Quebec Trip Report

Other than much challenging weather on the way out of Ottawa, the trip went quite well.  I had two great but very different days of skiing and had interesting conversations with two very different audiences. 

The crowd at Laval were mostly graduate students and faculty, while the audience at Bishop's was mostly undergrads with a few faculty sprinkled in.  Both groups asked sharp questions.  The latter group had a big advantage: the bookstore had copies of my book and brought a bunch to sell!

At both stops, I got to spend time with my former PhD students, which I discussed here.

The ski days were different.  Massif had a thin layer of snow over a hard surface, which meant very fast runs.  Jay Peak, where I have skied a few times but not very recently, had much ice before yesterday but then got a bunch of snow the night before and then much precipitation throughout the day.  The top was closed due to winds, which was very Jay-ish.  Still plenty of excellent blue cruising terrain which much fresh snow.  The challenge was not speed, but sight--that it alternated between snow, freezing rain and maybe some rain.  So, I looked like this:

And the visibility looked like this:

Oh, and Jay had the more familiar food (unlike Massif): egg/bacon bagel sandwiches, cinnamon rolls, burgers and chocolate milk.  The big shock at Jay was the development of the base area--completely unrecognizable from the road as they built hotels/restaurants/indoor waterpark around the old cafeteria/base area.

The book tour continues this week with my taking over the @fpacarleton twitter feed Thursday morning (Feb 25th) at 11:30 and the Author Meets Readers event at Irene's Pub at 5:30 on the same day.  A week later, I will have multiple talks in Vancouver.  After that, we shall see but I expect to make it to Toronto and Calgary at some point.

Tokyo Briefings, Day 3

The firehose keeps on on keeping on as we are being given a heap of info to assess.  I am starting to think the Japanese style of providing handouts of powerpoint is an interesting way to go, despite the dead trees.  Anyhow, today's stuff bounced around quite a bit, with the key consistent theme of "really good food."  Indeed, lunch was at the same place that President George HW Bush threw up long ago (see pic -->)
The only downside to lunch was that it was in an interesting area and we had a chance to walk around, but we got driven to a slightly different area to explore--heaps of upscale shops that were far less interesting.

Tokyo Briefings, Day 2

I am losing track of the days given the time travel that comes with living on the other side of the international dateline and getting little sleep (must remember the melatonin next time).  But since I have one post on the briefings, this must be day two.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The day led off with a breakfast meeting I had with a Japanese scholar who works on her country's civil-military relations.  Thanks to Jennifer Lind (I owe you many beers!), I am now working with this scholar on the project that will bring me back to Japan next fall.  Our interests are nicely complimentary as she wants more comparative perspective on her stuff, and it will be mighty helpful to work with someone who really knows Japan.  I am confident that next fall's research will be successful now that I have such a terrific ally here.

Tokyo Briefings, Day 1

I am in Japan this week to be a tool of Japan's public diplomacy efforts learn about Japan's role in the world these days.  I will try to keep a running series of entries on what I have learned.  Given that jetlag and time displacement has woken me up at 3am, and I have read about the various football games I missed (and thankfully so), time to sum up what I learned on Day 1.

Our first meeting focused on the security challenges facing Japan and, not unrelatedly, the new legislation that gives Japan a somewhat greater ability to use its Self Defence Forces.  I had already been briefed about the latter by the Japanese embassy in Ottawa, but it was nice to get even more clarity.  So, the key points here: