100 Days Old

In America, we have baby showers, a small gathering which men try to avoid to celebrate the baby who is about to be born.

In Japan, they celebrate the baby's first 100 days. So last night, Elina and I went to my supervisor Tacchi's parent's house for such a celebration. We didn't know what to expect, but both of us had not eaten dinner in the hope of getting free snacks. We arrive to see a giant over hang erected with people sitting at tables. The event was one large feast. There was no time frame for how long it lasted. People would arrive, eat, and leave to give their seat to others. I think at least a 100 people came in and out. We delivered our gifts (mine was the Japanese translation of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and were given a huge plate of food plus a bowl of goat soup. After finishing, it was decided that the soup wasn't a good enough introduction to eating goat, so they served us goat sashimi. Yep, raw goat. Yum. Apparently goat is the food to eat at these 100 day parties. How was this paid for? We found out that the gift to bring is money. Before I left I saw a garbage bag full of envelopes.

Beer and the ubiquitous awamori were the drinks of the evening. One thing that still surprises me is how a lot of my kids were there, and when I would run into them, they would shout, "Haha, Cliff-sensei is drunk!". I wasn't (that much) for the record. But Japan has a huge drinking culture where if you don't drink, you are weird. One teacher was telling me a few weeks ago how there is a problem with junior high and high school kids drinking. I wonder why.

I enjoy these events because I get some good speaking practice. All the old men come up to you and want to say a "Hello" in English. Then you say something in Japanese, usually "Hello" back, and they flip out. This is considered fluency, so they'll run their mouth telling you some story. I just pretended that I understood by nodding my head.

One old guy there was a magician! He was walking around the tables doing hand tricks for people. This guy was awesome. One trick he did for me was poke a hole into a ¥1000 note with a pen, pulled it out and there was no hole. Mind you, this is at close range, too. No clue how he did it. Then he had a ¥10 coin and a ¥100 coin. One is copper, the other is silver. He had the silver coin in his closed fist and the copper coin sitting on top of his fist. He tapped the copper coin with a pen, and, I swear, it turned into the silver coin. It literally flickered into the silver coin! I think this further confirms my theory that Ogimi is run by vampires that meddle in the dark arts.

When I left, I was given gifts for showing up. Got a set of pink hand towels and a large cake with chocolate frosting. A nice weekend snack.