The Party Report brought to you by Maeve Daly
First a GIANT THANKS to you all for your support for the ST. Patrick's Day gig here in Sapporo. Parcels were flowing in from Ireland on the run up to the party, in fact being at home and in my appartment to receive all the generous packages when the postman came a knocking was one of my biggest issues the week before March 17th. Thanks so much!! Angela and you gals, a big thank you for the tack, our venue was tacked to the nines because of you guys, great decorations and lots of fun stuff that went into our lucky dip. Alot of the stuff that came from Carrolls really made the atmosphere, people were thrilled to dip and come out with a crazy Irish flag afro for their donation. I intended to use the leprechaun hats as prizes for our Irish brogue contest but they were used to make our faux male Irish dancers instead. Brilliant. There was one Irish laddie who was gutted to see the hats coming out on stage because poor Portmarnack Tom had been on a recent trip back to Ireland and picked himself up a super cool leppie hat thinking that he'd be the best dressed there but was shocked to see we had also been milking our Irish contacts for the goods in the meantime. I also had tin whistles and feather bowas, Irish garters and shamrock tattoos (Mother!!) arrive from a certain lady of the castle there in Athlumney Navan. And Aunty B, (Josen tell her i said a big thanks ) sent me some fun green spangly stuff too. Great to get it all, people absolutely went mad for the stuff. On top of all this we had sponsorship from Baileys, Guinness, Suntory (Japanese co. that does Whiskey etc), and Jameson. I also had Kilkenny caps from another Irish bar in Sapporo and a case of wine sponsored by our local Aussie bar. We had enough stuff from the Embassy, Bord Bia and Tourism Ireland to make up gift bags and give them out at the door too. The amount of free stuff we ended up swinging was incredible and we came out with tonnes of leftovers, simply because our time ran out.
We had a 2 hour pre-party at the new Irish bar, followed by a 2 hour all-you-can-drink deal at our club venue where there was space to break out our Irish dancers(10 of the gals I trained up in 2 dances) and start the giant ceili which ended up being renditions of Strip the Willow (scottish dance ahem soz). People went mad for that. We had an hour in between drink specials ending at the Irish bar to give people time to guzzle down and get to the all-you-can-drink dance venue. That worked really well. also the first venue was alot more respectable and civilised ( as a venue to host our teachers, my English club who are all over 70 years old, and our school principals etc) then the club (more for the drunken youngie crowd!!) so we got two different crowds aswell as an overlap of crowds for both venues. all in all just over 130 people turned out. Bar Managers were delighted to say the least with Yen signs flashing in their eyes especially as it was such good promotion for the new Irish bar.
Our musicians were made up of my NZ farrier friend Rob on the guitar, my J.friend Kazushi on the fiddle(bluegrass more than IRish but hey who even noticed!) and Alex ( a JET I met last year in Tokyo who flew herself up especially for the weekend from where she lives in Nagoya in the south west of Japan) and she was absolutly amazing on the whistle and flute. Then we had a JET band (6 JETs who all live in Hokkaido -Paddys nite was their first gig) play for the Grand Finale, they wrapped things up with 'With or Without you' , the ultimate crowd pleaser. I thought they would be the feature act of the night and although they were really good, it was the Irish dancers who stole the show which was just friggin halarious for me! I'm telling ya and not a lesson in me life!!!!A
Amongst all the fun, we had the 'holy coin' collection ( he was a saint after all) which consisted of building a model house in the bar with people's 5 and 50 yen coins, as these are the 2 J. coins that are like polos with a hole in the middle and we could thread them onto wire to build a model house. We sent mass style baskets around the bar to collect the holy coins!! So that got people donating considering we were raising money for a house building project. We also had a 50/50 draw and we made 400USD out of that as the guy who won it donated his half back to charity. again Brilliant! and 2 days before the party i decided to do up some raffle tkts on excel and sell dollar tickets for the raffle all night. I only did that when I saw how much free stuff we had and turned the freebies into a raffle feature as opposed to spot prizes. People were winning bottles of Jammie left right and centre and were cheering away. People also got their own Irish name at the door of the club venue and had to use it to find their partner for the IRish dancing. That kept me entertained at my desk in school for an afternoon for sure. We had a " Navan Mc Shopping Centre" and a " Kells Mc Shopping Centre" in there who had to find each other not to mention the " Paddy O Furniture" who had to find Mary of the same name. It was the best part of the preparations for me, he he he, chuckling away at my desk, writing out 160 stickers of Irish names!!
Our special guests for the night were MR. Alan Browne and Edward Kelly , both on their way around the world and yet still made time in their busy schedule to stop into us in Sapporo for St. PAtrick's Day event! My friend Kimberley (Miss Louisiana) took a particular shine to Ed!! We also got out snowboarding on Monday which was a blast to see Browner ripping it up on a set of skies! Funny that we ended up getting home from snowboarding at 4am Monday nite though isn't it!!! was great to have the lads even if I was running around like a headless chicken on the nite itself but at least we had until Tuesday to catch up. Then Al and Ed headed back to Tokyo to make the move onto Melbourne shortly after that.
We ended up raising 1,500USD for the Association of Relief Volunteers from St. Patrick's night. This is the association that I'm going to India with to build houses and I'm going in just 3 weeks!! I can't bel the time is running in so fast. I am going with 10 other volunteers from all over Japan and we are a good mix of nationalities but there's one other Irish guy coming too from somewhere in the south of Japan. Sure who knows I'll prob know him or his sister or something once I meet him!
Anyway, best sign off as I'm sure many of you have stopped reading by now, I ended up babbling on alot here but only because it was the highlight of my JET year here!!
Hope you all broke lent and had a fab Patrick's Day too, was thinking of you all !!Thanks again for all the support,
Love 'n sporadic icier March snow,
Maeve
