SEE ME USE MY LAW ICON.
Jan. 15th, 2010 12:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tammaiyaOKAY I KNOW I TAKE FOREVER, but a month after the fact, the continuation/completion post of my adventures with the competition! Now moved to Japan, and consequently with a lot more photos.
Monday 30/11: Arrival in Japan
By the time we'd arrived, it was already pitch black outside. We got out of the airport with refreshingly little trauma-- I checked out rent phone prices on my way out but fortunately didn't get one, since on top of them being expensive my prepaid turned out to still work. We caught the Narita Express, presumably to Tokyo station, but for the life of me I don't remember that bit. I remember talking to Jenny and Ben on the Narita Express, I remember hauling my crap from the subway station to our minshuku and WISHING FOR DEATH, but I don't recall getting onto the subway. Which with that many people and that much luggage should be memorable. Maybe I just repressed the trauma. I hate luggage. orz
There was a bit of a kerfuffle at the minshuku because they'd gotten the numbers of girls and boys the wrong way around and so they'd prepared two boy rooms instead of two girl rooms. As one of the people who ended up in the second "boy" room I was totally willing to just roll with it (not least because the boys were on the ground floor) but the minshuku staff and Jenny were quite anxious about it so they ended up setting up a room for us next to the other girls' room. It was smaller and there were stairs involved so I was a little grumpy at first, but Kareem helped me get my suitcase up the stairs and it turned out the corner of the new room-- i.e. the area around my futon-- was the only place we managed to leech internet so it in fact ended up being for the best. XD
The original plan was to do some prepping, but Mamoru (who had come separately and gone to see his parents on arrival) didn't get back until late and the rest of us were all pretty buggered anyway so we basically just had baths and collapsed in our respective rooms. And, you know, discovered the leeched internet.
Tuesday 1/12
Up we got in the morning to head off to TouDai (AKA Tokyo University) where we would be shown to the classroom where we could prep for the competition. I think I managed to be out of bed and ready to go relatively on time that day. Actually, we took great relish in the fact that it was Kareem (who'd been to see his girlfriend and was coming separately), our captain, who was slightly late on that one particular occasion. XD
TouDai is really pretty in autumn. There are a lot of big trees with golden yellow leaves lining the paths and so on. I took photos-- not that day, excpet with my phone, because I'd forgotten my camera, but I did take photos. A lot of the buildings look really lovely from the outside, and the gates are totally awesome. The campus is HUGE.
The insides of the building we were in on that first day (a library of some description, I think) were really old and a little run down. But given how old TouDai is, that's not terribly surprising. Although I was a little disturbed by the signs in the toilets being like, please wrap your sanitary products when you throw them out! because I have never seen those before and... is it that much of a problem at TouDai? O__o;
Attempts to find internet in the general area were fruitless. Even Starbucks failed us. It turned out there was an internet cafe some distance away, but, well, expensive and not really conducive to studying so it was only worth it for when we needed something in particular.
Around midday, I had to eat, which meant everyone got a lunch break and we all went to the TouDai cafeteria. It was good, as Japanese cafeteria food is, but I feel I can safely say it loses to my university's cafeteria. I didn't actually get to eat there this time despite staying in the general area, though. TRAGIC AND EPIC FAIL.
Kent came to talk to us after lunch about our memorandums and stuff (we made it just in time with finishing our meals). He was pretty happy with them, which was good, and he was happy with how I'd taken his advice onboard re: structuring the fraud and mistake arguments, so yay. o/
Then I spent the afternoon drawing new characters to use in the negotiation and occasionally contributing to the tactics discussion. It was work, okay. I was the designated art-chick. :|And these are the characters:
Nego-zamurai
Nego-ninja
Nego-zilla
(My personal favourite is Nego-zamurai, and it's certainly the one I spent most time on, but I also quite like Nego-ninja.)
What was kind of hilarious was that we'd all come from Australian daylight savings summer straight to Japanese winter, and so when we realised it was suddenly dark we were all OH HOLY SHIT WHERE DID THE DAY GO WE'VE WASTED SO MUCH TIME!! thinking it was already like, 8pm, when it was in fact... 4.30.
Us: ... PHEW.
We did end up staying kind of late-ish, grabbing dinner at a ramen shop on the way back, but our day's work was not done, because after we got back the Japanese team stayed up really late in my room working on our negotiation memorandum. orz Jenny swapped beds with Melissa. I finished my part early-ish and wanted to sleeeeep but the boys were still working. And then when they were done I had to drag my carcass back up to do a read-over. muuurgh.
Wednesday 2/12
Moved to a new classroom that was sadly far, far away. I mean, we had to walk about 10-15 minutes to get to the first gate, Akamon, and then the library we'd been studying in was through the second gate, and then far, FAR away, on a whole new block, was the third gate. orz;;; So much walking. And there was only more walking from this point onward so you'd think I'd be losing weight, but it only just managed to balance out the food. Sigh.
