Enjoying the outdoor onsen at our hotel after a long night of parties. It was been a while since I have made a blog post. I have been extremely busy this December. A lot of Paatei's (partiessssss!) Let me start by sharing about "Forget-The-Year-Parties", or Bonenkai. Most if not all places of work have this end of the year, forget-the-year parties. At first I though it was a funky translation , forget the year? but the idea really is to forget the stress of the work year and start a fresh new year. It is an end-of-the-year work celebration among co-workers.We had ours the beginning of the month, and it was such a blast! We ate a lot of delicious food, karaoke, and went to an interesting bar. These luxurious parties are paid by our monthly "party dues" every month after we get our pay check we each contribute to our party fund $30, this all goes to fund these "enkais"(work parties). One of our co-workers was tasked with planning this years end