One night in Sendai (Part I)

The following is the tale of the annual teacher's trip that happened last week. Seeing as I forgot my camera AGAIN, there will be no photographic evidence.

I was awakened at 6:00AM by a phone call from the non-English speaking PE teacher at my school. He was wondering where I was since the bus for Sendai was due at 6:00. Turns out I had forgotten to set my alarm the night before, probably because of the drunken stupor I was in. For some reason the school had decided the have a drinking party the night before in spite of our early departure time the next morning. That didn't stop me from getting hammered though.

I told the PE teacher I was on my way. Thankfully I had already packed my bag and set out clothes to wear that day, so I was only about 5 minutes late (the bus was waiting at my school which is only a two minute walk from my apartment). I got on the bus, said good morning to everyone and sat down in the back. So began the 6 hour bus ride to Sendai.

The first thing I did when getting on the bus (at about 6:10 AM remember) was crack open a beer. As part of the drunken stupor I was in the night before, I had promised the PE teacher that I would drink at least 5 beers with him by the time we got to Sendai. He held me to it. After that was just normal banter between the male teachers for the next 6 or so hours, mostly about Pachinko. I kept my sanity by drinking, sleeping and sending early morning texts to all my friends, which probably pissed them all off, but oh well.

We arrived in the outskirts of Sendai around 12:15 and stopped for a traditional Sendai lunch at a restaraunt in an outlet mall. By "traditional Sendai" I mean we ate the food for which Sendai is famous: gyuu-tan (cow tongue). We had a 5 course meal with gyuu-tan cooked every which way imaginable. I had actually had gyuu-tan before; it's a common food served at yakitori places. There flavor isn't actually too bad, it's just a little chewy. The flavor is a lot like beef, so I see no reason to eat the chewy tongue over the rest of the cow, but I digress...

After lunch we went to a temple called Yama-dera. It was a quaint temple built on a mountain (I guess that's why it's called "mountain temple"). Visitors have to climb over 800 stairs to get to the main area of the temple. This proved to be a problem since Sendai is in the north of Japan and had gotten heavy snow the night before we arrived. The 800 steps had all been iced over causing the climb and especially the decscent to be much more of an ideal than it should have been.

We all headed off to our Japanese style hotel after about an hour and a half of sightseeing around the temple. I was put in in the room with all the young male teachers. While this may sound fun, we spent almost all of our free time before dinner by playing with a wooden puzzle that was in the room and then going down to take a quick comunal bath. Whoopee!

Dinner was the traditional Japanese party fare: lots of seafood and a ton of beer. For some reason I got abnormally drunk at the dinner. I think it's because nobody was talking to me so I had nothing to do but drink. Dinner lasted for 3 or so hours before we went down to do karaoke.

I was already way too drunk before the karaoke started, but i would be absolutely plastered by the end of it. The karaoke room we got included all-you-can-drink whiskey. Since I was the only one who drank whiskey, they kept pouring it down my throat (without too much resistince from me). I got so drunk that I actually agreed to sing some Japanese songs. While most of the teachers gave me the standard Japanese praise, one of the teachers said one of my Japanese songs wasn't so good. This really set me off for some reason and I was in a bad mood the rest of the night. It culminated in an outburst about how much I hate ramen when we went to a ramen shop after karaoke. I'm still not living that one down...

I passed out pretty soon after that. I was actually upset because all the teachers got a massage ordered except for me, but in hindsight it's a good thing because I was about to puke...