Recovering from holiday cheer

Christmas was an interesting one, indeed. We met up with Hiro's university days friends at a nice cottage in Izu. It was really nice to meet all of them for me but I do admit, I was a little nervous about it at first. I think his friends are quite unlike other 'typical' Japanese - it must be the 'engineer' factor? I cannot pinpoint it exactly (how they're different) but they just are. I could hardly remember anyone's name from the party so after the party I assigned a nickname to each guy: spacey man, mumbly man, superhero dad man, poor lonely loner man... As for their wives, spacey man's wife...and so on. They seemed to give my boyfriend a nickname too - 'cradle robber.' Everyone was in their mid-30's so they were a bit surprised to find out I'm a decade younger, oh, and the foreigner thing too.

THE WIVES, in Japanese: "so how old are you actually?"
ME: 25
WIVES: (blink, blink...gasp) "ohhh, Yamada-sannnnnn, he's almost 35 isn't he? Ooo, isn't that a crime?"
ME: umm, umm, umm...
THEM: (still blinking and gasping)
.
.
.

You can imagine how it went. Despite everyone's initial shock they were so friendly and frank - kind of unusual considering it was our first time to meet.

We had hot pot (see entries below for more on that), pizza from Costco, Christmas cake, rotisserie chicken from Costco, draft beer (see Tarunama entry below), and more...ohhh so full! Mumbly man's wife had a bit too much to drink and started to complain about her husband. Whining and complaining turned into full out crying - at which point the host, spacey man, tried to change the topic only to be redirected to the couple's situation by the sobbing wife. She said her husband had such a cold heart and was so mean to her. Eeks. Lonely loner man decided to be the 'talk-show' host and started to shoot many questions at them. Everyone in the room told mumbly man, 'tisk tisk tisk' and 'you shouldn't do that to your wife.' What a shock it was for me to see this. Usually Japanese are very composed and don't wander out of their persona, much less in public... Again I stand corrected.

Have you ever been victim of 'motehara?' It means popularity harrassment. Perhaps your friends, family, and acquaintances are all harrassing you to get a boyfriend/girlfriend or to go out and find a wider social circle. They use scare tactics and all sorts of things to get you to take action. Anyway this weekend I saw 'motehara' in its most pure form - them attacking the lonely loner guy. He was the only one who came to the cottage solo and everyone gave him hell for that. Questions were intrusive and frequent - why didn't he meet someone at English school? what is his type? why did past relationships fail? It didn't help that he's 35 (plus or minus a year) and never had a serious relationship with a girl. After that everyone tried to give him pointers - from what to do...to what kinds of topics he should talk about. Number one: don't talk about engineering and shoptalk!!! It was said that he has a tendency to scare women away with that...oooh.