Both the negotiation memorandum and the counter-memorandum were supposed to be due midday on Wednesday, but they extended the deadline for the latter because of a typo in the English version of the rules regarding the word limit for the English teams. Which was ironic, because our English team submitted both by the original deadline, but the Japanese team still hadn't finished the counter-memorandum. <<
We still took our break, though, because we had a planned guided tour care by this very kind Japanese lawyer. One of his assistants (originally from Hawaii) went with us and we took taxis to the Metropolitan Police Department (yes,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_leareth, what you've been waiting to hear about), the family court, the English law firm Herbert Smith, and then finally to the International House in Roppongi for dinner.
Couldn't take photos inside the MPD for the most part, but it was really interesting. There was a police museum, and an awesome control room with a huge map of police sectors in Tokyo which could light up and zoom in and things with police at high-tech consoles with a billion touch screens monitoring calls. It was all very futuristic and awesome. The corridors were white tiled and like a rabbit warren. There was also a small movie theatre for showing promotional vids and a gift shop (although we didn't visit the latter). XD
The family court was also pretty interesting, except I was really tired and it was a struggle not to fall asleep in the small room with the judge and probation officer (loose translation, we don't have an equivalent in western courts for family courts) talking to us about how the court works. We got to see the children's interview room and the family and juvenile court rooms, though, AND take photos:
At Herbert Smith, almost the entire litigation team was made up of ex-pat Australians. XD; It was cool. They fed us kit-kats and shortbread, mmm, and told us about what their jobs are like etc. Kent said afterwards that the employment drive was so explicit he almost felt like he needed a shower. XDDD
We stayed longer than we were meant to according to the plan and kept Mr Matsuo waiting a little, oops. The International House was where the ANU Alumni dinner thing was last year, so I'd been there before, but we had what was a delicious and obviously VERY expensive meal. The kind of meal with French wines and about 7 forks. God, it was good, though.
As said above parts of the tour I couldn't take photos, but here are the ones I did take:
Former ministry of justice, across the road from the MPD.
One of the family courts. It's inside a big skyscraper.
My team-mates plus teacher in the juvenile court.
Thursday 3/12
Had a morning off. Slept in. Considered going out somewhere. Discovered it was raining; decided I couldn't be fucked, especially since I'd have another three weeks plus after the competition to go places. Stayed in my room where it was warm and dry and only left to get very late breakfast.
And yet, I still managed to run late for our mock-negotiation/prepping in the afternoon. *fail*
At least I finally remembered to bring my camera!
... But by that point it had rained and the autumn leaves weren't as spectacular. D: But have some photos anyway!
That night we had dinner with the teams from Jouichi, AKA Sophia University, at an Indian/Pakistani restaurant near their campus which is where the comp was being held. Which was right next to Yotsuya station. After a year of frequently passing that station by, I finally know what's there! it was all very exciting. The food was good, and the people we were sitting near were fun to talk to. We swapped phone numbers and it was all, let's do karaoke! which never happened because mostly Japanese people won't contact you unless you contact them first, but oh well, I'm so busy now I wouldn't have time anyway (not to mention all the karaoke I've been doing...)
And then, after the dinner, it turned out there was a Kinko's down the street so we ran off to print the poster I made and stuff. o/
When we got back we were supposed to be working and researching and stuff but I was so goddamn tired. I tried, I really did, but I kept drifting off and I ended up passing out on my futon at 10.30 which is insane for me since usually I can't sleep before midnight. I ended up sleeping like 11 hours, it was crazy.
TouDai's Akamon, famous for being where they post university entrance results.
TouDai has pretty autumn leaves.
Srsly, you guys.
Pretty trees are pretty.
... One of these things: not like the others. (This is the poster, obvs.)
Friday 4/12
Was overly sluggish getting ready, because I can deal with small amounts of sleep but I am not a morning person and the cumulative effect gets to me, so the others left without me and told me to catch up. However, I thought they meant catch up at the classroom, not at the gates, and so I proceeded to got kind of SPECTACULARLY LOST on my way to the classroom because I tried to take a shortcut and, um, failed. Epically.
I got there EVENTUALLY. After, you know, a lot of backtracking. D: And I mean, I wasn't the LAST person there... Mamoru and Kareem had gone for haircuts, admittedly, but one of the others came in after me. :<
This was a day of last minute edits to the counter-memorandum in the morning, and last minute arbitration preparations writing up answers to every possible weak point and question we might be asked, revising opening speeches, etc. Around lunchtime Melissa and I went to Yotsuya to pick up the posters, which were expensive, but DAMN, they looked pretty good. Except blown up to that size I could see all the mistakes really clearly. *twitch* Still, overall I was pretty happy. Except for the fact that apparently we'd missed the bit in the rules which said it had to have a Christmas theme. Oops. Oh well.
