Day 2 (5/19) TOKYO

Tuesday. First stop is the all girls university. We listened to a translated speech from the woman president. She basically only talked about the swine flu- but overall it went well and she was grateful to have us as guests. She gave us a really gracious gift: a decorative towel that is used for wrapping gifts and a student designed notepad. Charlie made a speech in Japanese and it really impressed everyone. We got to observe a Japanese Tea Ceremony class as well as a calligraphy class. Most of the symbols were transformed from Chinese characters. A few of us got to participate in this event including myself and it was interesting. All of the Japanese classrooms are extremely quiet compared to U.S. classroom settings. The students generally don't ask questions in class-- they are so quiet! The classrooms are really nice too. All rooms have sliding doors and big windows that span the entire wall showcasing the city. Sounds like Walker COB right? Ha!
ERNEST & YOUNG: Top 5 in accounting firms. At this point everyone was exhausted. We had 3 or 4 sleepers during the meeting and one playing on a blackberry. It seemed a little rude. Tom, the executive, gave a brief overview of the company, current economic situation; real casual, and he also had a finance/banking guy and a Nissan guy from Holland there to talk to us as well. It really wasn't as informative as I would have expected, but it was still helpful and I definately learn something new at each company visit. Next, Tom made reservations for us at a restaurant that George Bush ate at when he was in Tokyo and also a scene in the movie Kill Bill was replicated after this specific restaurant...how unique!! He bought everyone 2 rounds of beer and bought everyone's meal (we each threw in 1000 yen to help.) The meal was tapas, so we continuously got served small dish after small dish. It was incredibly fancy Japanese food. I sat at the end of the table by Jessie and reallly engaged in some good conversations with her. She has traveled all around the globe adn said that Tokyo is her favorite. She was very insightful and was really willing to help me circle places on my metro map that would be good to go to. After our extravagant dinner, Tom said he would take us out to a fun bar, so we ended up at a place that had extravagant decor with big red leather circular booths adn shiny black walls/floor. He was absolutely ridiculous- throwing 10,000 yen on the table fo rus to take a taxi back; he even bought us all a round of beers. We danced like crazy and had a super fun time. Tom definately started getting wild, making silly faces and dancing like nuts...and he's like my dad's age! Riding home was interesting too- Jake went up to two taxis and couldn't figure out why they wouldn't take us. Then I ran up to the cab ahead of those two and the guy accepted. We came to realize that the first two cabs let the first guy in line get the first business. How nice; they are very courteous with stuff like that.