Welcome/Farewell meal
Today’s lunch was an interesting change: my colleagues took me to an Italian restaurant. One section of the menu was devoted to Japanese twists on Italian food, and I ended up with a spagghetti dish with soy sauce and sesame.
In the evening, they had planned a simultaneous welcome and farewell meal for me at a restaurant near the office. The food and the sake just kept coming: sashimi, tofu, yakitori, some sort of stew boiled at the table, soba noodles, rice. I was half expecting to be blind drunk and singing karaoke at three in the morning, but all of my Japanese colleagues are either of advancing age or have young children, and at 10pm, they needed to go home. This is probably for the best, since that hot sake really goes down easily, and I confess to having been a bit tipsy.