We left TouDai around 6 to have an early dinner with Kent and then used the big Japanese-style room they'd set aside for us at the minshuku to continue on with our work. With occasional detours to go iron shirts and stuff. I suck at ironing at the best of times, but it took me FOREVER, not least because I had to figure out how to use the portable iron and the board was small and also I've never ironed a woman's shirt before and they have a lot more darts and stuff than men's shirts. orz
Worked on arbitration stuff until about 1.30am, and then finally gave up and crawled off to bed. ungh.
Saturday 5/12: COMPETITION DAY 1
The actual arbitration didn't start until 1, but before that there was the opening ceremony and we still needed to get there and set ourselves up with all our vast amounts of luggage (and the posters, which are an added bitch to keep uncrushed), so no sleeping in for me. Ugh, luggage. I didn't even have my big suitcase because the minshuku allowed those of us returning sunday night to leave stuff there, but packing enough into my backpack so that I had everything I'd need for the next 36-ish hours and hauling it to the subway station near Tokyo Dome was enough to make me vaguely wish for death to end the back pain. T___T
We actually got there earlier than most people, which gave us time to settle in the Blue team waiting room. Or, I should say, the Blue Corporation Lounge. *snort* Photos!
Team members hard at work! (er, sort of.)
Team members ACTUALLY hard at work!
For the record: I, too, am hard at work. (Dammit, those are the earrings I lost.) Btw, we had to wear blue stuff as team blue, so Melissa and I had those flower clips.
Some of the other blue teams. I took this fairly early; there were two "Blue" rooms and this one got a lot more packed out before the opening ceremony started.
More last minute prepping and stressing, last minute dashes to buy lunch from the combini near the station, pretty much what you'd expect. The opening ceremony was... ceremony-ish. We accidentally sat in the judges and advisors area. Whoops. It had its moments, but mostly, y'know... ceremony.
Then finally... the arbitration! We got there earlier than Osaka, which gave us time to sort out our stuff and greet the judges, who were all really nice. One of them, a CEO of Hewlett Packard (!! all these important people took time to come and judge us, it was kind of humbling), had a great sense of humour and joked about giving us curtesy points when I suggested a way of setting up the desks. XD
The arbitration itself was... a little unexpected, because how it's run depends on the judges, and they were pretty happy to sit back and let one team say something and then the other team respond. It was particularly speech vs speech for the first claim-- which made me incredibly glad I'd written down what I wanted to say, because I'm fine answering questions but if you just tell me to talk and I haven't got anything planned I totally flounder. Although it had sped up somewhat by the time it reached my claim, very, "'Could not have been unaware' does not mean could have known or should have known. The end." (um. there's no way of translating "ijyou desu" that doesn't sound a bit funny in English.)
Overall... I was pretty happy with how it went. The judges seemed to favour our arguments over the other side's, there was no major Japanese fail, and at the end they had more criticisms for them than us. Plus they praised our memorandum's formatting. VICTORY OF THE FORMATTING NAZI! *strikes a heroic pose* Plus Kent was really pleased with us. o/
(Taken after the arbitration of us with the judges and the Osaka team)
After the comp there was a party for all the teams and judges etc where the poster was held. The food was good. One of the judges, a little obasan who'd apparently judged our English team, had even brighter purple hair than me, which was hilarious. A lady from Kanazawa University who'd been watching our arbitration came up to talk to me. I had to get up on a stage with a microphone and explain our poster in Japanese, which I managed to do without too much fail. XD; Overall, it was interesting. We didn't win the comp, but the poster that won (made by Kyoto University) deserved to -- we voted for it too. Which is obviously a cue for MORE PHOTOS:
Winning poster by KyouDai
TouDai's. Kinda blurry. You can see ours in the corner.
Ours-- in POSTER FORM. (I kept it. Yes, through a month of being in Japan and three planes. I gave the spare away, though.)
After that there was more hauling of crap to the competition minshuku, which... was a whole 2 or 3 streets away from the old one. orz;; Plus, in a failing of the Hitchhiker's Guide maxim, I'd left my towel in my big suitcase (which, truthfully, I hadn't thought about it at all, but even if I HAD it wouldn't have fit in my backpack), and the new minshuku made you pay 300 yen to rent a towel whereas the old one supplied them free. IRONY CUDGEL. But no fucking way I was missing out on my furo, and also, 10 minutes away or not, I wasn't feeling particularly energised to walk to the other place to see if I could grab my towel out of my suitcase and walk back, so I shelled out the money. SIGH. On the bright side I made a new friend~ The TouDai English team were in the furo at the same time as us and I discovered that one of them, Megumi, actually lived in Canberra for a few years during highschool. In the same suburb as me, in fact! this would be more insanely surprising if I did not live in the suburb with all the embassies and thus embassy staff residencies, but it's still a pretty impressive coincidence. Plus she was just really nice and fun to talk to.
