Today we had a quiz on all of the lectures that we had throughout our stay in Japan. We were able to use the notes we took during the lectures on the quiz. We were done by 11:00 and had the rest of the day free. I arranged a lunch with Akiko Takahashi and Akiko Arai, two employees of Wellington Management that I communicated with during my last co-op. I met them at their office and we went out for Chinese food. It was nice to see Akiko T. again as I had met her in Boston during my co-op. I had a very good time talking to them about my travels around Japan and the things that I have learned about their country. They found it interesting that I would choose Japan as a foreign country to study in. I told them I wanted to learn more about the people, culture, and see the sites of Tokyo and other places. I enjoyed our lunch and was glad I was able to meet them during my trip.
The afternoon when I returned from lunch I went exploring the many guitar stores that are around the university. I have never seen so many guitars in one area and there were shops that were dedicated to only Gibson guitars. I was tempted to buy one but decided against it. The area of Jinbocho is very neat and it is known for all of their used book stores. I am glad we stayed in this area because it was pretty centrally located to take the trains.
That night we had a few events planned with the Meiji University students and professors. They had a farewell dinner on the top floor of the university tower with all the students and some of the faculty. Everyone was dressed up and there was an excellent buffet of food. Some of the students from Northeastern and Meiji gave speeches about their thoughts on the trip. This was the first point where people started to get somewhat emotional as we heard what the Meiji students had to say about spending time with us. After this dinner we went to an Izakaya which is basically a Japanese bar. We went with most of the 3rd year students and had a great time drinking, eating, and singing karaoke. The professor from Meiji is such a character, always joking around with us, and he sung a few American songs. After this even was over we were outside the izakaya and the students surprised us with a gift for each of us. They gave us these book bags that had Meiji University written on them. It was so nice of them to do that. It was funny that earlier in the day I was at their bookstore buying a t-shirt and saw one of the students and she looked really surprised to see me. I found out later that she was there to buy our gifts and didn’t want me to notice what she was doing. That night we went to karaoke and took over a whole floor of the place because we had about 30 people in the group. It was fun singing songs with the Meiji students and was a good way to end our trip. We had the rooms reserved until 5 am but some of us left around 2 am. It was such an amazing night and it was so nice of the university and students to do all of this for us.
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