we like to party

Above: the principal where I work most of the time feeling his oats.

Above: Enkai after sports festival that was held at Hokubu Elementary. Below: That is not alcohol, I swear.




Every culture creates its own reasons for drinking alcohol. As we can observe in the spider monkey, even the other primates, “the primitive,” partake in what we usually think of as a distinctly human event. But why would the spider monkeys be motivated to eat the rotting fruit that so intoxicates them? Maybe they have few food sources and thus no choice but to eat – but for some reason I do not think this is the case. Or maybe they do not realize the fruit tastes rotten – but even dogs and cats know when something tastes a little funny and I would not put the mental abilities of the spider monkey underneath those of our favorite house pets.

No, no; I think there is a much better chance that the spider monkey simply gets tired of the tedious, continuous responsibility of clutching to branches, escaping predators, staying alive, and protecting their youth. They need a little escape. Nothing would feel better than a little intoxication time and again even if it means sometimes losing ones grip and falling to the forest floors.

In America people have all too many reasons to drink. The diversity of reasons to drink is perhaps unparalleled in all the countries of the world. In Japan there are fewer reasons but they seem to be more powerful, more profound than those found in America on the whole.
As you can read in any cheap guidebook on Japan, the business culture here is one with a system of formalities in language and action that is strictly adhered to. The guidebook will also tell you that to make up for all that the Japanese businessman will drink himself to oblivion and act like anything from a puppy dog to a chauvinist, a penguin to a young person of the opposite sex. While this does not seem to be the case out here with teachers and farmers in the countryside, I have noticed the ingrained necessity to drink and I have started to consider the reasons why.

I have had around a dozen opportunities to get drunk with the folk here during my first six weeks. My size and stomach, however, allow me to keep up with my colleagues and superiors in their drinking bouts and never really get drunk (well, maybe once or twice).

I think that the society of educators, even in the countryside, is so formal, careful, structured, and demanding that drinking is how people become able to exist in a freer, more relaxed state (note well that people spend large chunks of their free time drinking with people from their work, including their superiors). With that said you could probably also say that Hawaiian culture is like rural Japanese culture after having consumed a pint of Asahi or some gulps of sake. The people here are hardly obnoxious when they drink; they are just extremely good-natured and relaxed. I hope you enjoy the photos.