By the way, here is a visual depiction of how we were all feeling when we reached our room:
i.e., not in the least inclined for further study. Or indeed, movement. Luckily the combini was nearby for a dinner run. I was dreading having to stay up really late and not getting any sleep, because the negotiation started at 9 in the morning and we had to get there early to set up and stuff, but in the end we got a whole 6 hours. Yes, "whole" six hours. It felt like a lot, and given that Megumi told me the next day that her team got about 2 hours sleep, I was willing to take that as a victory...
Sunday 6/12: COMPETITION DAY 2/FREEEDOMMMM!!!!
Up bright and early-- okay, early, not particularly bright-- in our aim to arrive at the competition by about 8 or 8.30 so we could prepare (the negotiation started at 9.30). Given that we had to haul our crap back to the train station and get to Yotsuya again, I'm sure you can imagine how early that required getting up. orz BUT I MANAGED IT, OKAY. I was not one of the people running late!!! When I really need to, I can do these things. o/
We did get there before Kyuushuu University's team, but only just, and we ended up compromising on how we'd been planning to set the desks up because they needed to use the projector. A little intimidating. Still, it was good that we'd brought water and tim-tams for the other side and the judges, it was a good way to start off.
As for the negotiation, KyuuDai were really good, but that can actually be a good thing with negotiation. We didn't feel like it went too one-sided, and the whole thing was very friendly and relaxed with a lot of openness and give-and-take. I even got to use my new character designs-- I thought the chance had passed, and then the other side suggested in exchange for dropping Negozero we could maybe get new characters and I was like, YES! CHANCE TO SHOW OUR PREPARATION!!! and whipped out the designs. XD;;; But everyone, especially the judges, were really impressed by the designs (Judges: These could be turned into real salable goods!) so haha, ego boost. There are some things we could have done slightly better, but overall we got a deal which was within and in many cases surpassed our minimum requirements, so we were happy.
Anyway, there was a lunch for everyone after the negotiation was over. I spent so much time being a "social butterfly", as Kate put it, that I missed seeing Jenny off. orz I had fun, though. I got contact details from Megumi and had a really fun conversation with the Kyushu team-- we actually forgot to take a photo with both teams and the judges when we finished, but at least I got one of me and Mamoru and the Kyushu team:
Finally there was the closing ceremony, which after a lot of speeches and half of the students falling asleep (and getting told off for it by one of our judges who was giving a speech) culminated in the announcement of the results. It was quite nail-biting, because they announce the top five places in reverse and when it got down to top place, four universities that have previously won or come second more than once -- TouDai, Kyoto, Hitotsubashi, and us-- hadn't been named. In the end the winner was TouDai, which, well, my feeling was somewhere between "yappari" and "sasuga" which I can't properly translate but basically... yep, that's TouDai, all right. Oh well, at least (as our teacher said) we didn't cry, unlike Hitotsubashi. XD;;
Then of course we grabbed our crap, I congratulated Megumi, and those of us going back to the old minshuku headed in that direction. The four of us were the only ones in the place... but us three girls didn't get to have a bath because the women's bath wasn't prepared. orz GENDER BIAS!!
What followed was an evening of FUN AND REVELRY and me not believing I was actually FREE OF UNI for over 2 months, oh my god, I WAITED SO LONG FOR THAT MOMENT. Our night of celebration and team bonding and so forth was heaps of fun, seriously. We went over to the apartment of an alumni from the comp and met him and his BF, who were both very nice and interesting people, and then we went out for ramen and karaoke in Roppongi. It was already 11 when we went into the karaoke, and we stayed for 4 hours with a non-stop supply of alcohol. Imagine that, if you will. I am bound to a vow of what goes on tour stays on tour, but let me just say that there were some VERY DRUNK PEOPLE and a lot of loud singing of classics such as Love Shack. And dancing on chairs. And tables. I wasn't the one table-dancing, I was still capable of worrying that it would collapse despite being really very sloshed. XD; Oh my god, though, the bill was ASTRONOMICAL (thank god we got shouted) and we had to catch a taxi back because it was waaaaaaaay past last train and my throat was so raw I thought I wouldn't talk for a week (I was really thankful to mum for packing me all those throat lozenges, because actually I was fine in the morning... afternoon... whenever I awoke...) but it was seriously SO much fun.
There would be photos FUN AND REVELRY here, except I don't actually have any. I have a photo taken as we walked through the themepark near Tokyo Dome, though, and one taken at the minshuku before we went out that makes me look like a creepy stalker?
GLOWING BALL OF LIGHT!
And again with Kate's camera. Better people:glowy ball ratio, but I'm really laden down with crap and my handbag (which looks more like a santa sack, jesus) is kinda in the way...
