Schmooze Cruise

Last week I attended a glitzy function in the middle of Tokyo at the Hotel New Otani. The occasion was the South African Freedom Day Celebrations in Japan. The event was hosted by Phumzile Mlambo Ncguka, the Deputy President, successor to the fantastically loathsome Jacob Zuma. It is not often that expat-proletarians/pseudo-cogniscentii like myself get invited to such extravagant shindigs at the behest of their government's ambassador. Usually one needs an inside line, but I suppose I have one by virtue of the fact that I am a South African representative on an internationalization programme. So, even though I usually get around by bicycle and live in the backwaters of Japan's forgotten prefecture, I donned my Chinese silk shirt (R20 from Adderly street) and boarded the Nozomi, Japan's fastest bullet train, from Okayama to the heart of Tokyo. I felt like a spare part most of the evening, amidst the ice sculptures and chandeliers and gilded china. The only other member of the JET Programme that I came across was an inhabitant of an island off Kyushu, so she had flown in especially. I thought I was the extravagant one taking the Nozomi. She was having loads of fun getting photos taken with various politicians, but I only managed one with the KZN minister of Arts, Culture and Tourism, who didn't seem to have any idea why she was there (I didn't either). The Deputy President gave a tongue-in-cheek sales pitch on South African platinum after ever so briefly mentioning the Millenium Development Goals. The audience soon lost interest and began eyeing the buffet, taking the time to schmooze to the background noise of diplomatic rhetoric. After the speeches the band (flown in especially from South Africa) played groovy Azanian music and the guests tucked in to the Otani's ostentatious buffet. I thought that the evening would have presented good opportunities to meet South African politicians, but, even though there were at least fifteen of them there, all I got were photo ops and a conversation with the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs that I could not make any sense of at all ("Who arrre youhh?..Aaaarrrr... heh heh heh.." with the lazy eye on me and the good one on the cleavage of the pretty young woman nearby). I did, however, score business cards from more interesting people like the Second Secretary of the Mozambican Embassy and the Administrative Coordinator of the Goi Peace Foundation. As the delegates and businesspeople and hangers-on moved off to their flash hotel rooms, I decided to go off in search for one of my own, having thought of the issue as too trifling to pay much attention to beforehand. Alas, I was soon to learn that I was in the middle of one of the world's most expensive and populous cities, so even if I was prepared to part with a weeks pay for five hours of rest, I wouldn't have found any available rooms anyway. I whiled away the evening wandering between convenience stores and coffee shops in the city that never sleeps, turning down offers of expensive company and wondering if I could really bring myself to sing karaoke alone to while away the hours (I couldn't). Dawn finally began to illuminate the forest of steel and glass and I was whisked back to Okayama on the Nozomi and a torturous afternoon of trying to stay awake at my desk at work. I did it for my country.