On Monday my department at work had their Year-End Party!! (I know this is the month of parties, and it's awesome!!) We went to a traditional Okinawa-style restaurant and then karaoke! Time for another geography lesson... Okinawa is the southern islands of Japan. Generally known as the poorest part of the country (due to lack of industry), but it has tropical temps all year round and some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Oddly, few Japanese people have even been there. They prefer to vacation in Hawaii since it is so much cheaper!! Also, the American resorts are much nicer than the Japanese hotels. At dinner we took a survey, and no one had been to Okinawa but everyone (except me & Jacky) has been to Hawaii at least once!
We had 11 dishes of food... let's kick it off. Here is Shiraishi (Jazzy Dani) and me with some kind of fluffy purple rice chips and dried spicy cucumbers. Both were super yummy. I should also note that Okinawa has the healthiest food in all of Japan. In fact, Okinawa people tend to live 5 years longer on the average just due to their diet. (I think it might also because they are living in a beach paradise, but who knows?!)
3 types of mystery vegetables.
Caesar salad with a runny egg on top. They let me take my portion before they mixed up the egg with the lettuce.
Green onions with some fish hiding underneath.
Today was Jacky's last day for good. He goes back to Transfreight China. Pictured here with our General Manager, Kataoka, and my On the Job Trainer, Yosuke Kawakami.
Sashimi--raw fish. I didn't eat any this time.
Spicy roll made of egg with fish eggs inside. Actually, the spicy flavor made it pretty tasty. Drown out the fish egg taste!
My farewell gift to Jacky: a Transfreight "Engineering Lean Supply Chains" pen. He was super excited because apparently he saw me using this same one in India and was super jealous!! Jacky said it was a VERY NICE pen, and it has a different tagline from China, so everyone will be impressed. TFCL is still using "Explore the Opportunities".
I was told this was a chicken meatball...
...but in fact it was filled with 2 boiled egg yolks. Talk about an old bait & switch!! Thankfully the chicken drown out most of the egg taste!
Yosuke compared this dish to American "breakfast" because there is eggs, meat, and vegetables in it. Kind of like an omelet, I suppose. Also some fish flakes on top.
Japanese pizza. Basically a giant pancake filled with veggies. Also a little like okonomiyaki I had with Mika on my 2nd day here, but much better this time around!
As the night wore on and we order more & more beer, I forgot to take pictures of things when they first came out... Here's the Okinawa version of ramen noodles and some fried rice.
I learned many things as the beers were going down easy:
1. My Japanese language skills actually increased (or at least I was brave enough to speak a lot more!). I was ordering rounds for the entire table, and they were teaching me new words that I can actually remember today!!
2. My coordination goes downhill fast, and that includes chopsticks skills. I couldn't feel too bad though because I saw several other people drop food too, and then pick it up directly from the table and eat it!!
3. Japanese karaoke is just about the coolest thing ever!!!
The gang's all here, and we're ready to move to the bar to sing our hearts out!
We walked by the office on the way from the restaurant to karaoke, and 2 guys went back in to finish up some work for 30 minutes!! I can only imagine what my emails would have been like after 3 hours of drinking!! LOL.
I had a fab time singing a whole bunch of crazy American songs. No one seemed to notice that I'm pretty much tone-deaf...
Kerri & Shiraishi do a duet to Aerosmith's I Don't Want to Miss a Thing!!
A rousing rendition of We Are the World!
Kerri & her GM Kataoka close out with night with Michael Jackson's Billie Jean.
Japanese karaoke (as you can see from the pics) is in a small private room which you rent by the hour (or 3 like us!). They all love it, so you just have to grab the song books and start entering song codes to line them up!! People might also queue up a song for you to sing without your knowing!!
I had a great time. Some of the song I sang were: Pat Benatar's Hit Me with Your Shot, Miley Cyrus's Party in the USA, Madonna's Material Girl (so good I got high 5's all around!), Beatles' Hello Goodbye, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and the list could go on... My favorite group song was the Beatles' Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. I was still singing it in the shower this morning!!
Oh yeah, this Monday night party didn't end until just before 1am!! We all took taxis home. As I was getting loaded into my taxi, Shiraishi was giving me tips about how to prevent a hangover. He was still making motions about drinking a jug of water even as the door was closed, and I was pulling away!! Apparently, he doesn't know that this Central Michigan University girl has had some practice with battling hangovers ;)
Jacky is serenading Miyamura in Chinese, and then they start arguing in Japanese... priceless!!
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