Imma creepy stalker. :D
And now, after all that tl;dr, I end this post! There will be some to follow about my loafing around Tokyo and Sendai. Hopefully the pics make up for the word vomit. XD;;;
Monday 30/11: Arrival in Japan
By the time we'd arrived, it was already pitch black outside. We got out of the airport with refreshingly little trauma-- I checked out rent phone prices on my way out but fortunately didn't get one, since on top of them being expensive my prepaid turned out to still work. We caught the Narita Express, presumably to Tokyo station, but for the life of me I don't remember that bit. I remember talking to Jenny and Ben on the Narita Express, I remember hauling my crap from the subway station to our minshuku and WISHING FOR DEATH, but I don't recall getting onto the subway. Which with that many people and that much luggage should be memorable. Maybe I just repressed the trauma. I hate luggage. orz
There was a bit of a kerfuffle at the minshuku because they'd gotten the numbers of girls and boys the wrong way around and so they'd prepared two boy rooms instead of two girl rooms. As one of the people who ended up in the second "boy" room I was totally willing to just roll with it (not least because the boys were on the ground floor) but the minshuku staff and Jenny were quite anxious about it so they ended up setting up a room for us next to the other girls' room. It was smaller and there were stairs involved so I was a little grumpy at first, but Kareem helped me get my suitcase up the stairs and it turned out the corner of the new room-- i.e. the area around my futon-- was the only place we managed to leech internet so it in fact ended up being for the best. XD
The original plan was to do some prepping, but Mamoru (who had come separately and gone to see his parents on arrival) didn't get back until late and the rest of us were all pretty buggered anyway so we basically just had baths and collapsed in our respective rooms. And, you know, discovered the leeched internet.
Tuesday 1/12
Up we got in the morning to head off to TouDai (AKA Tokyo University) where we would be shown to the classroom where we could prep for the competition. I think I managed to be out of bed and ready to go relatively on time that day. Actually, we took great relish in the fact that it was Kareem (who'd been to see his girlfriend and was coming separately), our captain, who was slightly late on that one particular occasion. XD
TouDai is really pretty in autumn. There are a lot of big trees with golden yellow leaves lining the paths and so on. I took photos-- not that day, excpet with my phone, because I'd forgotten my camera, but I did take photos. A lot of the buildings look really lovely from the outside, and the gates are totally awesome. The campus is HUGE.
The insides of the building we were in on that first day (a library of some description, I think) were really old and a little run down. But given how old TouDai is, that's not terribly surprising. Although I was a little disturbed by the signs in the toilets being like, please wrap your sanitary products when you throw them out! because I have never seen those before and... is it that much of a problem at TouDai? O__o;
Attempts to find internet in the general area were fruitless. Even Starbucks failed us. It turned out there was an internet cafe some distance away, but, well, expensive and not really conducive to studying so it was only worth it for when we needed something in particular.
Around midday, I had to eat, which meant everyone got a lunch break and we all went to the TouDai cafeteria. It was good, as Japanese cafeteria food is, but I feel I can safely say it loses to my university's cafeteria. I didn't actually get to eat there this time despite staying in the general area, though. TRAGIC AND EPIC FAIL.
Kent came to talk to us after lunch about our memorandums and stuff (we made it just in time with finishing our meals). He was pretty happy with them, which was good, and he was happy with how I'd taken his advice onboard re: structuring the fraud and mistake arguments, so yay. o/
Then I spent the afternoon drawing new characters to use in the negotiation and occasionally contributing to the tactics discussion. It was work, okay. I was the designated art-chick. :|And these are the characters:
Nego-zamurai
Nego-ninja
Nego-zilla
(My personal favourite is Nego-zamurai, and it's certainly the one I spent most time on, but I also quite like Nego-ninja.)
What was kind of hilarious was that we'd all come from Australian daylight savings summer straight to Japanese winter, and so when we realised it was suddenly dark we were all OH HOLY SHIT WHERE DID THE DAY GO WE'VE WASTED SO MUCH TIME!! thinking it was already like, 8pm, when it was in fact... 4.30.
Us: ... PHEW.
We did end up staying kind of late-ish, grabbing dinner at a ramen shop on the way back, but our day's work was not done, because after we got back the Japanese team stayed up really late in my room working on our negotiation memorandum. orz Jenny swapped beds with Melissa. I finished my part early-ish and wanted to sleeeeep but the boys were still working. And then when they were done I had to drag my carcass back up to do a read-over. muuurgh.
Wednesday 2/12
Moved to a new classroom that was sadly far, far away. I mean, we had to walk about 10-15 minutes to get to the first gate, Akamon, and then the library we'd been studying in was through the second gate, and then far, FAR away, on a whole new block, was the third gate. orz;;; So much walking. And there was only more walking from this point onward so you'd think I'd be losing weight, but it only just managed to balance out the food. Sigh.
