Party Animal

After my triumphant victory over the Health Center Class on Thursday, I went straight to a local middle school to meet up with my softball team for my first game. By the time I made it to the field, it was already the fourth inning so I had missed out on most of the game, but fortunately, the team seemed very happy to see me and made sure to put me in at third base during the very next inning. Nobody hit anything to me, so I never got to show off my mad defensive skills, but apparently the team was very impressed with my arm and quick feet. (Actually, I think their agility was much more impressive than mine -- the second baseman and shortstop were quite nimble for being in their sixties!) Also, it seems that the opposing team was very impressed with my whiteness, since I could hear people yelling very loudly, "You have a foreigner on your team??" as I stepped up to bat.

After the game, the team always goes to a nearby restaurant to hang out, so they took me along for my first welcome party in Japan. Fortunately, there are two other women on this team, so in addition to my 5+ new Japanese grandfathers, I made a couple of new girlfriends too.

Everyone was very curious about me so they asked me all sorts of questions about my family, how old I am, my job, if I have a boyfriend in Japan, if I have a boyfriend in America etc. (Oddly enough, people are very surprised when I tell them that I don't have (2) boyfriends. I have yet to figure out why. Do I look like the type of person who would have multiple boyfriends?)

They also appeared to delight in watching me try every single type of food and drink served at the restaurant. When I first sat down, someone ordered me a beer, which I politely sipped. By the time I had finished about half of my glass, everyone around me was on their third or fourth glass. They thought this was quite odd, so they proceeded to order five other different drinks and had me drink all of them at the same time so I could pick my favorite.

In the meantime, they piled my plate with noodles, chicken, clams, and some kind of squishy gelatinous thing and watched me eat. I felt a bit like I was the subject of some kind of nature show on the Discovery channel. You know, the kind where some guy with a British accent says, "Foreigners, feared predators of the African savannah, often lurk near the waterhole waiting for a stray wildebeest to approach. If we wait here now, we may just catch one feeding on her hapless prey."

Anyway, I guess I found the team just as amusing as they found me, so it was an entertaining evening. Next week, there are two games, which means that we may have the pleasure of watching each other eat on two consecutive nights.

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On Friday night, the anesthesiology department had a party for a doctor who is leaving to start his own practice, and for some reason, Tyler and I were invited to attend. The party was in a Korean barbecue restaurant and the food was excellent, but the atmosphere was a little odd. All of the doctors sat at one table, while we were relegated to the foreigner/secretary/gossipers' table. Unfortunately, I could only understand about half of the gossip because the secretaries were speaking in a pretty strong version of their local dialect, so I don't have anything too interesting to report here. Meanwhile, the doctors at the other table were making speeches, presumably about how much they will miss each other now that Dr. What's-his-face is leaving. I was sitting so far away that I couldn't really hear them either so I just sat and smiled and ate more beef.

After dinner, we persuaded our boss and the other secretaries to go to karaoke, and I must say that Friday night was probably the weirdest karaoke box trip that I have ever experienced, mostly because our boss and the other secretaries were a bit tipsy. I could tell this for two reasons:

1. One of the other secretaries heard me sing and then begged me to do Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." Anyone who requests that I sing the Titanic theme must not be thinking clearly, as I'm sure it would only end badly. Very badly. Like cracked-and-bleeding-vocal-chords badly.

2. Our boss started to tell Tyler and I about how she loves construction workers with big muscles so much that she can barely speak when she sees one. This was a bit shocking, since our boss is always the model of professionalism and feminine modesty at work. Anyway, since the medical school is being renovated now, there are lots of construction workers around, so Tyler and I are planning to bring some of them into the office and help her profess her undying love to them. I wonder if she will remember that she told us this next Monday...