Busy Busy

Wow, it seems like such a long time since I got to record what I've been doing but it's just been one day. Insane! I guess it just feels longer because I've been so busy. So, let's see, where did I leave off. I believe it was just before I went down to Yokohama yesterday. So I lucked out and the train line that runs here also goes directly to Yokohama, which made my life easy. I just had to get on the train and wait till I got to Yokohama. Also convenient was my timing. I told Maggie that I would meet her at 11:30am at the station and I got there at about 6 minutes to 11:30. Go me! So I hung around and she called to let me know she was running a bit late. So while I hung around I took some pictures of the beautiful mosaic on the wall by the East exit, I watched a little fountain right below it, and I walked around a bit to get my bearings.

When Maggie got there she introduced me to her sister and we all set off in search of a place to have a light lunch and maybe hang around for a little bit. We ended up ultimately going back through the station to the West exit and walked around until we came across a cute restaurant that looked good. I knew I had dinner after my meeting so I decided not to eat a big meal and ended up getting a small appetizer of french fries and a strawberry parfait. Both were very good. After we all had some food we wandered over to a department store. Maggie and her sister got some frappaccinos in a Starbucks on the first floor (yes, they truly are everywhere now, worse than McDonald's), and I was quite amused to find that beverage sizes are truly quite different. The small size was REALLY small. In fact the medium size that Maggie got was more along the lines of a small size in the US.

But anyway, after that we went upstairs to browse. Maggie ended up finding a nice pair of sunglasses and they threw in a free case for them (a really nice one too) when she bought them, and they only cost about 2000 Yen ($20). Try getting that in the US. After we wandered around a bit more I had to go back to the station so I could get to my meeting on time. I said bye to Maggie and her sister and got on the train to go to Shinjuku. It wasn't too long of a ride and I got there early enough to figure out my way. I ran into Todd and his brother there. We said by to his brother and went to the hotel to meet Terumi-san and the others. The lounge where we had our meeting was very nice and I got to have an iced Earl Grey tea for free. It was yummy. After our meeting we walked over a short distance to the restaurant where we were going to have dinner. There we met Sasamoto-sensei (the ryuuteki teacher, my sensei as I like to think of him), Miura-sensei who will be teaching some sho lessons, the hichiriki teacher (whose name I am currently drawing a blank on =/), Komoda-sensei who has been instrumental in helping with the program, Professor Rusch, the head of both the Columbia and Kyoto Medieval Japanese Institutes, and Karada-san who is the Kyoto counterpart of Miho at Columbia, essentially the assistant director or something of the Institute (in the respective country of course).

Dinner was very nice and very different than what I'm used to. I mean I've had Japanese food before but only in small bits here or there. This was a full like 7 course meal of small bits of various different Japanese foods. It was exquisite. And of course there was beer and sake(really good sake!). I had never had Ebisu beer before but I really like it. I had about 3 small glasses (yes they were Japanese small not American small). I also had about 3 little sake glasses of this wonderful sake. I wish I knew what brand it was because it was really tasty, it had a taste of something close to melon and it was served cold in a clear tea kettle looking thing. I think Sasamoto-sensei was impressed with my drinking abilities (limited as they are) because he said that I was very, how to translate it....sturdy, or strong I guess. I took that as a complement. He's a fun guy, I really feel lucky that he's my sensei. After dinner we went back to the station to go home and I was really looking forward to sleep especially since my first lesson was early this morning with Sasamoto-sensei, 10:30am to be precise. But I shall save today's excursion for my next post because it is about 12:30am here, I'm tired, and it's hot as hell in the study room at the moment. Night all, until next time. Jya matta!