The week progressed with more orientation activities, of which the tea ceremony was the most fun.  It was my favorite, so I dedicated an entire page to it and I won't cover it here.

Most of the time this week was spent at GLOCOM.  I have no idea what that's an acronym for, but it's the building in which our orientation activities were held.  Dr. Jones covered a lot of information about our projects and Japanese culture to help us adjust our expectations of our stay in the country.

The highlight of most days was the evening, when we were free to go out and get to know the other American participants.  I felt a little out of place as the youngest and least experienced teacher, but I quickly got over that and began to enjoy the company of the other teachers.  Strangely, while I have met people from Japan before, I've never met anyone from North Dakota.  Or South Dakota either, for that matter.  So the FMF experience is broadening my horizons in some unexpected ways as well.

We also attended a presentation on interlinkages by Dr. Jerry Velasquez of United Nations University.  It was good to hear about the interconnectedness of the world's problems and therefore the necessary degree of interconnectedness in their solutions.  I've been trying to drive that point home with my students, so it was nice to hear someone with more authority echo my sentiments.  Nothing occurs in isolation, and we must stop treating the world's problems like they are isolated issues.

The technology coordinators from our schools showed up on Wednesday night in time for the reception following the press conference, but I did not get to meet Shibahara until the following day.  He's had a broken leg and ended up needing to rest a little that night.  The following day at GLOCOM we introduced ourselves.  He seemed like a wonderful man, and it proved to be the correct impression.  He has shared himself, his time, and his home with me and I cannot thank him enough.

That night several of us went out karaoking with our partners.  Shibahara has quite a voice!  Me, not so much.  We did some rousing renditions of Beatles' tunes, and I heard a version of Hotel California that I never want to hear again, but all in all it was a blast!  I discovered the word for my karaoke abilities - onchi!  

Hopefully these pictures capture some of the essence of Tokyo, from the sometimes odd architecture, to the vertically oriented streets, to the religious aspects of the culture.