So the next morning we got up and checked out. The hotel guy was nice enough to let us leave our bags there for awhile, because we couldn't check into the Keio Plaza Hotel (where the JET conference was) until noon. We headed over to the Imperial Palace again, hoping to see the gardens this time, since it wasn't raining. Once we got to Tokyo station, we headed towards the palace in an underground shopping area. We stumbled across a wonderful deli / marketplace where we bought lunch. They had a mix of Western deli foods and Japanese foods, so it was great. I had a bagel, a pretzel, and a sandwich. It was all really delicious, and I haven't been able to find bagels or pretzels since I came to Japan. Nearby was a pharmacy with A&W Cream Soda and Root Beer. Having a root beer with my meal made things pretty perfect in my book.

We walked towards the palace and came to a park area with many fountains (pictures: 1 2 3 4 5 6). We had seen it on the rainy day, but now it looked much better (as you might imagine). We stopped to eat lunch by the fountains, which was a very popular thing to do, judging from the number of people there. Lunch was great. Then we headed to the gardens, only to discover that they are closed twice a week. I think the days were Monday and Friday. So we decided we would have to save that for our next trip to Tokyo. We headed back to the hotel and changed into our dress clothes. Then we hurried over to the hotel, which was located in the government district of Shinjuku. Shinjuku has the nicest hotels in Tokyo.

The hotel is nice, but a bit older than some. They let us register for the conference and drop off our luggage in a big room. However, they refused to give us our keys because they were afraid everyone would skip the first part of the conference that afternoon. We had an opening ceremony which was a couple of speeches, followed by an hour and a half key note address. The key note speaker was a woman who has done a lot of experiential education work. She is something like President of Outward Bound Japan. I found her speech interesting, but a little too long. Also, I'm not sure she knew that much about the sort of teaching a lot of us JETs do. She had a lot of views on education, but I'm not sure how many of them could be applied to our jobs. It's possible they could be, but she didn't explain how at all. The speaker also had a tendency to use language that was perceived by many people as a bit simple, even condescending. I know Victoria didn't like it, and she said a lot of other Brits were probably put off by it too.

Once the speech ended, things turned a bit chaotic. In the big ballroom there were about 1000 people. However, none of us had our room keys, so they wanted us to all go to a room to collect them. However, their plan didn't seem to deal well with the fact that we all had to get to this room and wait in line. So they decided to start at one end of the ballroom and have the others remain seated until the first group had left. Anyway, the first people left and went up the escalator into the room above the ballroom. They probably got their keys and luggage quickly and left. However, the elevators in the hotel don't work efficiently, so they quickly ended up in a line waiting for the elevators. Then the next group started up the escalator and ran into the first group, causing a pile-up on the escalator. I was still waiting in the ballroom, on the very opposite side of the room from where people were being allowed to leave. They made an announcement that there was a huge back-up and that we'd have to wait for a long time. Now, call me crazy, but it should've been obvious that something like this would happen. In fact, the best way of doing it would have been to give us our keys ahead of time. Barring that, why not have each prefecture meet in the big ballroom and pass out keys to us there. It would've been a lot simpler. Apparently the same back-up happened the year before too!

Anyway, about an hour later I finally made it out of the big ballroom and got my key. After waiting in line for the elevator I finally made it to my room. It turns out that Victoria was rooming with Natalie, a JET who is also dating another JET at the conference. I basically managed to convince my roommate to room with Natalie's boyfriend, so that he could then switch with Victoria, meaning that the couples could room together. It worked out quite well, but required a little switching and a really nice ex-roommate of mine.

That night a large group of us headed to Shibuya, a really lively entertainment district with bright lights everywhere (and six giant Matrix Reloaded advertisements!). It is a lot like the Times Square of Tokyo. We were quite hungry because we got started late and decided to go to an Indian restaurant we found. It was quite nice. Afterwards we wandered around until we found a chain English pub, called The Hub. It wasn't that great, but it served our purpose of finding someplace to drink and talk. Victoria and I got a late train back and fell asleep. However, some people stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, which probably wasn't a good idea considering there were seminars all the next day.

I have to admit that I found some of the JETs' behavior irresponsible. I'm not trying to sound all high and mighty, but our contracting organizations paid for our hotel, our travel, gave us a lot of extra spending money, and paid our salary during the trip. We essentially got a big bonus for coming to Tokyo. Yet some of the JETs didn't go to a single seminar during the conference. I can understand skipping out on one seminar if you were too tired to get anything from it. Then you could rest and attend the other seminars. However, missing them all isn't fair to the JET Programme.

So Tuesday we had more seminars all day. They were actually a lot better than I expected them to be. I didn't have high hopes, but many of the seminars were quite interesting. I went to one on life as a second-year JET, classroom motivation strategies, elementary school teaching, and using drama in the classroom.

That night I told Victoria that we couldn't do anything with anyone else. We'd spent every other night with other people, so we had a private date instead. We went to a really nice Spanish restaurant that my neighbor Elita had recommended. I guess she went there one time before, and one of her teacher's friends owns the place. The food was pretty good. It was much better than the restaurant in Sendai, which wasn't horrible, but wasn't that authentic. This one was more so.

On Wednesday we went to the rest of the conference. Victoria and I went to the same seminars, one on life as a JET, by two guys who started a company selling English song CDs for elementary schools. The songs are about English topics you can teach. Most nursery rhymes aren't that helpful as far as basic English goes, so these songs focus around grammar points. Generally I've found the songs work best for 1-5 graders. My 6th graders seem to think they are too cool for the songs. They didn't talk about teaching elementary school as much as I would've hoped they would. Instead they talked about how being a JET was important, and about how to we have a great job. Not really a speech I needed to hear.

The second seminar was about finding a job after Japan. The guy seemed to know a lot, but he wasn't the most dynamic of speakers. I think he said some good things though. I probably wouldn't have gone to this seminar, but my other choice was about cross-cultural communication, which sounded really dull. After the seminar the conference was over.

We went in search of another Mexican restaurant, but we didn't find it. Instead we ate at an Italian restaurant, that was quite good. The waiters were quite nice too. Generally I've found that service in Japan is pretty good. There's no tipping in Japan, so I think it proves to me that tipping doesn't really equal good service. However, I have to admit that in Germany the service was really bad, and they don't have much tipping. We took the shinkansen home, which was nice. I'd never been on it before. It is quite fast and got us to Niigata in no time. On the way we got to view a pretty sunset. From Niigata we had to take a limited express back to Toyama, which took longer than the whole shinkansen trip (despite being a much shorter distance). It will be much more convenient in 2010 when they finish the shinkansen to Toyama. Thus ended our trip to Tokyo.