Visit to the Japanese Embassy!

For my first visit to the Japanese Embassy's Japan Information and Culture Center I had two goals- get out of the house, and get a map of DC in Japanese. I forgot to have the goal of arriving on time to the showing of Children Who Chase Lost Voices. We were super late, and I don't know why because I allowed 80 minutes to travel 6 miles by car. There wasn't even traffic most of the way. Driving here is the worst. I guess Casey and I are just going to check out all the free embassy events, in particular anything in Spanish or Japanese. I was totally impressed by the JICC venue and staff (I checked out their job posts, of course, and they want an unpaid, fluently bilingual intern in her 3rd or 4th year of undergrad or in grad school...), but Casey thinks China's will be great because China is working on its image.

The movie we saw was Children Who Chase Lost Voices, and it was really beautiful and only a little confusing. Since we arrived late, and sat in folding chairs, I couldn't quite see the subtitles over people's heads. So I would sit on my feet to see the subtitles and get the hang of what was happening, and then sit on the chair and try and listen. This was the first time in ages that I've heard anyone say anything in Japanese in person, although I have been keeping netflix and itunes on Japanese stuff every day.

I picked up a newspaper on our way out, and we went to get a bagel and I tried to read it. It's been a long time since I've read a paper newspaper, but this article looks like it's about the Olympics, right? The "London-five-something-somethingIknowIknow-something-he"? But the article is about Obama and Romney and something escalating. So I was thinking of translating it for myself, but I have kind of a backlog of Japanese language fliers and similar.