The climax of the opening ceremony was actually very hilarious. After the opening address by the Dean of Waseda University, Prof. Paul Snowden, the cheerleaders of Waseda University came on stage and performed signature cheers that involved extremely funny poses by the guys!! Hahax it's so different from the kind of cheers we get in Singapore. Shi Wei has the full video for one of the cheers, so I will get it from him and upload it soon. After the opening ceremony, we took a delegation photo with the cheerleaders. This one didn't have any funny poses though, except maybe Estee who looked really enthusiastic.
The model lecture on the UN charter was actually quite appealing to me at first, since I'm pretty interested in such stuff. But the professor was pretty boring, spouting out all the jargon with no intention of juicing up the lecture so that it could have been more interesting. As such, I was practically dozing off and playing my iPhone under the table while he rattled on and on, until the last 30 minutes or so. I noticed that Prof. Bacon was staring in my direction, so I felt a bit embarrassed and started listening. Hahax funny thing was, when he started talking about the practical side of the UN Charter, I was so engaged with the topic of the Iraq War and even answered most of his questions. Hahax lesson number one- always talk about the practical side of stuff.
We then left Waseda University for the Speeches and Q&A session at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in downtown Shinju-ku. There were the powerhouses speaking in Japanese and some who just spoke in English. I almost fell asleep during the speeches and had to literally use my fingers to prod open my eyelids. But one thing was for sure. I was still listening okie! And boy, parliamentarians really deserve to be who they are. We were addressed by the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs in Japan, Mr. Nobuhide Minorikawa. There were a couple of questions that he handled with ease, but if you listened closely enough, he never answered the questions posed. It was like hitting every other point on the dart board except the bull's eye. Hahax but I think he managed to carry it off though. Kudos anyway :) Kenickie was pretty impressive with his Japanese speech, but he seemed a little nervous! Anyways, well done Kenickie! (Psst..this one has the VM smiling very happily during your speech!)