Wine Party

A few weeks ago I got a call from a friend inviting me to a wine party. “I’d love to come,” I said. “There’s just one problem. I don’t drink.”

“That’s okay,” he assured me. “We have a lot of people coming who aren’t drinking. You’re more than welcome just to hang out with everyone even if you don’t want to drink.”

So I went. I agreed to bring a bottle of wine to share, just like everyone else, because I didn’t want to appear stingy. We went to an Italian restaurant where we all paid for an all you can eat course.

The food was pretty good, but when I tried to order an Oolong tea, I had to pay $5 extra. Japan does not cut you any breaks at all for not drinking. Sometimes I think I’d save more money if I was a big drinker.

As a non-drinker, I’m used to being one of the few sober people in the room. I don’t mind it if everyone is only having a couple drinks, but at a wine party, when most people come with the intention of getting tanked, there does reach a point where I feel I can no longer participate in the conversation.

The Japanese girl next to me, after finishing her 5th glass of wine, explained to me that, “I get drunkard”. I tried to continue to hold her in conversation, but the response was continually “I get drunkard”, and eventually she wandered off.

A businessman intent on practicing his English seized the open seat.

Dealing with inane conversation from “English leeches” is one thing that every foreigner in Japan has to deal with. As with many things in Japan, this is something that the longer I’ve been here, the less tolerance I have for it.

When I first got to Japan, I thought it was so cool that people I didn’t even know would just randomly strike up a conversation with me. But after 4 years, I can feel my head swim with boredom before the Japanese businessman even opens his mouth.

I’ve discovered that I have a bit of a double standard. If the English leech is a pretty Japanese girl, I can talk to her for hours without boring of the conversation. If the English Leech is a middle-aged businessman, I can’t get ride of him fast enough. Perhaps this is just human nature or “the way of the world” but I always feel a bit slimy when I catch myself applying this double standard. So, I make an effort to try and talk to the businessmen as well.

He starts out with all the usual questions. “What’s your name? What country are you from? What are your hobbies?” I’ve had this conversation a million times before, but I do my best to answer politely.

The previous weekend I had been in a bar with John. When an old Japanese man tried to talk to us, John just turned around and ignored him. I thought this was incredibly rude of him at the time, but, because I could not find a polite way out of the conversation, I ended up spending the whole night speaking in inane English to an old man I didn’t know. Sometimes you have to be a bit rude. I began to think of escape routes out of this conversation.

To make things worse, the businessman was very drunk, and had the habit of grabbing me around the shoulders in a friendly brotherly way after every question. I was too sober to put up with it. “How long have you been in Japan?” he asked.

“4 years,” I said in my best simply English, even holding up four fingers to aid in his comprehension.

“Wow? 4 years? Why so long? Maybe I think you want be Japanese.” He grabbed me around the shoulders again as he laughed.

I was way too sober for this. I suddenly had the feeling that I could not continue in this conversation another single minute. I didn’t even care how rude I was being. I just stood up and walked away to the other side of the room.

I didn’t know anyone on the other side of the room, so I just read the news on my cell-phone. I wasn’t alone for long though because a Japanese girl, so drunk she could barely stand, came stumbling over to me. A guy from New Delhi was pursuing her.

“What country are you from?” she asked me.

“Mexico,” the guy answered for me.

“Really, he doesn’t look like he’s from Mexico,” the girl said, to drunk to understand it was a joke.

I decided this might be an ideal time to use some of the Spanish Jorge had taught me. “Habla Espanol?”

Neither of them understood even that much Spanish, so it fell flat.

Under normal circumstances I would have had much more tolerance for the drunk girl than for the drunk businessman. But she was being pursued by another guy, and besides had already passed from the amusing stages of drunkenness to the liability stages. She needed assistance just to walk straight, and I was more than happy just to leave it to others. I returned to reading my cell phone.

She switched into Japanese to her limited English. “Pretty,” she said as she reached out to touch my face. It was not quite the compliment I would have hoped for, but at least maybe it can probably be ascribed to a translation error. “Are you e-mailing your girlfriend now?”

“Yes.” Usually I lie to deny the girlfriend. Now I was lying to confirm it.

“Of course he would have a girlfriend,” she said to the other guy as he led her away.

I said my good-byes and made my exit shortly after that. I was glad to have been invited, but I don’t know if I’ll attend the next wine party.

Then again, these things all depend on your mood. Maybe if I’m feeling a bit more energetic or sociable, I would have a great time.

Link of the Day
I went to a mix bathing place in Japan only once. It was in the days before blogging, so it never got written about on this blog, but it was an interesting experience.

I was assured that there was nothing sexual about it, and that it was so ingrained into Japanese tradition that none of the Japanese took it sexually.

As is often the case in Japan, the reality was a lot different than the myth. The place was filled with perverts trying to get a glimpse of women emerging from the women's entrance. As a result, no women were coming out, and it was just a bunch of horny guys.

That was only one experience of course, but the Japan Times has an article on mixed bathing and how perverts are ruinning it nation wide.