Eastern Exploration

Shabu-shabu with the DoCoMo office party

It took us a little while to find a decent place to eat, but when we finally rolled into a shabu-shabu spot, it was clearly a keeper. This one was do-it-yourself, with all kinds of meat and vegetable options available for quick boiling and dipping. A woman from the next table over saw that we didn’t really know what we were doing, so she demonstrated for us. (It takes six dips to cook the meat.) She was one of a big group of thirty- and forty-somethings, the rest of whom were men, all dressed in nice business clothes. We found out over the course of the evening that they all worked for NTT DoCoMo and were out to celebrate the holidays. (We later heard that what they were most likely celebrating was the end of the year, an occasion themed around erasing any bad memories of the past 12 months, which explains how much beer they were drinking.) One of them, they insisted, was a famous comedian with his own TV show. They brought out holiday gifts, and instead of a Yankee swap, they sang ‘Jingle Bells’ and passed them around the circle until the song was over. Except that they didn’t really know the words, so they sang the tune and we filled in the lyrics. Then the wrapping. One guy got a ski mask, and wore it for the rest of the meal. Another got a set of Tommy Hilfiger boxer briefs. (Pointing at his crotch, his coworker looked at us and said, “Very big!”) Another guy got a sex toy. By our estimation, the woman must have already been feeling sexually harassed after her colleagues’ earlier jokes that she was “the geisha” and “the hostess.” But she grabbed the toy out of his hands and started making kissy faces at it, to everyone’s amusement. It was especially funny since I’d just taken the Monitor harassment training course before leaving, and this dinner would have violated all kinds of rules. According to another Japanese person that Anja met, they think of sexuality in a somewhat different way—there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s also not part of public life in social and business settings. Since your sexual identity isn’t part of what you present to your friends and coworkers, there’s no stigma against it, and you’re free to be whoever you want to be between the sheets. (Who knows how it actually pans out, but that’s the theory.) Ahh, to live in a country that wasn’t founded by Puritans…

posted by Noah Flower @ 1:24 PM