Both the negotiation memorandum and the counter-memorandum were supposed to be due midday on Wednesday, but they extended the deadline for the latter because of a typo in the English version of the rules regarding the word limit for the English teams. Which was ironic, because our English team submitted both by the original deadline, but the Japanese team still hadn't finished the counter-memorandum. <<
We still took our break, though, because we had a planned guided tour care by this very kind Japanese lawyer. One of his assistants (originally from Hawaii) went with us and we took taxis to the Metropolitan Police Department (yes,
_leareth, what you've been waiting to hear about), the family court, the English law firm Herbert Smith, and then finally to the International House in Roppongi for dinner.Couldn't take photos inside the MPD for the most part, but it was really interesting. There was a police museum, and an awesome control room with a huge map of police sectors in Tokyo which could light up and zoom in and things with police at high-tech consoles with a billion touch screens monitoring calls. It was all very futuristic and awesome. The corridors were white tiled and like a rabbit warren. There was also a small movie theatre for showing promotional vids and a gift shop (although we didn't visit the latter). XD
The family court was also pretty interesting, except I was really tired and it was a struggle not to fall asleep in the small room with the judge and probation officer (loose translation, we don't have an equivalent in western courts for family courts) talking to us about how the court works. We got to see the children's interview room and the family and juvenile court rooms, though, AND take photos:
At Herbert Smith, almost the entire litigation team was made up of ex-pat Australians. XD; It was cool. They fed us kit-kats and shortbread, mmm, and told us about what their jobs are like etc. Kent said afterwards that the employment drive was so explicit he almost felt like he needed a shower. XDDD
We stayed longer than we were meant to according to the plan and kept Mr Matsuo waiting a little, oops. The International House was where the ANU Alumni dinner thing was last year, so I'd been there before, but we had what was a delicious and obviously VERY expensive meal. The kind of meal with French wines and about 7 forks. God, it was good, though.
As said above parts of the tour I couldn't take photos, but here are the ones I did take:
Former ministry of justice, across the road from the MPD.
One of the family courts. It's inside a big skyscraper.
My team-mates plus teacher in the juvenile court.
Thursday 3/12
Had a morning off. Slept in. Considered going out somewhere. Discovered it was raining; decided I couldn't be fucked, especially since I'd have another three weeks plus after the competition to go places. Stayed in my room where it was warm and dry and only left to get very late breakfast.
And yet, I still managed to run late for our mock-negotiation/prepping in the afternoon. *fail*
At least I finally remembered to bring my camera!
... But by that point it had rained and the autumn leaves weren't as spectacular. D: But have some photos anyway!
That night we had dinner with the teams from Jouichi, AKA Sophia University, at an Indian/Pakistani restaurant near their campus which is where the comp was being held. Which was right next to Yotsuya station. After a year of frequently passing that station by, I finally know what's there! it was all very exciting. The food was good, and the people we were sitting near were fun to talk to. We swapped phone numbers and it was all, let's do karaoke! which never happened because mostly Japanese people won't contact you unless you contact them first, but oh well, I'm so busy now I wouldn't have time anyway (not to mention all the karaoke I've been doing...)
And then, after the dinner, it turned out there was a Kinko's down the street so we ran off to print the poster I made and stuff. o/
When we got back we were supposed to be working and researching and stuff but I was so goddamn tired. I tried, I really did, but I kept drifting off and I ended up passing out on my futon at 10.30 which is insane for me since usually I can't sleep before midnight. I ended up sleeping like 11 hours, it was crazy.
TouDai's Akamon, famous for being where they post university entrance results.
TouDai has pretty autumn leaves.
Srsly, you guys.
Pretty trees are pretty.
... One of these things: not like the others. (This is the poster, obvs.)
Friday 4/12
Was overly sluggish getting ready, because I can deal with small amounts of sleep but I am not a morning person and the cumulative effect gets to me, so the others left without me and told me to catch up. However, I thought they meant catch up at the classroom, not at the gates, and so I proceeded to got kind of SPECTACULARLY LOST on my way to the classroom because I tried to take a shortcut and, um, failed. Epically.
I got there EVENTUALLY. After, you know, a lot of backtracking. D: And I mean, I wasn't the LAST person there... Mamoru and Kareem had gone for haircuts, admittedly, but one of the others came in after me. :<
This was a day of last minute edits to the counter-memorandum in the morning, and last minute arbitration preparations writing up answers to every possible weak point and question we might be asked, revising opening speeches, etc. Around lunchtime Melissa and I went to Yotsuya to pick up the posters, which were expensive, but DAMN, they looked pretty good. Except blown up to that size I could see all the mistakes really clearly. *twitch* Still, overall I was pretty happy. Except for the fact that apparently we'd missed the bit in the rules which said it had to have a Christmas theme. Oops. Oh well.
