We enjoyed a very pleasant Thanksgiving evening feast at Suji's. They served a buffet consisting of turkey, dressing, mixed grilled vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy, tossed salad, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie (with whipped cream). The food was very tasty and the company and conversation was excellent. Over 30 staff and their families attended the event. Our staff is a mixed lot with people from Australia, South Africa, England, India, Ireland, the US, the Philippines, Serbia, Belgium, Korea, Turkey, New Zealand, Canada, France, Lebanon, Russia, the Netherlands and of course Japan. Not all who attended the dinner were Americans. Evenings such as this provide us with an opportunity to meet and socialize in a non-educational setting. We enjoyed a Thanksgiving “quiz” prepared by Jeff (our HS guidance counselor) featuring a variety of “Turkey Day” questions. The restaurant is located in the Roppongi area of Tokyo. This area is already showing the holiday colors. Many of the stores are decked in with Christmas decorations and lights. We are seeing some beautiful Christmas lights. We’ve been told that as Christmas nears, the whole area will become quite a sight to behold.
On Friday, I had a meeting with representatives from Cisco at their corporate offices in Roppongi. We are in need of a major infrastructure renovation at our school and for the past few weeks we’ve had various companies come in and do site inspections to determine the best way of handling the job. We have a very complicated building structure with no unified local area network. Students and staff working in one area of the building are unable to access the file servers which are located in another area. The building network was developed over the years in stages and was never joined together. One of our goals is to develop a common LAN to provide access to all areas. In addition we want to expand our technology capabilities to take full advantage of the new technologies and high speed access that is available here in Tokyo. The meeting with Cisco came about with assistance from one of our parents who worked for Cisco in the US a few years ago. Needless to say, the trip to their corporate office was an eye-opening experience. The building and area for their offices was definitely “high-tech”. Everything in the office area was wired through their network. With a push of a button, they could bring up a video conference with any of their offices throughout the world. If the sun shone brightly on one side of the building, the shades automatically lowered. We are hoping that Cisco will take an interest in our school and perhaps want to make us a “model” school for technology innovation in the area.
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