Welcome Party

Last night, my coworkers threw Morgan and me a welcome party. I was asked to choose between Japanese, Chinese, or Italian food, and we quickly settled on Italian. We thought briefly that we would offend the other teachers if we didn't pick Japanese, but hey, they gave us options, so we went with what we really wanted. Apparently they all really like Italian though, so that worked out just fine.

The place they took us to turned out to be phenomenal! I was pretty worried that the "Italian" food would have too much of a Japanese twist, but someone I work with told me that the chef had trained in Italy, and when she made the reservations, she told him that two Americans would be trying Italian food in Japan for the first time. His response was that he would try his best to represent Italian cuisine for Japan. He definitely made a great impression on me with his six different pizzas. I have been absolutely craving pizza, and last night I was able to eat tons of it. In addition to the pizzas, various different pastas were brought out, and each of them was great. I even ate some kind of terrifying prawn creature with some pasta covered in a sauce made from its brains--something I wouldn't have even touched back in the States. After eating that critter, trying some of the sea bream, which was brought out pretty much fully intact with eyes and everything, was really no big deal. That thing was actually pretty good too. I'm not going to go and order my own sea creatures to eat in the future, but at least now I'm becoming a lot less picky. Then again, I might have a way to go yet, because I did turn my nose up at the raw squid. I mean, it was seriously just a dead baby squid sitting there on the plate. I'm not at that level yet.

Dessert was three different kinds of ice cream, and then a coffee. By the end of that meal, we were actually pretty stuffed. Actually being full was soooo nice, as we've been living on mostly rice and eggs as we wait for my first big paycheck. In accordance with Japanese custom, Morgan and I ate free!

The whole night was pretty nice, and I thought it was pretty neat for Morgan to meet the people I work with every day. The atmosphere was so much more relaxed than in the English office. During work, everyone is so quiet and busy, but last night they were really super talkative. We got onto the topic of pets when someone mentioned that Americans would never eat dog meat. They were really surprised to hear that Americans really do keep their dogs inside the house, sleep with them in the bed, and dress them up in little clothes. That stuff goes on in Tokyo, but not out here in the inaka, I guess.