This is why I have a blog in the first place.

Washington, D.C., April 27th, 2007. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's first trip to the US, his first meeting at Camp David with President Bush, and, of far greater historical importance than any of that, his first meeting with me.

Four of us took the train down from New York - JETAANY Secretary Carol, Sasaki-san of the Japan Local Govt. Center in New York, JET Alum Linda Kim (invited because she was in Yamaguchi, Abe's home prefecture) and myself. That's us in a group at Union Station in D.C., just as we arrived at about 11:00 a.m. Along the way we had caused a minor scandal by talking in the quiet car, being asked politely but firmly by the ticket collector to move (hee hee). It wasn't the first time I had been to D.C. - I was there with my Dad and brother in 2002 - and it was more or less the same as I had remembered. We passed through Newark, Trenton, Wilmington and Baltimore on the way - Baltimore looked like a bombsite, at least what we could see from the train, some of the worst urban blight I think I've ever seen. Not everything is skyscrapers and investment banks on the east coast.

We had been scheduled to meet with the junior senator from Delaware, Tom Carper, in the morning, but that apparently was cancelled at the last minute. I'm still not entirely sure why we were meant to be meeting him in the first place, but we filled in by going to a place in downtown D.C. called Kaz's Sushi Bistro for lunch, which was excellent, especially as it was all on expenses. Dessert was particularly good - banana tempura and black raspberry ice cream, absolutely to die for. I need to find out where I can get some black raspberries so I can make some myself.

Spending almost all of my time in New York, one comes to think, wrongly, that everywhere in the US is like the Big Apple. It isn't. Despite its size and importance, DC feels much more relaxed than New York...people stroll. Nobody strolls in New York, damn it. We even saw a couple of people with smiles on their faces, and even the cabs weren't all yellow. O brave new world!

We got to the Ambassador's residence at about 2:30, around half an hour before the event was meant to begin. Or at least we thought it was his residence - it turned out that it was just the house of some random person, though as you can see the cherry blossoms planted by the hedge were worthy of note of themselves. After about 20 minutes we realised our mistake and walked a couple of blocks over to where the residence actually was.

The residence, as you might expect, is one serious piece of real estate. Inside it's quite astonishingly luxurious, possessing both a massive Japanese-style garden and a tea house to boot, as well as large reception rooms decorated in a peculiarly Japanese style of opulence that seems to be stuck in the 70s. If you've been in the conference rooms at the Keio Plaza or the Tokyo Hilton, you know what I'm talking about - flock wallpaper, large chandeliers made out of triangular bits of glass, you know the thing. It's hard to describe, but it is very distinctive.

Format for the day was to mingle first with other ex-JETs present, mostly from DC, but some from as far away as Oregon and Alaska. As a 2003-05 vintage, I was one of the most recent returnees; there was one guy with whom I talked for a while who'd been an Original - one of the first to go out in 1987, back before there was internet, skype, or indeed any sense of what a JET was actually supposed to be doing (some may argue the latter hasn't changed much). So we mingled and chatted and so forth for about an hour, before the main event - the PM's arrival.

With us lining up in the main reception room, Abe came in, chatted to a few of the people nearest to him, and then got up onto the podium to make a speech. As you can see from the photo, I was in the front row on the left and very close to the PM indeed. His speech - entirely in Japanese - lasted about four or five minutes, and was more or less what you would expect; he talked about his visit to Camp David that morning, about how happy he was that the JET program had celebrated its 20th anniversary that year, and how important it had been in US-Japan relations. Following that, I had kind of wondered whether he might pack up and go at that point, but to his credit, he didn't. Accompanied by his wife and Deputy Cabinet Secretary Shimomura Hakubun, Abe worked his way around the room, making a point of shaking hands with everyone there and talking to them for at least a minute or two.

Which, of course, included me. The President and the PM meet face to face. On your right, you can see yours truly telling it like it is to ol' Shinzo. We spoke for about two minutes - reading my name badge, he asked if I spoke Miyagi-ben, to which I replied んだちゃ, and I told him I was doing a PhD in Japanese literature and what my research field was. He responded that this was a very important field, not studied very much outside Japan (which isn't actually true, but still) and that he hoped I could be a bridge 架け橋 between Japan and the US in future. I didn't point out that I'm not American - no need to confuse matters further.

He was followed by his wife, with whom I spoke for a little while, telling her that the smokestacks from the powerplant in Shiogama had ruined the bay view at Matsushima and they ought to do something about it (well, it came up in conversation - and hey, you never know).

Then came Shimomura, with whom I and the guy next to me (a professor of Japanese anthropology at MIT, and a fellow Miyagian - Kurikoma, as it happens. More juicy networking goodness) had a three or four minute conversation. I told him about my research on Michizane, which he said sounded interesting, and that I should tell him about it when I was next in Japan. Even got the dude's meishi.

And that more or less wrapped it up. Abe was good enough to pose for an individual photo with everyone there, which was taken by the Japanese press and which will apparently be sent on c/o the New York consular office, so I'll post that as soon as I have it. We took a moment to inspect the tea house and the garden inside the residence, and to have our photos taken outside the main gate, and that was that. We took a taxi back to Union Station, and just managed to catch the last express train back to NYC. The sun was setting just as we were crossing what I think was the Delaware river - not a bad way to end the day.