28 May 2009

My group had the earlier meeting session with Don this morning, so we met at 9:45am in one of the NOMYC classrooms. There were three other groups there as well. The second group met at 11:15am, then we had to meet at Yoyogi-koen Station to catch the 12:40pm train. We had a 1:30pm appointment to visit Fujimoto Sou’s office in Tokyo, even though Fujimoto himself is currently in the Netherlands for a project. The guy that met with us spoke very good English since he had lived in Australia for a while. I always find it a bit strange when Asians have a non-Asian accent. We got a tour of the office, and I was especially impressed with Fujimoto’s office because they design purely through physical models. It was very similar to the school studio setup, and I had never seen so many models at one time in my life. It was so astounding! It definitely looked like a cool place to work! At the end, we were each given an autographed copy of Fujimoto’s more recent book, and we were all thrilled. What a great experience overall!
From Fujimoto’s office, we all headed back to the NOMYC. We grabbed lunch at Matsuya, and Derrick paid for my meal since I had cut his hair. I tried the new item which was tuna sashimi, potato, and ginger over rice for 490 yen. It was really good, so I will probably be buying that again. By the time we returned to the NOMYC, we were all ready for a nap. I only meant to nap for about an hour, but it turned into a much later nap. I woke-up around 7pm and worked vigorously on finishing up my scholarship application. The deadline is May 29th, so I wanted to make sure I got it done with a day to spare or so just in case I hit any problems. I finished it around 11pm and submitted it via email. I then Skyped and hung out in the guys’ lounge since the girls’ side had no more internet. Four of my classmates came back very drunk later, so I was very amused by their drunkenness. Shae, Derrick, Jeff, Karen, and I just hung out and watched the Dan, John, Scot, and Zach humiliate themselves. It was really funny.
Tomorrow we have another office visit scheduled for 10am at Kengo Kuma’s office. Kuma is out of the office as well, but I’m excited to see his office since he is really famous as well.