Day 29: November 15th, Saturday

The past two days have been big university-related days.

Yesterday Y. and I had lunch with the president, which was fun because for about the first 15 minutes I didn't realize it was him. Several factors contributed to this. We were a few minutes early so Y. and I were waiting outside his building, when someone walked up and said hi. It seemed odd to me that the president would just waltz on up the sidewalk instead of being in his office, which is where we were supposed to meet him. Also, Y. said she had never met him, but when this man approached she didn't really introduce herself the way you would to a new person. She also told me he didn't speak English, but this person spoke English fairly well.

Waiting to meet the president.

After the introductions (and again, he didn't introduce himself by name--I think he assumed, as any normal person would have, that I should know who he was), we went to his office, where he had me sign the Presidential Guest Book. He brought out a tray with a selection of very nice writing instruments, and showed me the people who had signed before. There was the president of the University of South Korea, with beautiful calligraphy writing. Of course, my handwriting is absolutely abysmal (in fact, I only print now--the last time I wrote cursive I couldn't read it myself), but I tried my best and let's face it, no one is ever going to read it so it doesn't matter much.

He presented me with a gift, a Kansai University necktie (at which point I promptly kicked Y. under the table for telling me that I didn't need to bring him a gift--even though I had a gift for him in my hand at my office), and led us to lunch. And at that point I realized he was the president and not an assistant to the president. Oh well. The lunch was fine, it was a nice conversation, and we had some tasty food. After the lunch, I asked Y. why she told me not to bring along the gift, since now I felt bad that he had given me one. Her reply was that he hadn't given me a gift, the university had, so it was OK.

Today was the third talk I've given while here, and was supposed to be the big important one of the trip. (The first was at the conference in Kagoshima, the second was to Y.'s undergraduate class, entitled, after translation error, "The practical importance of social psychology".) This was the weirdest one, because the audience consisted of 10 people, including Y., her grad student, a translator, and a student who fell asleep and left halfway through the talk. Y. confessed a "secret," as she called it, which is that many faculty don't like to attend English language events because they fear having to speak and show their deficiencies at the language. The funny thing is, most of the faculty I've encountered who speak English apologize for their poor skills but speak really, really well. (The president mentioned several times that his English was poor, but aside from his vocabulary, he spoke like a near-native speaker.) No problem. It was a talk I had never given before, so it was somewhat relieving to give it for the first time in front of a small audience. I'm interested to see how the talk at University of Tokyo goes.

After, we met up with Kate and the boys and went to dinner, where Archer entertained everyone with his description of the toy store. (It's been a big topic of conversation lately.)
There was other entertainment as well:

Y. made a paper popper for Archer, which was then passed around the table for each of us to try our hand at.

O., a researcher at a nearby university who joined us for dinner, was forced by Archer to sing him songs! I think she was really, really embarrassed to do it, but she complied with his request and sang a few kids songs.

Archer looking for shrimp, or whatever I was having him search for to keep him calm for a bit. (This was towards the end of dinner, when things were getting a bit much.)

Traditional dinners are still influenced by the season, in terms of both ingredients and presentation style.

Following dinner, we both decided that we would not take the boys to anymore restaurants without chairs and with 28 dishes per course. It's just too much fun for them to run all around and too stressful to keep track of them plus our chopsticks plus chopstick resting dish plus tofu spoon plus etc. etc. etc. So the night of my talk at University of Tokyo, I may be going out for dinner with the group by myself. We'll see!

Bruiser! Malcolm's walking very well but, of course, still taking tumbles now and again.