The local Rotary Club in Mitaka (the suburb where ICU is
located) takes especially good care of all of us, even though each of us has
our own Rotary host counselor from clubs all around Tokyo. When we
first arrived, they invited us to a jazz concert and treated us to our
admission and drinks. Last night, they invited us to a rooftop beer
garden party at a nearby hotel and the event was fabulous!
When we walked out onto the patio of the high-rise and saw
tables full of chilled beer steins and plates of food waiting to be grilled, a
collective sigh of happy anticipation could be heard from all of the fellows
who have been living on cafeteria food and simple dinners in temporary housing.
Having bottomless drinks and an all-you-can-eat Hokkaido style barbecue
was an incredible luxury.
The type of barbecue was called Jinhisukan ("Genghis
Khan") and consisted of roasting lamb meat and vegetables over a round
skillet in the center of the table. According to Wikipedia, "The
dish is rumored to be so named because in prewar Japan, lamb was widely thought to be the
meat of choice among Mongolian soldiers, and the dome-shaped skillet is meant
to represent the soldiers' helmets that they purportedly used to cook their
food. In 1918, according to the plan by the Japanese government to
increase the flock to one million sheep, five sheep farms were established in
Japan. However, all of them were demolished except in Hokkaido. Because
of this, Hokkaido's residents first began eating the meat from sheep that they
sheared for their wool." In any case, it was delicious and after
roasting food on the skillet we dipped them into various tasty sauces.
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| Ohno-san, our fantastic program coordinator (i.e. she solves all of our logistical problems here) |
When I first thought of Rotary, I tended to think of the
members as fairly serious and subdued. But after I got to know many of my
district's Rotarians in Michigan and after spending time with Japanese
Rotarians here, I quickly learned that they like to have a good time. A really
good time. After a few steins, everyone relaxed and language barriers and
nervousness faded away. Most of the group (including Rotarians) headed
out to another craft beer bar and then onto karaoke until about 3 a.m. (mind
you, it's Tuesday night). I headed home at about 10:30 right after the beer garden, ended up getting
lost, and finally made it home at 11:30, just in time to get enough sleep to be
able to function in Japanese class today. Thanks for a fun night, Mitaka
Rotary Club!
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