Kinō wa gochisōsama deshita (昨日はごちそうさまでした): thank you for treating me yesterday. A manners guide in Mynavi News advises adding these words to the greeting the next morning after being treated to a meal or drinks: Ohayō gozaimasu. Kinō wa gochisōsama deshita. Good morning. Thank you for yesterday.
A written thank-you, the guide adds, should go out the same day or, at the latest, the next day.
In October 2026, Tokyo Shoko Research asked companies whether they would hold bōnenkai and shinnenkai, year-end and New Year parties, this season. Of the 5,052 companies that answered, 56.5 percent said they would.
Before the pandemic, according to the same report, about 80 percent of companies held them.
The company Sansan runs a system called Know Me. It pays up to 3,000 yen per person for food and drinks when an employee goes out with up to three people from other departments with whom the employee has never drunk before. For lunch, it pays 1,000 yen per person.
Forbes Japan reported the system in 2018.
In the anime Aggressive Retsuko, released worldwide by Netflix on April 20, 2018, Retsuko is a red panda who works in the accounting department of the trading company Characterman Shōji. Sanrio, which created the character, writes that she relieves her stress by singing death metal at karaoke on her own.
Japanese media describe her as 25 years old.
An employee took part in a welcome and farewell party at work at the strong wish of his boss. Afterward, he drove trainees home in a company car and died in a traffic accident.
On July 8, 2016, Japan’s Supreme Court held that the accident had occurred in the course of his work. It noted that the costs of the party had been paid from the employer’s expenses, and that taking the trainees home had been planned as a task for the boss.
When Japanese television wants to interview salarymen, it usually goes to the SL Square at the Hibiya exit of Shinbashi Station. The transport news site Traffic News explains why. Slightly drunk after work, the salarymen interviewed there tend to say what they really think, including their everyday complaints. The site suggests that this makes the square ideal for program makers.
Two surveys point in different directions on whether young Japanese employees still want to drink with their colleagues and bosses. In a December 2025 survey of 360 company employees, 66.5 percent of those in their twenties said that they wanted to join such nomikai, drinking parties, or would join when needed.
In a survey of Generation Z by SHIBUYA109 lab., cited by the NLI Research Institute, 66.7 percent said that they were not fond of company drinking parties that include bosses. The report does not give the year of that survey.
A bureikō is a banquet held without regard to rank or etiquette. The most famous one in Japanese history was held by Emperor Go-Daigo in the Kamakura period. He used it to gather people of different ranks and plot in secret. One guest told his wife, and the plot leaked.
The same source notes that, in practice, rank does not disappear at a bureikō. Communication at company drinking parties has its own coined word, nominication, from nomu (to drink). It first appeared in the media in the 1980s.