Belated Update

It's been a busy few weeks since Mom and Pierre left Japan, so I thought I'd recap with the most interesting events as of late:

1) In the space of two weeks I held a cheese fondue/cheese and wine tasting party and a chocolate fondue party for my co-workers. Both events went off well (I was even able to find my favourite cheese, St. Andre, at the local imported foods shop), though at the cheese party one of my co-workers--who incidentally has an intolerance for alcohol--got completely smashed off of the wine I put in the fondue and fell sound asleep on my couch. Admittedly, it was fun to see even my boss get tipsy.

My co-workers from the Center for International Studies.

Traditional cheese arrangement

2) I spent an evening in Tokyo with Marie-Claude, a friend of my Dad's who was recently here on business. Together we went to one of the city's biggest shrines, Meiji Jingu, where we witnessed a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony. Following that we wandered into the restaurant and shopping mecca of Shibuya for dinner. Without really knowing what we were getting ourselves into, we sat down for a lavish, multi-course meal consisting entirely of...whale meat. Fried whale, raw whale, whale jerky, shredded whale, smoked whale, you name it! I was surprised we weren't served whale ice cream for dessert (we had green tea ice cream instead).

Shinto wedding procession, Meiji Shrine

3) Last Friday I attended a day-long symposium on immigration at Tokyo's United Nations University. Guest speakers included, amongst many others, the Chair of the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance and the Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). All discussions/presentations were simultaneously translated into either English or Japanese, so that people in the audience had only to tune into their language of choice via a nifty little earphone device attached to their seat. The symposium lasted from 9:30 am to 5pm and every minute of it was informative. I went with Fujishiro, the guy I plan to do research with. In fact, this week Fujishiro and I are applying for a joint research grant to carry out fieldwork on the education of Brazilian Nikkeijin children in nearby Kanagawa Prefecture. I don't want to count my chicks before they've hatched but if we do win, it will be amazing! The grant consists of a full-year stipend plus the chance to publish our findings in both Japanese and English. So I've got not only my fingers crossed but all my toes too...