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| JET Adventures 58 - Moon Viewing Party |
| Sunday, October 08, 2006 |
Over the summer a school on the mainland had a teacher party where all the teachers went out and got pissed. This is not an unusual event, but it was broadcast all over the news because one teacher got really drunk and passed out in front of a car (apparently he thought it was his own car), and then another really drunk teacher got into the car, didn't see the comotose body in front of him, ran him over and killed him. Two weeks later in Okinawa, another school had a teacher party, all the teachers went out and got pissed, and one group of drunken teachers driving home crashed into another car and drove them off a bridge - the family in the other car all died, including two toddlers. There was a bit of an uproar about responsible upstanding role models (i.e. teachers) behaving in such an unruly fashion and the board of education has put pressure on schools to stop having these teacher parties.
This week was the traditional Moon Viewing party - a lot of my friends had their parties cancelled but mine decided to recklessly forge ahead with it. I understood why when I turned up because there were only about 10 people there, all over the age of 200, drinking orange juice. The moon viewing party is to celebrate (surprise surprise) the moon in all its glory, but just like last year we had ours in the basement of a soulless business hotel with the curtains drawn.
It was the worst! party! ever! I was drinking pretty fast to try and get through the 3 hours of torturous small talk (thank god for the principal - if he hadn't been knocking the beer back too I'd have been the only one drinking), but this kind of backfired when I had to stand up and read my poem out. Oh yes, the poetry reading - truly the highlight of the evening. We all had to write haikus about the moon.
Mine is the one in the middle:
It says: The ricecakes made by the rabbit are tasted by the space aliens.
This is because in Japan, a rabbit lives on the moon, making mochi:
 
And mochi means ricecake and also the full moon.
My rubbish poem lost out to a poem about how students do bad things and then do more bad things, but my prize was better - lottery tickets for a potential 1 billion yen, rather than a cup with a dog on it. But still, it really was a tragically unsuccessful party - by 9pm I was ready to go and lie down in front of a car praying for a teacher who'd overdosed on OJ to come and end the pain. |
posted by Alice @ 12:27 pm  |
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