I’ve written before how I’ve learned to stop drinking after I’ve had too much to drink. What I haven’t learned to do, though, is stop eating after I’ve had too much to drink.

Today was the welcome party for the new teachers at the school where I work. After work I had a few hours to kill which involved me having coffee and a tiramisu at a coffee shop and doing some writing. After that it was shopping and after that a moment of ESP.

I went to a place I knew was open and stumbled across a couple colleagues. We had a couple beers and some food.

(Note: Japanese parties often have a lot of food, but that food often comes slowly. As such, I usually have a snack before I go to the party.)

Because it was “all you can drink” I set about trying various cocktails, including a fresh lemon sour (which required me to do work by squeezing the lemon and pouring it in the drink myself) and a “tomato hai” which is tomato juice and alcohol and which, thanks to soy sauce, lemon and some hot sauce I managed to turn it into something resembling a Bloody Mary. After that i switched to iced tea.

The problem was the food was surprisingly good. The restaurant’s specialty is various forms of chicken. There was chicken soup (with a creamy sauce) we had to cook ourselves and a plate of chicken bits with onion and some kind of salty black sauce.There was also an odd side trip to calamari and deep fried fish bones (which are kind of like salty crackers served with squeezed lemon).

The most addictive, though, were two dishes that resembled lemon pepper chicken which was one of my go to “I’ve been drinking” foods in Mississippi. To make matters worse, I’d had just enough alcohol to get the munchies. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that if I’d dropped some chicken down a crack in the table I’d have eaten the table to get at it. I’d normally have ordered French fries but I’d actually had those before I went to the party.

Then, right when I was full, they brought out noodles we were supposed to cook in the remaining soup. When that was gone they brought out a small dish of matcha ice cream.

Now, the funny part is, I actually feel kind of drunk, but mostly from overeating. Tomorrow I’ll regret it, but not as much as I’d regret the hang over.