Big Reunion After Ten Years for SG in Tokyo

This is the first post from Tokyo, Japan. But it is not an usual post from the new city since this post is not about what new things I found in the city, but what old things I have forgotten during the last ten years when I left Saint Gabriel's College. 

Tanabata Festival on the 7/7, near Asakusa

It was a quick notice but four of us meet together at Asakusa for the Tanabata festival which is a festival about the story of two young people who can meet each other once a year during the 7th of the 7th month because of the separation from the Milky Way. The festival itself is interesting with all strange stuffs scattering around the festival such as Tamagoyaki (Japanese Sweet Egg Omelet) for 100 yen which was surprisingly good and people dressing in Yukata. But the main point of this post is not the festival, but about the reunion after ten years and thousands of miles away from where we met each other before.
Four people from four different paths after leaving SG from four different time come back and meet each other again in the center of Tokyo. One came here from Japanese scholarship for undergraduate study, another one is from Thai scholarship since high school, the other one had elective classes while studying medical school in Thailand and I simply had an internship at University of Tokyo while studying in the US. I will call this a luck.

I thought that we might not have anything to talk about since we no longer have much in common. But the memory that we have shared during the elementary school is still valuable. We laugh at the exact same thing that we did ten years ago and I bet we will laugh about it ten years from now. 

Shibuya Crossing, Tokyo

Lastly due to the fall in attendants of the high school reunion, people started to criticize social media especially Facebook to be the cause of this decline. New York Times had an article for this topic couple years ago called 'Remember Me From Yesterday?'. However, I am thinking the opposite. The reason that I am able to meet up with my elementary school friends in Tokyo ten years afterward is simply because of Facebook because it allows us to stay connected even though we have not seen each other for a long time. Ten years ago, there was no Facebook or Twitter, and email is just started to be known in Thailand. So, only home telephone is the only way to contact each other. Imagine you try to call someone ten years later to meet up, I don't think anyone will even pick up that phone. Facebook is what help us to know that four of us are living in Japan now and allows to us to set up the time to hang out in Tokyo.

Therefore, in my opinion, Facebook is not what makes the high school (or elementary school) reunion useless because we already know about each other already from all the information on Facebook, but it is what makes the reunion possible because it helps us locate one another, to meet up with each other and to keep track of everyone in the group.

Japanese Buffet BBQ in Ameyoko, near Ueno Park, Tokyo