部長：昨夜のドンチャン騒ぎは何だね。
石井：すみません。年に一度の新年会ですから。
Donchan-sawagi
(Shinnenkai de)
Buchoo: Sakuya no donchan-sawagi wa nan da ne.
Ishii: Sumimasen. Nen ni ichido no shinnenkai desu kara...
(On a New Year's party trip)
Boss: What do you think you were doing making such an uproar last night?
Ishii: Sorry. It's only once a year we have a New Year's party...
Donchan originally comes from the sound made by the beating of drums and gongs as noise effects for a battle scene in theater. The word donchan-sawagi has since come to describe the noise of people singing and dancing at drinking parties.
Company trips are a common feature of an employee's Me in Japan, and many firms combine these with New Year's parties at the beginning of the year. It's a chance for colleagues to get together and spend a night or two away from work somewhere.
Attendance at these events is usually compulsory though, and you can see what makes some people say that Japanese companies think of their employees as members of a big family.
There are always drinking parties on company trips. The fee for these parties is a set rate and you can drink all you want, and of course people don't have to worry about getting home at night, so Shuen wa donchan-sawagi ni hatten shiyasui (Drinking parties easily develop into wild celebrations).
However, not everyone drinks alcohol. Watashi wa donchan-sawagi ga nigate nan desu yo (I don't like noisy, drunken parties very much myself).
Like the boss in this conversation, it's hard at times when you don't drink. You feel that Donchan-sawagi no naka de, fun'iki ni tokekomu koto ga dekinakatta (While everyone else was having a wild time, you couldn't join in the
fun).
Ishii, in the conversation, is not like this though. Ishii-san wa donchan-sawagi ga daisuki da (Mr. Ishii loves rowdy parties).
He enjoys drinking and chatting with his friends from work, and feels that it brings him close to them. Shain-ryoko de wa, donchan-sawagi wo shite tanoshikatta na (That wild party on the company trip was great fun), he thinks, and it has revitalized him for the year ahead.