I feel like an old man writing this... only 32 for the record. so I was in tokyo for 2 weeks recently and went to a lot of izakayas and other zashiki-type places. before that I could do a night like that once every 5 days or so no problem... but that 2-week period was probably 10 zashiki evenings, and I can still feel it in my knees and hips when I do yoga now, 2 weeks later.

people that are living there / did for years... did your kahanshin ever get used to it? do you have any tricks for dealing with zashiki?

I end up sprawling out. People know foreigners can't seiza really well so no one cares.

Other than that, there's no secret. Just 我慢.

Afaik, unless it's a really posh engagement, men only do seiza for the first few minutes, until the toast is over, and then go into crosslegged style. Was your experience different?

面白そう、でも日本語でOK！

No help with your problem, but y'all are using some interesting terms and some 本物日本語文字 would really help with the リカイちゃん!

居酒屋
座敷
下半身
正座

勉強になりました、ありがとうございました。

males would usually sit cross-legged and females do that mermaid thing a lot. Honestly I can do either of those for 6 hours fine... But try that for a week straight and you have problems...no?

Just man up

yes sir

dtcamero Wrote:...females do that mermaid thing a lot.

Perch on a rock and comb their hair with a fork?

I practiced tea ceremony for a year. It still hurts like hell doing 正座.
So yeah, sit properly for 10 min and then go cross legged. That's my strategy anyway...

dtcamero Wrote:males would usually sit cross-legged and females do that mermaid thing a lot. Honestly I can do either of those for 6 hours fine... But try that for a week straight and you have problems...no?

There used to be a yoga position I found more comfortable than the regular cross-leg... sorry, can't remember the name right now, but it's like a lower half lotus: the upper feet, instead of resting on the top of the thigh (like in the half lotus), rests in the crevice made by the thigh and the calf (of the opposite leg). It's probably not comfortable for everybody though...

You do eventually get just about as good at it as anyone else in Japan. I lived in a all tatami house for two years (with no real furniture) which helped a lot, and two and a half additional years in Japan. Another thing is that I just have a bad back (and I'm 26!), so I switch to seiza all the time when my back is hurting, even when I'm sitting in my desk chair at my apartmet. I just do seiza on top of the chair.

I can sit seiza for longer than most of my students but not quite as long as most adults. The tea ceremony club does an event at cultural festival where any student or teacher can come do the ceremony, and a lot of my students give up half way but I can make it through a full ceremony with little trouble.

I never had a problem with it.. I can do it forever