My team held a farewell party for me 🥩

I am leaving my network operations job soon, so my coworkers held a farewell party for me.

At my current workplace, the idea of a "team" is very important.

There are several teams, and each team rotates day shifts and night shifts.

So even in the same workplace, you see the people on your own team every day.

So I went to a steak restaurant with the members of that team as a farewell party.

By the way, this was my first time working at what people call a big, traditional Japanese company.

So here are the common times when Japanese companies have drinking parties.

December is the "bonenkai."

It is a drinking party that means "Let's forget the bad things from this year, too."

I suddenly thought "bonenkai" is an amazing name.

When new employees join, it is the "kangeikai," the welcome party.

As a difference from other countries, at Japanese drinking parties, you sit at your seat and drink for 2 or 3 hours.

And it is common for new or young people to serve the salad to everyone and pour drinks for people whose glasses are almost empty.

What felt very Japanese to me was the fee for the drinking party.

Japanese companies have a system called "nenko joretsu," where your pay goes up with the number of years since you joined.

So, for example, a new person a few years into the company pays 3,000 yen, and a manager pays 10,000 yen. The price just changes like that.

Women sometimes pay about 1,000 yen less than men, and male managers sometimes pay for others.

I often heard about this in dramas and novels, but it really happened at my workplace too.

Even the price of a drinking party shows the order inside the company.

Well, I was in the operations department, so compared to the sales department, I think the mood is that we do not have many drinking parties.

By the way, at this restaurant, I also had a welcome party when I started working there.

At that time I was on a different team, but they paid for everything! 😳

To be honest, the conversation that got the most exciting was when we all walked to the station on the way home!

When you just sit still at your seat, sometimes the fun kind of fizzles out...

So maybe drinking parties where you stand and walk around while talking, like Western parties, are actually more fun.