Hi everyone,
It's officially my fourth day in Japan! A lot has happened over the
past four days and I haven't been able to access the internet until now. Without
further ado, here is my belated post!
July 28/29: After my last blog post, we were ushered through the line onto
our plane. There were two stories on the plane (an upper deck and a main
deck)!! I had no idea our plane was that huge!
Anyways, Ryan and I got onto the flight and no one wanted to switch seats
with one of us, so we had to spend the entire 11 hour flight sitting next to
other people. It was
pretty lonely at first, but the on-flight entertainment was enough to keep me
busy for a while. There were plenty of recently released movies for us to watch, games for us to play, and music for us to listen to. Even the food was pretty good for plane food! The only thing that sucked was sitting in a middle seat next to a person on the aisle who was asleep for most of the flight, so I couldn't go the
bathroom when I wanted. I was pretty miserable near the end of the
flight, since I wasn't feeling very good. I'm not sure what my
body's up to when I go on planes, but it's not good...
We lost an entire day traveling, landing in Narita airport at 7:05pm on Sunday. It really hurt to be dressed so formally for such a long plane ride, then landing in a really hot and humid area, but I digress.
I met up with Ryan again and we saw Megumi, our friend from our Japanese 20C class, at the airport. She was in Tokyo for her job and,
even though we arrived at 7pm, she was nice enough to stay, welcome us, and even chat for a
little bit! It was so nice to see a familiar face right off the bat! The effort that she made to
see us made my day!
We got to the Keio Plaza hotel, the ritzy hotel in Shinjuku that we were going to be staying at, around 10-11pm. After we got to the hotel, we met
our new roommates and promptly passed out because we were so dead tired.
July 30-31: During the first two days in Tokyo, Ryan and I met other JETs in our respective prefectures, and then we went to a lot of long and boring meetings. Having TEFL certification already, these workshops were not very useful...but we had to endure til the very end, around dinner time where we had free time to explore Tokyo.
In fact, yesterday, after all the meetings, Ryan and I were able to meet up with a
friend that we met in the TEFL program at UCSD Extension, Sho! He took us to an izakaya where we ate a lot of strange things like chicken neck, chicken thigh, fried
potato/cheese, and raw horse meat! Other than a mysterious white chewy meat(?), all
of it tasted really good! After that, we
parted ways with Sho, went back to the hotel and slept.
August 1: Lastly, I said my final goodbyes to Ryan and, after re-composing myself, I prepared to leave for Nagano-ken! The Nagano JETs left at 9am and got to the first stop,
Matsumoto, at 12pm. There, I met my
supervisor Ito-san, who drove me all the way down to Komagane, a 2
hour car ride. I thought that the car
ride with my supervisor was going to be really awkward, but we talked about
many different things like Miyazaki films, sports, Disneyland, the weather of
my hometown, and lots of other things. She was easier to talk to than I had thought! We finally got to my new base school, Akaho Senior High School, at around 2pm. She she showed me around, introducing me to many teachers and the
principal. After that, we went to my apartment and the local supermarket,
called Delicia. She then dropped me off at my apartment and
told me that she will pick me up at 8:30am for work tomorrow! I'm not sure what’s in store, but I’m excited
and nervous at the same time!
At the moment, I am super tired and I still have to unpack, so I will sign
off.
I miss everyone so much!! It’s so
strange being alone, but I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet…
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