drinking party).

It was at Rapport, the same place we had the Graduation Enkai. As I went in, I choose my seat through a lottery and found that I was sat on a table with no English Teachers. This has happened at a couple of enkais before and it always scares me. I immediatly think that I won't be able to talk to anyone, that my Japanese will be too bad for conversation.

But, as always, it turned out alright. I spoke in my broken Japanese and the teachers were patient with me and seemed to understand me. After an hour or so, people started movign around. I was going to move and talk to other teachers, but they came to me instead!

The enkai finished around 9, so four of us moved onto a karaoke bar for niji-kai (second party). We all sang except for one teacher who claimed that he was under doctors orders not to sing. Still, he was wearing a yukata so we let him off.



Enkais are great because it's the best opportunity I have to talk to teachers. Because it's out of school neither of us are busy so we can relax and just chat. I have another enkai on Monday with the teachers in Tsunan so I'm looking forward to that too.