15 May 2009

This morning we had individual meeting times scheduled with Don, so my group’s was the last one at 11:25am. It was nice since this allowed us to sleep in a bit longer than all of the other groups. I actually thought I was supposed to register for my classes this morning at 6am, but once waking up at 5:30am and unsuccessfully attempting to register for fall classes, I realized that I was a day early since Japan is a day ahead of the U.S. What a silly mistake I made! I’ll just have to make sure to wake-up at the same time tomorrow morning so I can successfully register for classes. Haha. After meeting with Don, we decided as a group to visit our project site again, then afterwards, we did some shopping with Norio. He had to buy a few things, so I just tagged along to browse.
This evening, Don had a meeting scheduled with Henri de Hahn, the head of the architecture department at Cal Poly. Henri is visiting Japan as a quick vacation with his wife, and he wanted us to visit the Park Hyatt Hotel which he was staying at. It was located on the 41st floor in a high rise building in Shinjuku. We walked there as a class and arrived around 6pm. Henri and his wife gave us a short tour of the high scale hotel, then we had two tours scheduled for the two types of suites they offered to their guests. The Hyatt was nice, but it still seemed a bit over-the-top for the amount a room probably cost, and there were plenty of amenities in the rooms which I would consider unnecessary. I think living in Japan has made me into more of a minimalist, so the excessive living arrangement in the Hyatt was almost distasteful and financially unpractical. Henri and his wife were also very showy with their status and money, which also turned many of us off. They kept trying to get fees waved or just walked into formal dining areas without asking, so I was almost embarrassed to be associated with the group. The employees and other guests obviously weren’t happy about our presence, so a small group of us just stood in the lobby until Henri was done showing off.
Since the bar at the Hyatt had a cover charge per person, Henri decided he would take us out on the town to tour the Shinjuku area. By then, we were really unhappy, since we had obviously already visited this area many times. We did not need to have the head of the architecture department give us a tour of a place in Japan, especially since we had already been there. About half of the students were completely trying to suck up to Henri, and the rest of us just kept to ourselves. Don ended up leading us to a drinking restaurant in Shinjuku, where there was a 300 yen cover charge per person. I ordered chicken brisket yakitori and cheese wontons, along with a coke since there was a one drink, one food minimum. Don ended up paying for the meal since he figured he owed us for some stuff anyways, so I was glad that I ordered more than one food item.
After dinner, Henri returned to the Hyatt, and Don left us on our own. I headed back to the NOMYC on the local train with Jeff, Blake, Derrick, and Shae. Once getting off at the Sangu-bashi station, I stopped by the SunKus convenience store and bought a huge Coca-Cola can for 100 yen. Once back at the NOMYC, I took a shower and went to bed. I have to register for class tomorrow, so I wanted to make sure I got plenty of rest beforehand.