Somehow, We Ended Up Having Dinner with a Kurdish Delegation

It was the Obon holidays, and a few of us who weren’t traveling or heading back to our hometowns decided to get together for dinner.

We chose Mesopotamia, a Kurdish restaurant in Higashi-Jujo that had only opened that week. I had no idea how many Kurdish people were living in Japan at the time, but a restaurant specializing in Kurdish cuisine was certainly unusual.

When we arrived, another group of around fifteen people was already having dinner. They appeared to be Kurdish, and several of them were wearing suits.

Curious, we struck up a conversation with them.

To our surprise, they told us they were a delegation from the Kurdistan Regional Government.

The Kurdistan government?

Did they have an embassy in Japan? That couldn’t be right — Japan does not recognize Kurdistan as an independent state, so there could be no Kurdish embassy.

Then who was that man over there?

“Minister,” they told us.

Wait… a minister??

They explained that they had attended events related to the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and were now spending some time in Tokyo before flying home two days later. The group included a government official responsible for education — although “minister” may not have been the exact title — mayors from several cities, members of the Japan-Kurdistan Friendship Association, and someone from the Iraqi Embassy in Japan.

Two of Us Had Actually Been to Kurdistan

By sheer coincidence, two of the six friends at our dinner had traveled through the Kurdistan Region.
Takumi Ito immediately became excited when he realized who he was talking to.
“What? You’re the mayor of Sulaymaniyah?! Why are you here?! I’ve been there! Look, here’s a photo from my trip!”

Then:
“What? You’re the mayor of Dukan?! I’ve been to Dukan Lake too! Look — here’s the photo!”

We were suddenly chatting with people we would almost certainly never have met even if we had traveled all the way to Kurdistan. The mayor of Erbil was there too. They seemed equally amused to discover that there were several Japanese people in one small restaurant in Tokyo who had actually visited Kurdistan.

“Let us know before you come to Kurdistan next time.”
Then one of them actually picked up his phone and called someone, apparently telling them to look after us if we came.

This was getting ridiculous. We even became Facebook friends — although I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do with Facebook connections to Kurdish mayors and government officials.

“So What Kind of Organization Are You?”

Then they started asking about us.
“What kind of group is this?”
–We’re just friends who like traveling.

“How many members does your organization have?”
–Well… there isn’t actually an organization.

“What work took you to Kurdistan?”
–It wasn’t work. We went there as tourists.

“What NGO are you from?”
–We’re not an NGO.

Eventually they seemed to understand that we were simply a group of people who shared travel information.
Then came another question:
“How much financial support does the Japanese government give you when you travel?”
–None. Absolutely none.

Then one of them looked at me.
“Are you the leader? You look Indian.”

Every question seemed to make the conversation stranger.From our point of view, the mystery was why a Kurdish government delegation was having dinner in a newly opened restaurant in Tokyo.

From their point of view, perhaps the mystery was why a group of Japanese people who had traveled independently through Kurdistan just happened to be sitting in the same restaurant.

Kurdistan, in Higashi-Jujo

At one point, they even invited me to Kurdistan to have my teeth whitened.

“Come to Kurdistan. I’ll do it for you.”
I had no idea how to respond to that either.

We had simply gone out for Kurdish food. Somehow, we ended up talking with Kurdish government officials and mayors, exchanging contact details and being invited to visit Kurdistan again.

And apparently that wasn’t going to be the end of it.

The next day, I was going to show around someone we’d met that evening — a Kurdish man who was, somehow, a dentist, teacher, and nephew of a minister.

There was even a possibility that Iraqi television would be filming us. Someone from NHK had been there that evening as well. None of this had been in my plans the day before.Every day brings something different. Life really is interesting.

Postscript

I later discovered that this post had been translated into English and read by some of the people involved.
Which means they also read the part about someone telling me I looked Indian…

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Kurdish Restaurant “Mesopotamia”
Higashi-Jujo, Tokyo