We left TouDai around 6 to have an early dinner with Kent and then used the big Japanese-style room they'd set aside for us at the minshuku to continue on with our work. With occasional detours to go iron shirts and stuff. I suck at ironing at the best of times, but it took me FOREVER, not least because I had to figure out how to use the portable iron and the board was small and also I've never ironed a woman's shirt before and they have a lot more darts and stuff than men's shirts. orz
Worked on arbitration stuff until about 1.30am, and then finally gave up and crawled off to bed. ungh.
Saturday 5/12: COMPETITION DAY 1
The actual arbitration didn't start until 1, but before that there was the opening ceremony and we still needed to get there and set ourselves up with all our vast amounts of luggage (and the posters, which are an added bitch to keep uncrushed), so no sleeping in for me. Ugh, luggage. I didn't even have my big suitcase because the minshuku allowed those of us returning sunday night to leave stuff there, but packing enough into my backpack so that I had everything I'd need for the next 36-ish hours and hauling it to the subway station near Tokyo Dome was enough to make me vaguely wish for death to end the back pain. T___T
We actually got there earlier than most people, which gave us time to settle in the Blue team waiting room. Or, I should say, the Blue Corporation Lounge. *snort* Photos!
Team members hard at work! (er, sort of.)
Team members ACTUALLY hard at work!
For the record: I, too, am hard at work. (Dammit, those are the earrings I lost.) Btw, we had to wear blue stuff as team blue, so Melissa and I had those flower clips.
Some of the other blue teams. I took this fairly early; there were two "Blue" rooms and this one got a lot more packed out before the opening ceremony started.
More last minute prepping and stressing, last minute dashes to buy lunch from the combini near the station, pretty much what you'd expect. The opening ceremony was... ceremony-ish. We accidentally sat in the judges and advisors area. Whoops. It had its moments, but mostly, y'know... ceremony.
Then finally... the arbitration! We got there earlier than Osaka, which gave us time to sort out our stuff and greet the judges, who were all really nice. One of them, a CEO of Hewlett Packard (!! all these important people took time to come and judge us, it was kind of humbling), had a great sense of humour and joked about giving us curtesy points when I suggested a way of setting up the desks. XD
The arbitration itself was... a little unexpected, because how it's run depends on the judges, and they were pretty happy to sit back and let one team say something and then the other team respond. It was particularly speech vs speech for the first claim-- which made me incredibly glad I'd written down what I wanted to say, because I'm fine answering questions but if you just tell me to talk and I haven't got anything planned I totally flounder. Although it had sped up somewhat by the time it reached my claim, very, "'Could not have been unaware' does not mean could have known or should have known. The end." (um. there's no way of translating "ijyou desu" that doesn't sound a bit funny in English.)
Overall... I was pretty happy with how it went. The judges seemed to favour our arguments over the other side's, there was no major Japanese fail, and at the end they had more criticisms for them than us. Plus they praised our memorandum's formatting. VICTORY OF THE FORMATTING NAZI! *strikes a heroic pose* Plus Kent was really pleased with us. o/
(Taken after the arbitration of us with the judges and the Osaka team)
After the comp there was a party for all the teams and judges etc where the poster was held. The food was good. One of the judges, a little obasan who'd apparently judged our English team, had even brighter purple hair than me, which was hilarious. A lady from Kanazawa University who'd been watching our arbitration came up to talk to me. I had to get up on a stage with a microphone and explain our poster in Japanese, which I managed to do without too much fail. XD; Overall, it was interesting. We didn't win the comp, but the poster that won (made by Kyoto University) deserved to -- we voted for it too. Which is obviously a cue for MORE PHOTOS:
Winning poster by KyouDai
TouDai's. Kinda blurry. You can see ours in the corner.
Ours-- in POSTER FORM. (I kept it. Yes, through a month of being in Japan and three planes. I gave the spare away, though.)
After that there was more hauling of crap to the competition minshuku, which... was a whole 2 or 3 streets away from the old one. orz;; Plus, in a failing of the Hitchhiker's Guide maxim, I'd left my towel in my big suitcase (which, truthfully, I hadn't thought about it at all, but even if I HAD it wouldn't have fit in my backpack), and the new minshuku made you pay 300 yen to rent a towel whereas the old one supplied them free. IRONY CUDGEL. But no fucking way I was missing out on my furo, and also, 10 minutes away or not, I wasn't feeling particularly energised to walk to the other place to see if I could grab my towel out of my suitcase and walk back, so I shelled out the money. SIGH. On the bright side I made a new friend~ The TouDai English team were in the furo at the same time as us and I discovered that one of them, Megumi, actually lived in Canberra for a few years during highschool. In the same suburb as me, in fact! this would be more insanely surprising if I did not live in the suburb with all the embassies and thus embassy staff residencies, but it's still a pretty impressive coincidence. Plus she was just really nice and fun to talk to.
