Initiation.

Last weekend I had an experience that felt very oddly, and very precisely, like an initiation. I've been teaching at elementary schools through a guy who lives near my primary job. His name is D. On Saturday, I went to pick up my pay from the elementary work, and he invited me out for a drink. Then it got weird.

We went to his friend's house, whose name I cannot currently remember. Japanese names usually take at least two or three hearings for me to remember then, and it can be sketchy even then. Since he is an aikido master, I just ended up calling him sensei for most of the evening. Tragically, his girlfriend very recently killed herself and Duncan has been spending a lot of time with him, so part of our job there was to hang out with him. With a huge bottle of Japanese rice wine, or nihon-shu. You can call it sake, as well, if you'd like. There are many kinds, so nihon-shu is a general term.

We killed the bottle and then headed back into the city. We hit a sushi bar, where apparently sensei is well known. The wait-staff put on an epic ass-kissing, so I assume that he goes there a lot. We had more nihon-shu, served in traditional Japanese fashion. A shot glass of nihon-shu is placed on the corner of a bamboo drinking vessel, also full of booze, and sushi was served. This point felt particularly initiation-y, because Duncan and the sensei ordered sushi for me and didn't eat any themselves. When I tried to eat it with ohashi (chopsticks), the sensei rapped my knuckles and told me to eat it by hand. So, I did and it was frickin' sweet. I do love my sushi.

Anyway...things get a little fuzzy after that, thanks to all of the drinking, but it was a good time. Not the sort of thing you want to do every night, but...everything in moderation, including moderation. Especially moderation.

Did I mention that we barely spoke English all night? I didn't understand about 75% of what I was hearing, but that's down from 90% a couple of months ago. Things are moving along...