Graham graduated 8th grade. The school had a nice little graduation ceremony and afterward a catered lunch with champagne for the parents and juices for the kids. One of Graham's classmates' father is Mario Frittoli, a famous chef here in Tokyo and he provided all the food and drinks for free.
Graham and his girlfriend, Sam hold up their diplomas.
We went to the Ginza last weekend to see an art show where our friend, Takehito Yanaka, had one of his paintings. On the way, we saw this cat on top of the sign and a million Japanese people taking its picture. It was so funny that I wanted a picture of the people taking pictures of the cat. Cats seem to be very popular in Japan. At shrines and temples sometimes you happen across people sitting there with a cat or two and they always attract a huge crowd. Sid is always trying to trick me at restaurants by telling me what to say in Japanese. Sometimes he will tell me the words for "Now I am sick to my stomach," but generally he tries to get me to ask for some weird meat. Early on, his thing was to tell me to ask for "Neko Niku, okudasai." That means, "Cat meat, please." I am glad that Japan is a first world country or I might very well have eaten cat (neko) or dog (enu) niku (mean) a few times.
I will miss the wax models showing you what you can order when we leave here. I wonder how foreign visitors to America survive at all without these helpful little things!
Fulbright arranged a tour of the Diet (Japanese parliament) for us yesterday. It was great. We got to see all around the building and we also got to meet with a Japanese congressional representative. Sid was so happy because she gave him a signed poster of herself that says "Japanese Democratic Party" on it. He has wanted a Japanese Democratic Party poster since we got here!
School kids also touring the Diet. We think they were from the provinces because they were so excited to see a bunch of westerners!
In the Diet.
Hall in the Diet. It is a beautiful building.
Sid in front of the Diet. While we were there we also got to eat at the Diet cafeteria. Sid and I had tonkatsu. But, Sid told everyone later that we ate "diet food."
Outside of the Diet building.
This is Prime Minister Kan's home. Something important was going on as you can see by the number of black government cars parked in front. Black is definitely the power color here. Everyone dresses in black and important people drive (or are driven in) black cars. At Akasaka Mitsuke we saw a huge number of Yakusa (mob) cars parked when a big Yakusa meeting was taking place there. Anyway, lots of important meetings are being held by Kan now as the government tries to figure out what to do about the Fukushima mess. We still get reports of contaminated food and water from quite far away--even further from Fukushima than Tokyo. We are all very samishi (sad) to leave Tokyo, but will also be a little relieved to be further away from the radiation and irradiated produce.
We also toured the Supreme Court and got to meet one of the 15 Supreme Court Justices. This is a big skylight thing over one of the petty courts.
Our friend Beth sitting in one of the justice's seats.
Sid sitting in what we think is the Chief Justice's seat.
Looking very "judgmental."
My turn to judge.
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