By the way, here is a visual depiction of how we were all feeling when we reached our room:
i.e., not in the least inclined for further study. Or indeed, movement. Luckily the combini was nearby for a dinner run. I was dreading having to stay up really late and not getting any sleep, because the negotiation started at 9 in the morning and we had to get there early to set up and stuff, but in the end we got a whole 6 hours. Yes, "whole" six hours. It felt like a lot, and given that Megumi told me the next day that her team got about 2 hours sleep, I was willing to take that as a victory...
Sunday 6/12: COMPETITION DAY 2/FREEEDOMMMM!!!!
Up bright and early-- okay, early, not particularly bright-- in our aim to arrive at the competition by about 8 or 8.30 so we could prepare (the negotiation started at 9.30). Given that we had to haul our crap back to the train station and get to Yotsuya again, I'm sure you can imagine how early that required getting up. orz BUT I MANAGED IT, OKAY. I was not one of the people running late!!! When I really need to, I can do these things. o/
We did get there before Kyuushuu University's team, but only just, and we ended up compromising on how we'd been planning to set the desks up because they needed to use the projector. A little intimidating. Still, it was good that we'd brought water and tim-tams for the other side and the judges, it was a good way to start off.
As for the negotiation, KyuuDai were really good, but that can actually be a good thing with negotiation. We didn't feel like it went too one-sided, and the whole thing was very friendly and relaxed with a lot of openness and give-and-take. I even got to use my new character designs-- I thought the chance had passed, and then the other side suggested in exchange for dropping Negozero we could maybe get new characters and I was like, YES! CHANCE TO SHOW OUR PREPARATION!!! and whipped out the designs. XD;;; But everyone, especially the judges, were really impressed by the designs (Judges: These could be turned into real salable goods!) so haha, ego boost. There are some things we could have done slightly better, but overall we got a deal which was within and in many cases surpassed our minimum requirements, so we were happy.
Anyway, there was a lunch for everyone after the negotiation was over. I spent so much time being a "social butterfly", as Kate put it, that I missed seeing Jenny off. orz I had fun, though. I got contact details from Megumi and had a really fun conversation with the Kyushu team-- we actually forgot to take a photo with both teams and the judges when we finished, but at least I got one of me and Mamoru and the Kyushu team:
Finally there was the closing ceremony, which after a lot of speeches and half of the students falling asleep (and getting told off for it by one of our judges who was giving a speech) culminated in the announcement of the results. It was quite nail-biting, because they announce the top five places in reverse and when it got down to top place, four universities that have previously won or come second more than once -- TouDai, Kyoto, Hitotsubashi, and us-- hadn't been named. In the end the winner was TouDai, which, well, my feeling was somewhere between "yappari" and "sasuga" which I can't properly translate but basically... yep, that's TouDai, all right. Oh well, at least (as our teacher said) we didn't cry, unlike Hitotsubashi. XD;;
Then of course we grabbed our crap, I congratulated Megumi, and those of us going back to the old minshuku headed in that direction. The four of us were the only ones in the place... but us three girls didn't get to have a bath because the women's bath wasn't prepared. orz GENDER BIAS!!
What followed was an evening of FUN AND REVELRY and me not believing I was actually FREE OF UNI for over 2 months, oh my god, I WAITED SO LONG FOR THAT MOMENT. Our night of celebration and team bonding and so forth was heaps of fun, seriously. We went over to the apartment of an alumni from the comp and met him and his BF, who were both very nice and interesting people, and then we went out for ramen and karaoke in Roppongi. It was already 11 when we went into the karaoke, and we stayed for 4 hours with a non-stop supply of alcohol. Imagine that, if you will. I am bound to a vow of what goes on tour stays on tour, but let me just say that there were some VERY DRUNK PEOPLE and a lot of loud singing of classics such as Love Shack. And dancing on chairs. And tables. I wasn't the one table-dancing, I was still capable of worrying that it would collapse despite being really very sloshed. XD; Oh my god, though, the bill was ASTRONOMICAL (thank god we got shouted) and we had to catch a taxi back because it was waaaaaaaay past last train and my throat was so raw I thought I wouldn't talk for a week (I was really thankful to mum for packing me all those throat lozenges, because actually I was fine in the morning... afternoon... whenever I awoke...) but it was seriously SO much fun.
There would be photos FUN AND REVELRY here, except I don't actually have any. I have a photo taken as we walked through the themepark near Tokyo Dome, though, and one taken at the minshuku before we went out that makes me look like a creepy stalker?
GLOWING BALL OF LIGHT!
And again with Kate's camera. Better people:glowy ball ratio, but I'm really laden down with crap and my handbag (which looks more like a santa sack, jesus) is kinda in the way...
Imma creepy stalker. :D
And now, after all that tl;dr, I end this post! There will be some to follow about my loafing around Tokyo and Sendai. Hopefully the pics make up for the word vomit. XD;;;
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 06:42 am (UTC)