Official BSCIS opening with a few "friends"

Well... BSCIS is now officially official, certified, fully accredited and certified BC Offshore school. Our little school, shepherded by Margaret Compo, our BC Offshore Ministry of Education consultant, has now received all of the paperwork. Now students from our school will receive both a BC Dogwood Certificate as well as the fully accredited Japanese highschool graduation certificate.

Sounds straightforward and simple...yes? Well, as in most other things I have experieced here this was another mind-blowing experience.   

We spents weeks and weeks in meetings planning the 2 hour visit of the Minister. First of all the parties involved were quite complex: BSCIS (that's me), the Board of Directors of our sister school, the BC Trade Commission office of Tokyo and the Canadian Embassy, and most importantly the Minister's office. Every detail had to be worked, reworked, translated, passed by the Minster's office etc. etc. etc. Where would the flowers be offered? Who would offer the flowers? Who would be in which picture? Who would sit where? Would the BC flag be in the center, or the Japanese flag or the Canadian flag?

This was my first expereince being immersed in planning a VIP visit and it gave me a new respect for the work that goes into visits of people like Obama!

Nevertheless, after all the dust settled we were ready!

As it turned out we all orchestrated a very successful visit. The Minister came to our school first to tour the facilities and meet the students.

I had met Minister Fassbender at previous meeting with the Provincial Principal's Association and was impressed once again at his on-the-ground warmth, genuine interest in kids and our program.

This was an opportunity to exchange gifts of friendship between BC and Japan. Check out the beautiful prints!

From there we were driven in a convoy to the most central Tokyo Keio Plaza hotel, a huge beautiful hotel right across from city hall. I sat in the van next to the Minister and had a fascianting conversation about the state of education in BC and some of the up-coming issues (this conversation did make me feel grateful to be in Japan at this point!)

This was the formal opening ceremony with about 30 media reporters, senior representatives from the Japanese Education bureau, Ministry personel, BC Trade Bureau personel, Embassy personel, parents, teachers and students. It was quite the deal. The owner of the school consortium we have here received the formal certificate from the MOE and we had speeches from all parties involved.

The most touching part of the Ceremony was when Makiko did a little pledge directly to Fassbender about her commitment to the program. 

From there we had an intense media scrum with media from all across Japan.

The day ended off with a sumptuous dinner and reception put on by the Canadian Ambassador at his residence.

 We all enjoyed eating amazingly delicious "Canadian Food" dishes (check out the menu; what do you think?) drinking delicious wines (three different ones representing areas from across Canada... of course) and networking with Embassy, BC Trade Delegation, MOE and Japanese MOE VIPs.

As you can guess, I had a lot of fun and I got a great kick out of this. Yes... this was definitely a different kind of day than I have been having in the previous years at my other schools!  :)