Thursday: Centre People party at Westminster

So much has happened this week!! Can't believe how manic it's been.

The Parliament do on Thursday was really great - it was pretty neat walking through what felt like such important buildings and to see them from not only the inside but the other side - a close up of the view you can normally only see from the other side of the river. The reception itself was very warm and friendly - it was a good chance to meet people and there were a few (a very few, for me!) familiar faces. It was enough to impress on me the relative cohesion of the Japanese circle in London and I'm sure if you get invited to enough parties you can probably get to know people pretty quickly. I will have to work on this!!

I also had the great honour of coming across someone in London for the first time who had visited Fukaura, in fact he said he stayed at the Suigun-no-yado Onsen in Ajigasawa, which was my Sunday-night haunt for most of that last winter. He seemed fairly amused by this as was I; he was, after all, only the second person of all those from Japan whom I have had the pleasure to meet here, who has ever been to Aomori, so it was a pretty amazing coincidence that he had been to places like the Shirakami and Furofushi onsen and so on...

There is a link to the photos here: http://community.webshots.com/album/552630742MZiuJp (watch out for the one of me after arguably too much wine at the start of page 12!) - there are some good ones of the venue but most of them are just of people.