On Wednesday, after a fairly routine start to the week, I came back down to Tokyo in anticipation of Friday's Fulbright mid-year conference. I was going to go back home to Sendai on Saturday, but decided to stay til Monday morning (leaving in a few hours presumably). It was the usual Tokyo run-around - squeezing in shopping and eating and drinking between running around seeing different friends.
On the way down, I had to be in Tokyo by 6 PM on Wednesday night to hang out with the Penn group in good ole Kichijoji, but I ended up missing my train and getting to the city an hour late. I spent that hour up in Sendai kicking my bag around the station and cursing myself before getting on my train and falling asleep just long enough to wake up before getting to Ueno. I made my away across Tokyo to Kichijoji and threw my heavy bags in a locker. Last time I saw most of these folks (excluding my more regular crew of Akari and Rie), I was dead drunk and throwing up outside of an izakaya in Musashi-sakai, so I made good this time and only had a couple gin/tonics. Because Chiari moved into Akari's apartment this last week replacing the old roommate Madoka, I decided to crash at their place so I could catch up with the both of them. Of course we ended up staying up til 8 AM talking in circles about our personal and professional lives and wasting most of the day sleeping, but that's how these things go. I then made it out of Akari's just early enough to do a couple hours of shopping in Harajuku before running home to the Shimizus in Ryuusen (aka, they part of Tokyo far away from everything but Ueno) to relax. I skipped Fulbright dinner to eat some sukiyaki (!!) at home. I couldn't much go out that night since I had to report to the JUSEC office the next morning at 9 for our meeting, so I just met Daisuke, who works for Morgan Stanley, out in Ebisu for some coffee (which I don't drink) so we could catch up for about 30 minutes before I had to hop on the last train home to go to sleep.
Of course, having just left Sendai for warm Tokyo, I woke up the next morning and much to my chagrin it was snowing. Snow in Tokyo naturally lands on the ground long enough to build up and melt into a slushy puddle, so walking to the station was enjoyable. Compound this with the fact that I had to ride the subway INTO town at rush hour (yes, they have guys whose job it is to push people into the trains when they don't fit) and it wasn't exactly a pleasant morning. The meeting was the typical 9-5 setup, but was much more enjoyable than the Fall Orientation because (1) everyone actually knows each other now and (2) we all had much more to talk about now that we've actually been doing things. At the end of the day, I was selected as editor of the new Fulbright Handbook for our year (well I was half selected and I half selected myself) which I figure is pretty appropriate since I'm almost entirely sure I was the only idiot who wanted to edit the thing since last summer. My only directions from the group were to make it look awesome and to make everyone's writing funnier. It's going to take awhile, but I'm already hard at work on it in my head.
Friday night, the group went out together in Shibuya (where we always go for some reason it seems). We had dinner at a half-hearted version of El Torito (half-hearted ain't bad for Japan though) and had some drinks afterward. At which point I ditched the group to see Shinji and his girl before he left for New York the next day. I of course figured after having a couple drinks with Shinj I'd see the rest of the team again, but right as I was leaving, I got a mail saying everyone suddenly decided to split after vetoing all night karaoke. I was pretty disappointed since this will probably be the last time I see most of them in Japan (as I'm leaving in 3 months), but then I was also dead tired, so it wasn't so bad. Saturday saw lunch with Fulbrighters Dave and Katie and Katie's friend Lara, and then drinks and dessert with recent ICU grad Maiko (who I somehow haven't seen since August). The little place Maiko and I went was having a special that day where everything on the menu was 180 yen, so we of course ate way more than we intended. I then had a dinner appointment with my cousin (second cousin, whatever) Kaori, but we both were tired so we took a nap instead. Our 10 o'clock dinner of course ended up at the typical "where are we going to eat right now in this area" family restaurant of choice, Jonathan (jon-a-san as it is in Japanese). That pretty much ended that night since John Kim (of Fulbright fame) decided he and his friend were too tired to do anything.
Today (Sunday), I finally found the pair of gray pants I have been searching for (which took a lot longer than it sounds like it would; we're talking months here) when I was out in Roppongi. Since that was enough to fill the day, I came home and went out to eat with all the Shimizus (Yuka, Te-chin, and Rio were here today). Today's menu?: Yaki-niku at Gyuu-kaku, which was delicious. Come to think of it, it's amazing the Fulbrighters didn't eat any yakiniku while here since I don't think I've ever been with them and NOT eaten yaki-niku at one point. We all filled out one of those customer satisfaction surveys for a free scoop of ice cream after all the meat had been consumed. After dinner I ran over to Ginza to have a couple drinks (having a couple cocktails or beers with people seems to be the running theme of my social life now) with John and his Princetonian friend Dan. We found this pretty high-scale place that was pretty much the only place open late on a Sunday night. We were all under-dressed considering the next most casually-dressed guy was in a suit. The waitress seemed pretty annoyed at us when we asked for a breadstick refill (we didn't eat any food) which was admittedly a pretty cheap request in such a nice place. After quickly punching out the bill, I sprinted back to the station in time to barely slip on the last train.
And tomorrow I finally get to go back to Sendai. For one week. Before leaving again for three. Better make this one count - though things are already falling apart as we speak.
