Professor Tsuneo Akaha and four MIIS students Jessica Yoo, Kathryn Smart, Jack Lomicky, and Lewis Dorman traveled to Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, Russia from March 21 to 27 as part of the Graduate Initiative in Russian Studies funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In Vladivostok, the group stayed at the Far Eastern Federal University, the site of the 2012 APEC Summit, and met with faculty and students in the university’s School of Regional and International Studies and discussed the current state of Russia’s relations with North and South Korea, China, and Japan. Professor Akaha gave a lecture at the university and used it as an opportunity to engage the students in a discussion of some of the research questions the MIIS students had prepared for their individual research projects concerning Russian-Chinese relations, Russian-Japanese territorial dispute, Japanese investments in the region, and the North Korean human presence in the region. The group also met with a high-ranking international affairs official in the Primorskii Krai Administration as well as two journalists to discuss regional and international developments in the Russian Far East. In Khabarovsk, the MIIS group stayed at the Economic Research Institute and visited the Academy of Law and Economy and the Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. They held a series of meetings with researchers, faculty, and students about the current state of regional development and foreign relations. Professor Akaha was interviewed by a local TV station about the MIIS delegation’s visit to Khabarovsk and the questionnaire survey that the group had prepared and distributed to colleagues in Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. The group was able to canvass the local experts’ views on the students’ research topics and also observe first-hand economic and social changes taking place in the two largest cities in the region as well as changing relations between the central government in Moscow and the Far Eastern region. Among the highlights of the trip were 11 hour+ train rides between the two cities and a dinner at a North Korean restaurant in Vladivostok.