Monday, August 19, 2013

To the Embassy!

As the program is coming to a close, I have a couple more group activities to document.

A couple weeks ago we had two separate embassy-related activities. On Monday we all took a trip to the American Embassy in Roppongi. We met at the station as a group and then wandered around for about half an hour trying to find the place because the streets out there are rather confusing. Walked in a couple separate directions at first, then finally ended up finding it, and by the time we got there, Sensei-sama was about ready to die because he had hurt his back a day or so before. We all offered to carry his bag, but he wouldn't let us...
Anyway, we finally go to the embassy compound and turned in all of our electronics and such (and thus I have no pictures from this trip), had copies taken of our passports, and were lead to a meeting-style room where we met with dai-senpai Mark Davidson and three of his interns. He told us stories about his life and about what it's like to work at the embassy. We also heard from the interns and got to ask a bunch of questions and had some pretty good discussions. Afterward we all had lunch together at the embassy cafe (American food!) and then took leave, some making their way to Sky Tree, some going to school.

The next embassy trip was a group barbecue with Dartmouth alumni and related persons, organized by the president of the Dartmouth Japan Club, Kenji Hosokawa. I got there kind of late because I had gone to watch the closing performance of my dance group at Kanda, so I got there about half way through. It was at the embassy housing complex on this huge lawn that was a brilliant shade of bright green. There were hot dogs and hamburgers and other kinds of American barbecue snack foods, it was like being back in America! But the mingling was fun and unfortunately toward the end there was  downpour of rain so we hurriedly moved everything indoors and hung around in dai-senpai's apartment for a while. It was a really beautiful space, two floors with a balcony overlooking Roppongi. Once the party started to dissipate we all made our way home in the rain.

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