Last night we had a lovely dinner at a restaurant in Korea Town in Shin-Okubo with some of Don’s grad school friends (left-to-right): Ken, a professor from the US; Bao-san, a professor originally from China who now lives in Osaka; Jaipim, an architect in Thailand (but who lived in Osaka for several years as a child); and her husband, Iwamoto-san, originally from Japan but who now lives in Thailand. At the table, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai were all spoken (though obviously mostly Japanese), but since I was the only monoglot, they all also indulged me by speaking lots of English, as well.
We ate at a low table, as you can see, and were probably supposed to sit with our legs under us or cross-legged, but since we spent about four hours at dinner, I eventually had to give up and be a gauche American and stretch my legs out (luckily, I saw other folks around the restaurant doing this too, though more surreptitiously than I was doing) – and still, I could barely walk when it was time to leave! Sigh. Maybe I’ll learn over the next two months….
Delicious food, though!
Tokyo Tidbits 
The first thing I thought of when I saw the picture was how does that feel if you sit a while? Looks like a great get together. Did everyone else know each other already?