gaijin kuma desu: Nomikai - Graduations 2011

March is graduation season in Japan - basically the school year ends and people graduate. The new school year begins in April. In our lab, around 8 people are graduating, some of them are staying and about 5 new students are coming in. So, to celebrate those graduations, the whole lab went for nomikai - basically drinking party (all you can drink with some small food). I completely forgot about it on that day and was asking one of my lab members if he wanted to go for dinner and he was really confused asking "today?".

We started off with this one restaurant (stage 1) and I drank a few beers. There was some salad:

Some other finger-type food:

Fries with slices of kaffir lime leaves:

Some fried rice:

Dessert:

Awesome disposable wooden forks:

After about 2 hours at that place, we had to leave... so most of us went for stage 2 to another nearby place.

Where we ordered a bunch of smaller (finger type) foods and of course drinks. I got this sake which came in a glass in a box and when the waitress poured it, it went over the side to the box. So you basically first drink the glass then drink the spilled over stuff from the box.

We also got some very pricey sake to try as a group:

This was the size and it cost around $20. But we all tried a little and it was very tasty!

And the drinking continued...

Oh yeah!

We all had some drinking by this time :P.

Awesome sweet potato fries:

The food was really tasty - some wasabi eggplant and chicken skin:

Fish fins! Tasty!

After being there about 2 hours - it was around midnight - we had to go (there is a time limit on these things). So many of the people went back to the lab for stage 3. I went off home since I had enough and was closer to home. By the lack of people in the lab the following day, I assume that stage 3 went on for a while. Good times.

While on the topic of drinking... I found an awesome liquour store near my apartment (like 2 blocks):