1 week today

13th July, I leave in one week. Am in the middle of the usual round of sobetsukais and farewell parties; I had one in my honour given by the mayor and the various dignitaries of the city last night. It was as stiff and formal as one would expect, though I did get some cool presents, including a gold-plated sake cup from Ogawa-sensei, head of the BOE and fan of mine, mainly because I'm male and not American. The party was bearable, anyway, and after it finished I and some of my colleagues went drinking in our local izakaya.

Been thinking some more about London...every time someone asks me about it, as for example last night, the first thing I say is something along the lines of "well, everyone I know is OK". It feels wrong somehow, that I shouldn't be so concerned with only my own acquaintances, that I shouldn't think of the lives of those who did die in the bombings as less important. I don't normally think of myself as particularly parochial...but I guess it's hard not to be.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

- John Donne, Meditations XVII