From Short and Sweet to the Longest Day Ever
Ohayo gozaimasu (Good Morning). I say that because as I am writing this entry it is 3:34 am in Austin and 5:35 pm in Tokyo. We are on a break before our reception tonight with the American Ambassador to Japan and the Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology. So much has gone on, I will try and catch you up.
We left San Francisco on Monday, flew 10 ho
urs to Narita and arrived on Tuesday - crossing the dateline made us lose Monday night. Once at Nartia, we were greeted by the staff of JFMF and worked our way through Immigration and Customs. Once we collected all our luggage (here we are waiting on people), they bussed us to the hotel. We 
drove over an hour. Tokyo is majorily HUGE. Big, Big buildings everywhere you look. Here is our hotel. Can we say swank? We are staying in the Akasaka area of Tokyo, just down the street from the Diet, National Theatre and Imperial Guesthouse.
urs to Narita and arrived on Tuesday - crossing the dateline made us lose Monday night. Once at Nartia, we were greeted by the staff of JFMF and worked our way through Immigration and Customs. Once we collected all our luggage (here we are waiting on people), they bussed us to the hotel. We 
drove over an hour. Tokyo is majorily HUGE. Big, Big buildings everywhere you look. Here is our hotel. Can we say swank? We are staying in the Akasaka area of Tokyo, just down the street from the Diet, National Theatre and Imperial Guesthouse. Staff advised us to try and make it to 10 pm Tokyo time so we could try and right our mixed up body clocks. After seeing our AWESOME rooms, we met Fulbright alumni for dinner. My Fulbrighter went to school at Boston University and is a 
Professor Emertis from Rissho University. She took five of us out to a typical Japanese dinner in the sixth floor of a building not far from our hotel. We had 9 courses which were served family style. Each course we were given tiny plates to eat off of and chopsticks. I had fried bean curd for the first time ---- it was very good. We also had chicken cut in small pieces, a Japanese salad with seaweed and pickled cabbage, noodles in a vinegar seawater with dried seaweed and green onion. There was also salmon. I have come to find out that salmon is VERY popular and appears at many meals including breakfast (more on that later). We finished dinner with green tea ice cream which is very different from our ice cream ---- it tastes more like sherbet without sugar. As we were parting, she asked me if I was interested in an international art exchange project that she is a part of in her home city. SCORE!!! This is part of my follow-on plan. She also gave me a stack of origami paper that is beautiful and much thicker than what I can get at home. Kids, guess what we will be working with in the fall. She left us to our own devices and we walked around VERY tired and amazed at the city. Many people were only leaving the office and it was 9 pm! This is evidently very typical. Many people then go hangout with friends before going home. We stumbled onto FedEx Kinkos and they left me to email and do the short previous entry. It was really weird as the keyboard has a number of written languages on it and some keys are in different places, thus some funny spelled words. It was home and nighty night after that excursion. That is all for this entry. Check the next one for my day on Wednesday. Love and best wishes to all. Reed I hope you like today's pictures.
Professor Emertis from Rissho University. She took five of us out to a typical Japanese dinner in the sixth floor of a building not far from our hotel. We had 9 courses which were served family style. Each course we were given tiny plates to eat off of and chopsticks. I had fried bean curd for the first time ---- it was very good. We also had chicken cut in small pieces, a Japanese salad with seaweed and pickled cabbage, noodles in a vinegar seawater with dried seaweed and green onion. There was also salmon. I have come to find out that salmon is VERY popular and appears at many meals including breakfast (more on that later). We finished dinner with green tea ice cream which is very different from our ice cream ---- it tastes more like sherbet without sugar. As we were parting, she asked me if I was interested in an international art exchange project that she is a part of in her home city. SCORE!!! This is part of my follow-on plan. She also gave me a stack of origami paper that is beautiful and much thicker than what I can get at home. Kids, guess what we will be working with in the fall. She left us to our own devices and we walked around VERY tired and amazed at the city. Many people were only leaving the office and it was 9 pm! This is evidently very typical. Many people then go hangout with friends before going home. We stumbled onto FedEx Kinkos and they left me to email and do the short previous entry. It was really weird as the keyboard has a number of written languages on it and some keys are in different places, thus some funny spelled words. It was home and nighty night after that excursion. That is all for this entry. Check the next one for my day on Wednesday. Love and best wishes to all. Reed I hope you like today's pictures.Mata aimasho (We shall meet again)
Tim Lowke
posted by Tim Lowke at 1:36 AM
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