Meetings-Language problem

Here, you have to present your work (status, results, whatever) in regular meetings. Meetings, called KENTOKAI, are all in Japanese; and it makes them boring to the foreigners. They last for a long time depending on the number of participants; several hours, no way...

After each meeting, I have lots of printed papers which can be definitely useful but in fact they are not since I can't read those KANJI characters. One I suggested to my professors if the students can provide the figure captions in English and they accepted but no body did really care.

And here is the result: 2 days ago the secretary said that they can not reserve a hotel for the PhD student who is going to attend the conference in US coz the process needs to be done via phone. And asked me to call and make the reservation.

Sigh... That was what heard from the student when the reservation was accomplished...