Hi! Hello! 馃憢
It鈥檚 late, but today I had dinner with people from work. Well more like a team dinner. This is our first get together this year. We held it late because one of our team members went for a very long vacation and today is his first day back. We intentionally scheduled our new year鈥檚 get together late to wait for him.
Anyway, from my experience, work related get togethers here in Japan are mostly a drinking party. Not the kind where you drink and dance, and dress up for the occasion, but more like a sit-down-and-drink-as-much-as-you-can thing.
We seldom do overtime work, thankfully, so we went directly right after work. The place is just on the 1st floor of our company building so it was convenient. The place is called Gran Central and we鈥檝e been here a couple of times already. As our company is located in the heart of tokyo, you can say this looks like a high-end izakaya place.
My manager had made a reservation for our team for an all-you-can-drink and, I think, it was a dinner course. I was hungry but we had to order a drink first. With an empty stomach, I drank alcohol 馃槅馃槶
Only me and another team mate are not into beer so we ordered cocktail drinks. I had peach tree mixed with ginger ale. It was sweet and it really hit the spot for me. the rest had beers.
I also had lychee ginger ale and it looks just the same as above. And then I also tired to be brave and try something else. It was capari with ginger ale and I regretted it so much. It had a bitter after taste and I didn鈥檛 like it. I endured but really did not finish all of it.
I had a total of 5 drinks. 2 each of lychee and peach, and then 1 campari. But of course we also had food while we were drinking.
As the food course was ordered in advance we didn鈥檛 know what we were getting but first on the menu is some ham, some kind of quiche pastry, and some cured fish. It wasn鈥檛 bad but it wasn鈥檛 that good too. But the fish definitely didn鈥檛 have any taste 馃槅
And then some garlic bread. This one I liked but 1 stick is enough.
The next one we were laughing and were confused as to how we were supoosed to eat it. It鈥檚 like we were fed fresh grass. It wasn鈥檛 chopped but we still ate it though 馃槅 The dressing and bacon were delicious.
So I thought we鈥檒l only be having some finger food but those were just appetizers. The mains followed. First was pizza, it was so-so.
At this point I was starting to feel full. On our side of the table, we had 2 slices of pizza each. Then it was followed by pasta. It was good.
After that I was really full I thought that was the end of it. The last dish took some time to be served so I was surprised when it came. It was like some chicked masala or something. It was reaaaally good and my favorite among all but it was difficult to finish my share. But still I ate it all 馃槅 Although I was told I don鈥檛 have to if I don鈥檛 want to 馃槅
The volume wasn鈥檛 really that much and we thought we only had enough share each but everyone was really full. Maybe because we had too much to drink? But I noticed our side of the table ate faster the the other side. There were 8 of us in total. In our side, we鈥檝e gobbled up everything yet the other side still hasn鈥檛 even touched the previous dish 馃槅 Maybe we were just too hungry 馃槅
It was a pleasant dinner. We haven鈥檛 talked anything work-related throughout the entire time. We talked about our hobbies and life outside work. The person who came back from vacation actually took a paternity leave and we talked about his life as a new father. One also makes 3D prints as a hobby and he has made little 3rd cars from scratch with his own designs. It was a fun and I had a great time talking to them outside work. We rarely get to talk often as we work from home and we mostly work independently.
In our team, we mostly are introverts, and in such rare occasions, we get to talk freely in times like this. Maybe I got used to working in a Japanese environment, but tomorrow, everything will be back to normal where we don't talk much again lol I don't mind though, and I'm sure they don't too.
That鈥檚 all for today.
Thank you for reading and see you on my next blog.
Eating-Apple,
Apple
PS: All photos are mine unless stated otherwise.