Up to their old tricks

Everything seems to be gradually normalising now; the gloom seems to be passing with the first few rays of Spring sunshine. Enkai season has officially hit and while I don't have quite so many workplaces to go to parties for this year, there's still a remarkable amount of drinking to be done. Friday was our end of year party, last night we had an extra one for our section of the office and this Friday is the farewell. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a "new year" and "welcome" party came hot on their heels - anything worth doing is worth doing until you throw up, I suppose.

Once I had withdrawn my spear from Friday's corpse, I was taken to celebrate the spoils of victory at an ominous-sounding "vegetable bar" in Motomachi. This actually turned out to be surprisingly nice, despite being alone in my amusement at the idea of starting with "vegetable sashimi" (literally raw vegetables on a plate). I shouldn't be cynical though - for a country with such a reputation for healthy food, there's an astonishing lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. In fact, this restaurant and the scene of our earlier pumpkin gnocchi experience are the only two "vegetable" restaurants we've found and I'm sure both did us the power of good (if you ignore the booze). Up next was a vegetable hot pot with fresh cherry tomatoes and rock salt, chargrilled chicken and pumpkin and arancini balls filled with mountain vegetables. It was all lovely and "fresh", which still feels like a bad thing after the fugu.

After our dinner, the top brass resolutely plucked me from the lobby and announced that we were going to karaoke. We went to a tiny little place near the station and started ordering up drinks with the phone in our room. We needn't have bothered using it - I could see the guy picking up the receiver on his end not 2m away. It was a long awaited return to the booths, but by the time we got to the second song the room was opaque; it was like taking a deep breath and trying to sing Hey Jude in an airport smoking room.

Last night was much the same, but with the unfortunate addition of it being a Monday night - the second worst night of the week you can hit the whiskey. That we did, despite everyone's lack of interest to begin with. We went to an Okinawan restaurant, which seems to have that same strange American flavour that Hawaiian food does. "Have you tried SPAM before?" someone asked, with that same excited you're in for a treat tone that you might have when introducing someone to truffles or really exotic cheese. I must say though, it's not too bad fried up and put in a caesar salad, if you try and forget that it comes out can-shaped. Apart from that, we had salmon carpaccio, roast pork (how I have missed thee) and fried vegetable fritters with "mountain carrots" in them. None of this was a particular problem - the main one was the astonishing amount of beer, whiskey and plum wine we got through. I can assure you that despite starting with the former, I was feeling neither frisky nor fine by the end of the night. The journey was worth it though, I think - we headed off to a snack bar with a brilliant karaoke system, then I was dragged to a tiny hole in the wall pub where half the office materialised and repeatedly poured me drinks. This is great, I thought, why don't we do this all the time?

The answer, of course, didn't take too long to dawn on me - I think it was about halfway home, as I weaved drunkenly back and forth across the path and tried not to trip over the perfectly flat ground. Come morning, it took two cups of coffee, two McDonalds breakfasts and a can of Coke Zero before my hands stopped shaking; the grim nod from everyone else as I walked in the door suggested I'm not the only one in pain today. I'm also incapable of speaking more than a half sentence at a time. At this stage I cannot possibly imagine drinking on Friday - even oolong tea is sounding a bit wild.

Despite its bookends of naughtiness, the weekend itself was a muted affair - we did some good shopping, had our second attempt at buying a bed (which will hopefully fit up the stairs this time) and discussed whether there's anything else in the world our apartment doesn't have yet. This weekend is the opening of cherry blossom season, so between bouts of disgusting consumerism we'll probably head out for a nice picnic. I'll even take my camera - this time around, if I take some photos you might be able to see something other than cigarette smoke.