The Company hits Nikko
Company trip… one of those strange beasts that Japanese culture has birthed, where an entire company (or division, if the company is too large) heads into the mountains for a day or two of “togetherness” and “bonding” and “company spirit education and appreciation”.
What this translates into is usually a weekend opened by a half-hearted attempt to convey company values, vision and strategy, before everyone dives into an all-out frenzy of boozing and mayhem. The top guns, if they are good sports, will proceed to humiliate themselves utterly by stripping down and performing numerous lewd embarassing acts as other staff go around encouraging key members to down cups of sake and what not in escalating quantities. In the end, you get about 5% passed out stone cold, while the rest retire to the hot baths to lounge around, gossip and drink some more.
Although it sounds like Japanese madness, given the right type of company and Company, it’s actually pretty darn amusing, and crazily enough it’s a great bonding experience. It’s the one night where the superiors are subject to the whims of the common staff, and everyone is equal in that wacky half-perverted state of lecherous but ultimate harmless revelry.
Of course, my company isn’t quite normal, so in additional to all of the above, we also had one of the VPs trundle around in a fluffy green godzilla suit, throughout the Waterfalls of Kegon and the Temples and Shrines of Nikko, and another VP showed up cosplaying the pink Ranger after the skits were over. He was summarily ignored.
Oh yeah, the skits. We had been divided into 6 teams, and had to put on a 5-10 min skit, losing team subject to some other form of horrible abject humiliation. My team came in second, perhaps because we were tasteful – all g-string clad members (male, of course) came complete with aprons, and we actually had a series of stories comprising picking up schoolgirls for one-night stands, and a guy ravaging underwear after reading a porn mag.
Yes, the rest are too indecent to actually put down in writing. Except for the last one, which was a reinactment of various commercials and Matrix sequences. This deserved won first prize.
We finished off the trip with a run through some cultural sex museum. The green godzilla once again made its appearance.
