Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Fourth Time? Japan Again

Strange that I had never been to East Asia at all until January of 2016, and now I am on my fourth trip to Japan.  I was supposed to go to South Korea this week for research and then next week to Hong Kong for the ISA meeting there.  However, impeachment and its aftermath has made a research trip this month to South Korea to be a bad idea.  Since I was already committed to going to Hong Kong and since I hadn't had the chance to talk to that many members of the Diet in my previous visits to Tokyo, I decided to come back and finish the follow ups for that case study. 

And, so far, so good.  I had two excellent interviews yesterday, finally meeting someone from Komeito, the coalition partner, as well as an LDP (the ruling party) senior party member.  I have a few other interviews scheduled this week, and then I go to Hong Kong to present this research.  Yes, I love my job. 

So, blogging has been infrequent as I have been traveling, and as I am kind of exhausted--the post NATO fiasco blogging spree exhausted me, I guess.  Anyhow, here's some of the pictures thus far, and, yes, like many others, I have really fallen in love with Tokyo.

Yakitori is a  must

Gate near my hotel and on way to Diet

Diet building

Prime Minister has a swell building
Canada is not the only country with monarchists

So much style all over the place

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