I would not have held it to be possible, but indeed, nothing is beyond the staff of our institute: today's evening of toe-curling entertainment was even worse than last one...
The gaggle of Danish have arrived yesterday and today was the first day of the workshop. We had some fine talks during the day, and for dinner a so-called "welcome party" was planned. Due to Anke's
successful hosting of the party for the distinguished guest, she is now the host-of-choice and was asked a week ago if she would be host again. She even said yes (she needs the material for this blog!) Her co-host for tonight was graduate student Hao -- who was apparently volunteered rather than asked.
Our new secretary (the one that did the somewhat inappropriate belly dance last time) was in charge of organizing the whole event. She got a little carried away perhaps. Here's what she sent Anke and Hao last night:
"
This is final the program list for the reception. There are introductions about every performance.And in addition, I wrote something about the open part and end part. You could use your own words to say it. Just a tip for you. So, enjoy yourselves at the party."
Attached to the message was a complete write up of what she thought we should say, starting with "
Good evening, distinguished guests, faculty and students, welcome to our reception banquet. It’s a great privilege for me/us to be the host of our performance tonight. "
This kind of took the fun out of the whole thing for Anke. No, I guess that is putting it too mildly. It really pissed me off! For Hao, the situation was much worse. The lovely secretary had told him to organize a game, and when the idea he had did not work out so well, she refused to let him drop it. In the end, we convinced him to screw her and drop it anyway. Still he was so stressed out that he ran off while walking over to the hotel with Frans, to make sure he was not late (nobody had even arrived at the venue). After the first introduction, when Anke went to talk to him, he immediately said "Did I say something wrong???" Poor guy!!!
According to Frans, the whole evening was somewhat hard to take because of all the pressure being put on the hosts and performers. Add to that the fact that the same secretary did her scarcely dressed belly dance plus this time also sang a song while wearing inappropriate dress. And finally, consider that all Danish visitors are male, plus very polite, so they did not know what to do. (I should add that most of the entertainment was not indecent -- just somewhat boring perhaps.)
Frans managed to add comic relief towards the end of the evening, when he gave a pop-quiz based on his
driver's license exam. It was a great success, but according to Frans this was due more to the fact that everyone needed to get rid of the tension, than to the humor content of the presentation. I guess that says a lot...
Anyways, now that I have been able to vent; here are some photos from tonight. Sorry, no photos of the scantily dressed secretary -- we're too decent for that...
Uncomfortable looking Danes:
Fortunately, the Danes are good people. We managed to get over the trauma together with a bit of karaoke. Here's the most distinguished Dane, rocking out to "Girls just want to have fun" with Frans and fellow postdoc Elad.
Here is a picture of Anke talking to our host, professor Asano:
Life is not all play, however. Here is a picture of Anke working:
After our visit of JAIST, we went to the airport and arrived at Sendai. Here we had the local specialty of Sendai: barbecued cow's tongue. A picture will be posted soon...
... we saw the birds and the 
... the castle of course...
... and then we had some more okonomiyaki.
The food was exactly what you would hope to make when you get home after partying all night. Not a great culinary delight, but definitely tasty.
Our impressions of Japan so far:
We have survived the week with the Danish (which was actually quite enjoyable). We did so well in fact, that we are apparently getting a bonus for our respective hosting of the welcome party (Anke) and presenting a hilarious quiz on the Chinese driver's exam (Frans). These bonuses are very welcome, because we have not been getting any bonuses this year, whereas last year we received enough in bonuses to live on. (We suspect that had something to do with money that had to be spent before the end of the year, rather than with our performance.)
Uncomfortable looking Danes:
Fortunately, the Danes are good people. We managed to get over the trauma together with a bit of karaoke. Here's the most distinguished Dane, rocking out to "Girls just want to have fun" with Frans and fellow postdoc Elad.
The air was lovely and we did a lot of breathing. The company was great too, so we also did a lot of chatting. Two things we don't really get to do much of in Beijing proper...
I am not sure what that's about. The hanbao was festive, but, more importantly perhaps, disgusting, the pizza was not bad but worse than the Nines (and does not seem to have the same cleansing effect -- boo!), and -- well, what can we say about KFC's chicken nuggets?? Yuk?
