Alcohol Ponds—Meat Forests

 Alcohol Ponds—Meat Forests

The Japanese love to have parties!

Official ones are known as “enkai”, which translates to “banquet”, but is much more formalized here.

These types of parties are very common in Japan and is a bonding session between members of the feasting group.

Of course the party always starts with some long winded speech by a couple of “important people”, of the group. These speeches tend to drone on and every one wants them to shut up and start the party.

There’s always an amazing array of delicious food and lots and lots of “junkatsu yu” or social lubricant.

When the the party consist of all males, you often see the “companions” come in. These are hired all young ladies more often than not in their early 20s smelling of cheap perfume and they are there to coddle these middle-age salary men or business people along, and add spice to the party.

Clocking in at exactly 2 hours. The banquet ends with everybody standing up and doing something that’s known as “3 bon jimei”. This is where the leader of the party, says ready go, and everybody claps their hands three times and then shouts “yo”, repeated two more times for a total of three, and at the end everybody claps and cheers, and that’s the end of this particular party, but not the end of the night no sir!

The party then breaks up into separate groups with lots of the younger crowd going sing more karaoke, or more commonly so amongst the men, go to what is known as a “snack”, where they drink more alcohol served by young hostesses, and eat overpriced fruit trays.

This is what is known as “ni jikai” or “second party”.

More often than not, these snack men then go into a 3rd and last party, which is at a late night ramen shop.

There they drink more beer, eat hearty bowls of noodles containing heavy calorie rich broth, and eating Chinese dumplings.

Have experienced this myself, and can attest to feeling of heaviness the next day. I’ve only done this a couple times in my life. You are better off to skip this one, unless you are hungry, which you are not.

The Japanese “enkai” banquet is truly a unique experience, and you can not truly understand this unique Japanese party style until you have actually experienced one for your own self.