zutto sa
It's late and I should be asleep but I just need to write.
Last night was, aside from my joint birthday party with Andy here last year, my craziest night out in Tokyo. I had planned to meet Andy and a few other friends--Wakako, Yumi, Mike, etc.--as well as bring some of my new JASC friends, maybe 4 people, in Shinjuku for drinks. We met at the usual spot, outside the east exit, and before I knew it there were 25 people there. I had been expecting less than 10. I had just casually invited a few friends, but I guess word just spread through the group like wildfire. It all worked out... amazingly enough, we all fit in the same izakaya in Shinjuku, and everyone got along. Of course the two groups didn't exactly blend perfectly, not in the beginning anyway, and I was totally stuck in the middle, between old friends and new ones, which was really awkward but kinda fun at the same time--especially once we started eating and drinking. At least some people met each other and were able to talk to each other and exchange info, and of course Andy was a big hit... anyway I just feel like the crowd, and the night, really capture the craziness of my life here. After the first izakaya, most people went home, and a small group of us ended up drinking at Dubliners, an Irish pub we frequent there, until it closed, chatting with strangers and having a great time... it was an amazing night... we came back here to the Olympic Center and sat outside and chatted with a larger group for a while... and I was only minorly hungover this morning. I wasn't even late for anything.
Tonight, we had a reception at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here in Tokyo, where we met an ambassador, a pretty serious affair. The food was absolutely out of this world, like it has been at all of these events, and the place was full of important people, JASC alumni and rich sponsors and government officials. I totally schmoozed, people kept coming to me and introducing me to people, and before I knew it, I was talking to a guy who runs the language school I studied at here two summers ago. He's opening a new language school here in Tokyo this winter, which is a big, exciting deal, with support from even the imperial family. He's friends with both Seidensticker, the most famous Japanese scholar and translator of our time, and Donald Ritchie, the most famous author of Japan studies, whose works I've been reading and falling in love with for the past year. He took a group of us out to a second dinner and drinks afterwards, and--get this--he invited me and another guy to dinner at the Tokyo Foreign Correspondents Society tomorrow night, where he's going to invite Donald Ritchie. I really can't believe it... I don't know whether he'll actually show up or not... but I've dreamed of meeting this guy forever...
The other big thing is the JASC election. I'm really nayanderu right now, up in the air about the next year of my life and whether or not I should do this thing. Sigh.
Someone's waiting to talk to me, I need to go now...
Last night was, aside from my joint birthday party with Andy here last year, my craziest night out in Tokyo. I had planned to meet Andy and a few other friends--Wakako, Yumi, Mike, etc.--as well as bring some of my new JASC friends, maybe 4 people, in Shinjuku for drinks. We met at the usual spot, outside the east exit, and before I knew it there were 25 people there. I had been expecting less than 10. I had just casually invited a few friends, but I guess word just spread through the group like wildfire. It all worked out... amazingly enough, we all fit in the same izakaya in Shinjuku, and everyone got along. Of course the two groups didn't exactly blend perfectly, not in the beginning anyway, and I was totally stuck in the middle, between old friends and new ones, which was really awkward but kinda fun at the same time--especially once we started eating and drinking. At least some people met each other and were able to talk to each other and exchange info, and of course Andy was a big hit... anyway I just feel like the crowd, and the night, really capture the craziness of my life here. After the first izakaya, most people went home, and a small group of us ended up drinking at Dubliners, an Irish pub we frequent there, until it closed, chatting with strangers and having a great time... it was an amazing night... we came back here to the Olympic Center and sat outside and chatted with a larger group for a while... and I was only minorly hungover this morning. I wasn't even late for anything.
Tonight, we had a reception at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here in Tokyo, where we met an ambassador, a pretty serious affair. The food was absolutely out of this world, like it has been at all of these events, and the place was full of important people, JASC alumni and rich sponsors and government officials. I totally schmoozed, people kept coming to me and introducing me to people, and before I knew it, I was talking to a guy who runs the language school I studied at here two summers ago. He's opening a new language school here in Tokyo this winter, which is a big, exciting deal, with support from even the imperial family. He's friends with both Seidensticker, the most famous Japanese scholar and translator of our time, and Donald Ritchie, the most famous author of Japan studies, whose works I've been reading and falling in love with for the past year. He took a group of us out to a second dinner and drinks afterwards, and--get this--he invited me and another guy to dinner at the Tokyo Foreign Correspondents Society tomorrow night, where he's going to invite Donald Ritchie. I really can't believe it... I don't know whether he'll actually show up or not... but I've dreamed of meeting this guy forever...
The other big thing is the JASC election. I'm really nayanderu right now, up in the air about the next year of my life and whether or not I should do this thing. Sigh.
Someone's waiting to talk to me, I need to go now...