This year’s summer adventure in Tokyo was a surprisingly turbulent alas quite an exciting one. With a move to corporate housing which followed the start of my internship at this golden bank of America, my dwelling location was shifted from the shabby, small, ugly little dorm room in Komaba to the unnecessarily luxurious and over-the-top, will-never-be-able-to-afford-until-I’m-30 kind of apartment with swimming pool and SPA, located at the heart of Roppongi. And since locations changed, so did the people and the lifestyle.
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| Ark Hills! Oh I miss the corporate housing. |
Instead of European traveler-students, it was time to meet some good old American comrades at the firm, who turned out to be some awesome kids indeed. And finally, I didn’t have to struggle to use slower or simpler English, fearing that otherwise my accented European friend might get very confused. It was now all good American English flowing in and out.
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| My own handcraft! (not all of it, more like 1 fish ;)) |
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GS interns at Community Work Project
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| GS Interns sweetest deal :) |
Work was equivalent to end of the indolent days at Todai. No more waking up at noon (which used to happen only if Ben text messaged with the immortal question “have you eaten yet?”), no more skipping classes and lazing off at (and exploring) some random location in Tokyo, no more random nomikai in the middle of the week. Instead, mornings started with a “crap, did I iron that shirt?” rush and days passed by in front of computer screens on a 48th floor of the spider tower, accented only with nice lunches oftentimes graciously paid for by working sempais. Dinners were always reserved for friends or other significant individuals. Evenings became suddenly extremely short, and I found myself in bed most of the time before midnight, with occasional exceptions. |
And of course Roppongi, the cursed Roppongi, the essence of my summer. Proximity of it also meant more escapades to the myriad clubs around – this summer Vanity on the 15th floor seemed like the no. 1 popular dwelling spot for traders and others in the finance world. That also tended to result in quite a few instances of fair headaches in the mornings or a rather unexpected Swiss discovery that spiked the rest of the summer.
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| With GS intern buddy at Warehouse. |
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| On the way to Ageha. |
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| Warehouse. |
It was also a very nice summer of precious visits. Elizabeth came in and swooped me away to Korea. Once back, she went off exploring Kyoto and other spots deemed as tourist attraction. Dung also dropped by, and that afforded yet another string of crazy and heavily sleep deprived escapades, Yokohama fireworks, black-sand beaches or revisits of the Air club, which as the legend claims, was featured in “Lost in Translation.” (my doubts and brows highly raised). At the very end of this summer break, parents also decided they might as well see that weird land of Japan, and so the 3 of stormed on me right before the end of the internship, bringing in quite a tornado of events, farewell parties, ad hoc trips to Hakone, (which unfortunately didn't yield any breathtaking views of Mt Fuji simply because of all the fog, Mt Fuji is actually visible only once a year) etc.
Juggling work, friends, family and others left me dead exhausted at the very end of my year-long journey, so the return to academic circles at Harvard in September was probably the best conclusion to all of it. Time to calm down (or so I thought…).
But what an incredible summer it was – third time in my life was I convinced that while youth, health, lack of personal commitments and a certain degree financial flexibility allowed, one should always pursue the global explorations whenever possible. A good excuse to enjoy hedonism of life ;).
