Hotel
The hotel will be the King George Hotel located at:
334 Mason Street
San Francisco, California 94102
It is a short 7 minute walk from the Powell Street station to the hotel. See google maps for directions.
A disclaimer about the hotel: The King George is an older, quaint hotel that does not offer many of the amenities most people would be accustomed to in a modern building. For example, the elevators are very narrow, the bedrooms/bathrooms are tiny, the double rooms have twin beds not doubles, and the doors are not sound-proofed so the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor is such that you can hear conversations in the hallways from your rooms. This being said, they offered a rate that MOFA was able to afford in a popular month for conferences in San Francisco. We usually double-up (2 people per room) in hotel rooms at the National Conference. However, most hotels in SF do not have as many double rooms as we requested, and the King George was no exception. So, about half of the hotel rooms are doubles (with two twin beds), and the other half are singles. The majority of you will double rooms but some of you will have singles.
Conference Venue
The Conference location will be at the Consulate General of Japan in SF. The address is:
50 Fremont Street #2300
San Francisco, CA 94105
It is a short 17 minute walk from the hotel to the CG. See link for directions.
While the program details are still being determined, you should know that the conference will start officially on Friday morning around 8:00am. While the King George Hotel offers coupons for breakfast at Lefty O’Doul’s, a restaurant bar around the corner, continental breakfast will be provided at the CG prior to the conference every morning. The conference will last all day Friday and Saturday with breaks in between until around 5:00pm, ending on Sunday around 12:00pm. Please plan your travel accordingly.
Omiyage
In keeping with national conference tradition, we are also requesting that each chapter bring omiyage (food) from your local area. There will be approximately 60 conference participants. A box or bag of food would be considered just fine–it does not need to be individually wrapped or fancy. We will put the snacks out with a note describing each chapter’s omiyage for everyone at the conference. As with omiyage in Japan, you do not have to spend a lot of money; this is a fun thing that we do to learn a little more about each chapter’s local culture.
Conference Registration
Conference Registration will begin 3-5pm at The King George Hotel Lobby on 10/25. We will leave as a group and travel to the Thursday night reception shortly after 5:00pm (exact time TBD). For those of you arriving later and unable to make the 3-5pm Registration, you will be able to register the following morning at the conference.