Cultural misunderstandings - the bad kind

So it has been a loooong time since I last posted -who knew that moving country could keep you this busy!

Yesterday something happened that I really wanted to write about. For the past month the English teachers had been planning a bbq on the beach. Sounds good right? So the bbq slowly morphed into a combined fun event and the otsukarekai (kind of farewell and thanks for working hard party) for the student teacher. So the night before the party I go to Karaoke with my friend, and purely by chance we bump into all of the teachers from my school, they tell me to join them and so I ask if its ok for my friend to come as well. No problem. In the karaoke room there are no English teachers but all the teachers start to tell me, enthusiastically, how they are all going to come to the bbq. I was a bit surprised but just went with it, I had been at my visiting schools for the past few days so just assumed I had missed hearing the party was expanding. The more people the more fun it will be right?

Day of the bbq, I got 2 shocks.

Shock No. 1
The sight of another ALT walking down to the beach. I assumed that they had just come to snorkel at the beach (I knew there was a plan to do this, just at a different venue I thought) Turns out the student teacher had invited him. No problem, it is just unusual to invite non-work colleagues to a work event in Japan, but this was a pretty relaxed affair, so as I said no problem. Except for all the teachers assumed I had invited him. Furthermore they also assumed he was my boyfriend. So i spent a great portion of my time explaining to EVERY teacher there that no I didn't invite him and no he wasn't my boyfriend (the teachers don't gossip about things like that at the party, that would be rude, however it meant I had to explain it too many times to count).

Shock No. 2
At the end of the party the head of the English department gives a speech (in japanese), so he mentions the student teacaher is leaving and says thank you to her for working hard and good luck with her study. Then he mentions me, and how I am leaving and I am just standing there trying to understand what he is saying. Is this my leaving party and nobody told me? A whole month before I actually leave? are they trying to get rid of me early? Or just figure it is easier to merge the two leaving parties? (the last option being the least likely but also the most worrying, that they didnt like me enough to organise a leaving party closer to the time for me) However I knew it couldn't be the last option because when he announced my leaving a lot of the teachers basically shouted 'we don't want you to leave' (iyada) So I am desperately trying to work out whether this is an announcement that this was my leaving party or just an announcement that I will be leaving in the not too distant future. But i am frozen. I am confused and it is all in Japanese and my brain shut down. So I don't say anything.

On the drive back into town I ask the teachers in the car with me, 'was that my leaving party?' They said 'yeah, kinda, but we will have other opportunities to hang out'. A little bit indefinitive - I am trying to process this, does that mean that was my big finish? My final official chance to say thanks to people and keep in touch and I somehow managed to miss it? (pretty typical for me actually)

Fast forward to a bit later and we are in a bar. Currently three of us, one of the other people is an English teacher. So whent he other teacher goes to the toiled, she tells me, we didnt want a big tearful farewell party we thought a bbq would be nice and because you are leaving so many teachers came'. She was obviously saying this because the other teacher went to the toilet and as she finished speaking he came back and she changed the topic. So i am left thinking so that WAS my leaving party? Why didnt anyone tell me. I feel like crying. I explain the situation to a few other ALTs who also happen to be in the same bar and they are also confused. Some of them write it off as 'japanese people do things differently' others are equally confused knowing that this is uncommon for the Japanese who love ceremony and finishing things properly.

Anyway the night goes on a bit and I start feeling really tired and am still feeling upset. If I had known that was my farewell party I would have behaved differently, I would have spoken more to everyone, thanked them for comming to say goodbye to me, and a whole range of things that I didnt manage to do before. Anyway I start to feel overwhelemed, and since I am close to tears it is not the appropriate place to discuss things with the teachers. It wouldn't do to show them that their kind gesture and all the hard work they put into organising such an event was completely unappreciated by me. So I go home to escape. When I am alone it overwhelms me. I am so confused and hurt and I start crying hysterically. The idea of leaving two years of my life behind without the opportunity to say goodbye properly is devastating. So I do what any reasonable adult does in such a situation. I call my mother. She calms me down enough so that I can sleep (although i am crying up until that point).

The next day I wake up unreasonably early - I mean 7am on a sunday is just not fair, but it is a pattern for recent weeks - and I remember everything that happened and start crying again. it is ridiculous and I know I have to do something proactive or I will never stop. So I email my teacher at 8am and dont hear anything beack until 12ish. She managed to have a lie-in (not that I'm jealous...) In the email, I explained that I was upset and confused and asked if that was the official leaving part or not. So when she calls me back I explain why I was upset and ask again if it was my leaving party, and she tells me it was a chance to make good memories, and the reason they mentioned my leaving was first and foremost to make sure other teachers were aware I was leaving and also because in Japanese society they need an excuse to throw a party. They dont just have them for the sake of it. She also says that it is too early to have my official leaving party as I'm here for another month (echoing my earlier thoughts) and that they will have another big one before I leave and that they will tell me beforehand that it is my leaving party! (Thank goodness!)

All that stress was for nothing. But that is the difficulty of living in a foreign country when you are not fluent in the language, or are unaware of a particular cultural aspect of the society. In this case it the was the stress of not having a perfect understanding of what was said at the actual party combined with not having the opportunity to ask privately in detail about what happened with the final glaze of being oblivious of that particular aspect of Japanese party throwing. And I thought I had become such an expert on Japanese culture.