Professional Attire

June 14, 2005



Breakfast was in the large banquet hall that basically turned into our headquarters for a great deal of the Tokyo part of the program. Despite the presence of 200 of us at some point during the serving period, the buffet lines moved quickly and efficiently. I think if there was two things I would bring back to the US it would be this efficiency without freakish control and the poise and manner that has flowed from our hosts and hostesses without the disingenuousness it might have.

This was a day of presentations in the morning and afternoon.

In the morning, we heard a presentation by Tsutomu Kimura (“My English friends call me Tom; please call me Tom.”), the President of the National Institution for Academic Degrees. This was actually quite illuminating and very easy to listen to. His power point presentation gave a great visual for the statistics he quoted, and he talked with ease and appropriate humor. Apparently, the Japanese schools are not doing all that well, at least in comparison to how they were doing, and this is tied to the behavior of the students. (!!) We received a copy of the power point, and I took some notes on it. I found this lecture to be quite stimulating and interesting. I am very intereted in the metacognitive view of education, I think, particularly the sociology of schools.

In the afternoon, we watched samples of traditional Japanese theater. The first was a style I knew nothing about called Kyogen. The performers were two white Americans who performed a comedic play about a man who wanted to steal a dwarf tree from his neighbor and what happened once he was discovered. The gentleman also discussed different types of masks.

The second lecturer of the afternoon was a Japanese American who’d come to Japan to do his doctoral dissertation on Japanese performance arts and ended becoming a traditional Japanese dancer himself. He had a slide presentation which included quicktime movies (Mac equipment, I noticed) He never did finish the dissertation and now lives in Japan.

He had quite a lot to say, more than I could write down, and his visuals were key. I think this might well be a video I order.

The highlight of this presentation for me was being able to watch a dancer put on her make-up as he described it. She came in already with her hair in a skull cap. Afterwards, he sang with a woman who was playing a shamimasen and another man, and the dancer danced. I think that at one point, as a vocalist, he "had all the notes", and it was unclear to me whether some of his minor vocal difficulties were due to the fact that he had just been talking or what. I did enjoy this demonstration lecture very much as well.

We had an opportunity to have a little time on our own before the reception at night. I did get an email out and was able to clean up a bit.

My friend Reggie has been giving me a hard time about my clothes, however. Some of the people here are totally dressed to the nines, and brought the suitcases to do that. This really is a deluxe hotel, which is a different style of travel than I am used to. I could have had more dressier outfits had I wanted, but I think that there will be a laundry issue later that I will be able to avoid, one that involves time and expense.

The reception was fun. There was a certain amount of relatively brief speechmaking. I stood in the front for this and I think it helped me enjoy it more than I might have, although I am so auditorally oriented, who knows. I circulated and chit chatted with this and that person. There was a lot of Western food served, which I always find so disappointing. I am not interested in having a watered down experience, although this allow a comfort level that I haven’t experienced to the same degree as before. It was officially over at 8:30, but I bailed at 8, and I think there were folks who’d left before that, judging by how much the crowd had thinned out.

After I went back to my room to change out of the dress clothes, I wandered outside on my own for a while. Bascially, I just walked up and down streets. I had to buy a nail clipper which was easy enough to do, although I really felt the language barrier. I think I am not an unfriendly person in general, at least on most days now, and I really felt the absence of being able to speak very much, especially given the degree to which people are very polite.

The clerk in the drugstore gave me a free sample of bath salts, which I haven’t used yet. The bath salts in the bathroom at the hotel are pretty strange. One says it is bergamot, and I have no idea what bergamot smells like, so can’t really judge the smell on its own merits. When you put it in the bath water at first, it is a very bright yellow color. However, if its authenticity is at all related to the peppermint salts, I doubt it is real bergamot scent. The peppermint is decided not peppermint, and it is a fantastic blue shade at first. However, neither are irritating physically in any way and smell OK, so I may use them again.

I went into a fairly large bookstore where, ding ding ding, the books were all in Japanese. (!) I still do not get the written language of course, although I look intently at kanji when I can and can pick out a lot of characters. I am sort of making myself do that. I did purchase a few postcards, however.

Although I wandered a bit too far in one direction and decided to retrace my footsteps to get back to where I was, I felt pretty safe out there on my own. I might have gone into some place for a drink, but I chickened out in the end. I did go into a pachinko parlor which was a noisy, smoky and utterly confusing place, but I did not play as I could not figure it out. Did go into an arcade and play “Out Run” twice, got the extra time twice, which was pretty fun. I was the only female in there.

When I got back, I worked a little on this journal, and then all of a sudden, just crashed.