Birthday Cakes and Throwing Beans

n the morning before we took off, Yamagi mentioned quickly that tonight was the night that 'we throw the beans.' I had no idea what he meant by this, and by the time 10 pm rolled around I figured the beans were off,  but I was wrong. Murata-San (another employee who had just returned from working on a project in Samoa) and Yamagi-San had gone out, but I've gotten very used to having no idea where people are going or when they are coming or what I'll be doing in 15 minutes, and generally not knowing what's going on; so naturally, them going out seemed perfectly normal. They returned however with three big bags in tow and immediately started cutting out cardboard circles. They then drew scary faces on them and tied a string to make a mask. Yamagi put on the mask and we were to throw the blessed peanuts at him and should "go away evil spirits", and "come good fate,"in japanese of course. We took turns (except Kat) wearing the mask and having peanuts thrown at us, and then Murata-San announced abruptly that it was now time to eat, which I really wasn't happy to hear after I had just eaten a huge dinner. He handed everyone something like a very long role of sushi and explained that this year the lucky direction is South-West so we all have to turn to the direction and eat the roll without talking or turning until we finish the whole thing. I was really stuffed and the idea of eating the entire roll was very daunting, so I tried to leave little bits, but Murata who took the process very seriously kept glancing in my direction every few seconds to check my progress. I finished at last and could relax knowing that I won't be haunted by any evil spirits this year. I started walking back to my desk when they explained I could not sit down until I ate 20 peanuts (one for every year I have been alive), I was only greatful that I wasn't Ueda-San who had to eat 57 peanuts. 

The next night Yamagi's girlfriend came from Nara to celebrate Yamagi's birthday. Although most don't know the meaning of half the words, everyone knows the song Happy Birthday in english and sing it on people's birthday. Generally, very few people people in Japan have ovens, so they bought a cake from the bakery and I made smores in honour of the day. After a bottle of Sake was cracked open, Yamagi struck up a conversation in english about how when he dies he wants to sees giant redwoods and baobabs. He actually meant to say, which took us about half an hour to decipher that he wants to see them before he dies. He then started drawing lumber jacks and how large he imagined the redwoods to be in Canada, so wide that 30 people could stand around them holding hands. I drew a line through his tree and tried to explain that they were not so wide, which led to an even more confusing conversation when he became convinced that Canadians were chopping their trees in half and then just leaving them.