飲み会 (nomikai)

Nomikai means simply „drinking party”. Not a new thing, there’s plenty of places in the world where there is the prevailing idea that in order to get to know each other and to integrate, one needs to go to a drinking party. But in Japan it looks a little bit different.

Sure, you can go to a club or a bar, but my guess is that most Japanese people would agree that if you’re going for a nomikai, then you really can only go to an izakaya (居酒屋). This is where office workers and other sort of salarymen meet after work to integrate (after all, the better the team’s integrated, the better and more efficiently they work) and that is where we went to yesterday with almost all the people on my program along with some Japanese students and three teachers.

Unlike bars or clubs, in izakaya it’s not all about drinking, but also about eating too. It’s more of a social gathering rather than a typical drinking party we know in Europe. One would almost love to say that the izakaya named “Irohanihoeto” (いろはにほへと, the nam is the first verse of a poem written probably around  Heian period (平安), 794-1179 AD), where we went, had a typically Japanese décor: the tables were separated by hanging pieces of fabric or bamboo mats, the seats were on floor level with a hole for legs and the table, so you had to take your shoes off, the walls were made to look like old-fashioned Japanese houses and the decorations were few, limited to a single plant somewhere in the corner or a subtle painting.

I have to admit that after this one evening we definitely integrated quite a bit more, both among the students and with the teachers. An option called nomihōdai (飲み放題, drink as much as you can/want – which, given that the Japanese alcohols are fairly weak, is quite a lot) definitely helped with that, we all know that alcohol helps to socialise, but just the atmosphere of the izakaya was so friendly and cosy. After all we sat there a bit squeezed in a group of twenty-something, maybe even thirty people at three tables, how could you not talk to your neighbour, that’d be really awkward! After some time everyone started swapping seats anyway, to talk to people at the end of the tables or sitting at completely different tables, so by the end of the two hours that we paid for there were already plans for further nomikais or going for karaoke (which I went to along with a small group of exchange students and one of the teachers!), so I think it’s safe to say that this nomikai was a success.

I shouldn’t publish pictures with my mates and teachers here, after all I don’t have their permission to do so, with possible exception of social media, and I’ve no strength to fight with the izakaya’s website to kindly lend me a few photos, so here’s the link to their photogallery (simply click on the button and a slideshow will start).