Sometimes I find the Japanese language limiting. When you talk about food, it’s oishii. That’s it. Delicious. No “tasty.” No “good.” Conversationally, you’ve got “delicious,” and that’s all she wrote, folks.
Then again, the language can be expansive. Bounenkai is a word that means, “end-of-the-year party where everybody gets annihilated.”
Big shock: It’s become my favorite Japanese word of the season.
Tonight I went to my dojo’s bounenkai. End-of-the-year parties in American dojo – in my experience, at least – have involved everybody going out for some sort of affordable Asian food. There’s a little bit of drinking, maybe some beer to wash down the pork fried rice, but not much beyond that.
Here, we brought McDonald’s into the dojo, along with some more traditional Japanese convenience store munchies. I didn’t want to appear rude, so I ate the Mickey D’s, but… well, it was just really, really peculiar. Cheap food is cheap food, I guess.
Of course, there was severe liver conditioning going on, too. We started with beer, then went on to sake, and finished with rum. And it wasn’t just me drinking: everybody, including the sensei, was nine sheets to the wind. Cooked. Toasted. Blitzed.
It was good to see everybody relax and let their hair down, though.
I agree, bounenkai is a great word.
I have to point out that you’re wrong about the oishii comment, though. There are tons of different ways to say that food is good. You even forget the almighty mai-u, coined by Papaya Suzuki and crew from Debuya.
You mentioned Dojo, what do you train in? I’m curious about the experience of other non-native speakers training in Japan. I train in Aikodo a few times a week, which I love.
i made the oishii comment with the hopes that someone would oblige me with something less bland since obviously i didn’t know any better. Eleven times out of 10, if you ask someone what you can say for food, you wind up with the big O.
i’m assuming you mean aikido, right? i study uechi-ryu, an okinawan style of karate. i wrote about my first experiences in the dojo here, if you’re interested in reading a bit more.
maybe it’s time for another dojo post?
/.s./
Yeah, Aikido, sorry about the typo.
That’s a great post. I’m curious about the dojo culture of other places, if you wanted to write about that. Where I train everyone is pretty friendly, we go drinking once a month together, and most people train about 5 times a week, though I can only make it about 3 times a week generally. The more you participate the more you get drawn in. There are endless events, demontrations, special workshops, and parties. It seems like the dojo society is the central part of a lot of their lives. I would love to get that involved, but I’m damn busy with my business and of course spending time with my family. I wonder if the spouse’s of the other members don’t get frustrated with them.
Regarding oishii, yeah, 9 out of ten times you only year oishii or umai. Of coures people could say it has a yutakana aji or describe the food by the hazawari or aroma, but on TV it is generally just a loud exclamation of umai!