Tokyo!

So. We're here! It was a long and grueling trip, but we made it. Somehow.

As I wrote out this story, I discovered that a lot of Japanese words had drifted in, which not everyone may be familiar. So, for your reading pleasure, all words in bold are defined at the end of the post. :P

Friday afternoon was the mandatory pre-departure orientation, after which Fig and I went with my parents to our last dinner in America: delicious Lebanese food at Mezza. Then it was all packing all the time at my house, with only a brief one and a half our interlude in which we stepped out to say goodbye to a bunch of my friends.

We packed until all hours. I took a brief thirty-minute power-nap at 3:30, and then took a shower and finished getting my biz together. We were out of my house by 5:30 (a.m.), and at the airport by 6.

Checking in didn't take long, so we spent a good two or two hours sitting at the gate with our group of sixtyish JETs, all just chatting about the trip. Two-hour plane ride to Detroit, a three hour layover, and lunch at a place called the Jose Cuervo Tequileria. Goodbye, Mexican food.

Then the exhausting and uncomfortable twelve hour trip to Narita airport. I sat between two other jets; a 27-year-old guy named Jacob, and a black chick named Christine. We chatted a bit, I did something like eleven crosswords, watched two episodes of Dexter on my laptop, and tried unsuccessfully to take a nap.

Finally, sleep-deprived and slightly crazed, we landed. Breezed with surprising ease through customs, picked up our luggage, and were escorted by a veritable fleet of current JETs to a bunch of buses. We shipped our big luggage on to our host organizations and took our carry-ons with us to the buses, which then loaded up and proceeded on the two-hour drive to our hotel in Tokyo.

The Keio Plaza Hotel is a four-star, super-fance building in the middle of Shinjuku, a popular district on the west of Tokyo. Our room is really nice, with all manner of amenities, from a heated toilet seat (that automatically runs water when you sit down...boy, did that surprise me), to free hairbrushes, toothbrushes, slippers, and more! (The slippers, of course, have already disappeared into our suitcases.)

My roommate turned out to be Briana, a girl from Atlanta whom I just happened to know already. (We got in touch over the Atlanta JET forums online, and went to dinner with John and two other guys in June.) After briefly settling in, we met Fig, John, our friend Mari Christmas from the orientation, and a couple other kids in the lobby. The whole massive group of us caravaned into the Shinjuku surrounds, seeking dinner. We settled on a quick and cheap noodle joint, where I got curry udon better than any I ever faked in the states. Mmmm!

Then back to the hotel, where Fig and I met a different girl named Mari, who was a friend of ours at Wittenberg, and happens to live just south of Tokyo in Yokohama City. We went to a nearby izakaya called Watami, and had a few drinks. I learned that "blue apple" and apple-mango are both delicious flavors. Mari kindly picked up the tab, as a dual-purpose "Welcome to Japan!" and "Thank you for always treating me in Ohio!" gesture.

At long last, we stumbled back to Keio and our beds. It was by then 11:30 here, which would be 10:30 a.m. Atlanta time. (Meaning that I had been more or less awake for almost 48 hours.) I and roommate Briana watched the last bit of a Mythbusters knock-off show, and then finally, sleep!

Today was lots of sitting around listening to people talk. We were shepherded into a decently sized rooms, and divided to sit amongst the other JETs in our prefecture. The chairs were really uncomfortable and really close together, so we were hot and our bottoms began to hurt very quickly. On the upside, many of the presenters were pretty funny, so at least the morning sessions were interesting.

Lunch was a fairly nice affair, apart from the somewhat unpleasant faux-beef made from soybeans, and I met a very nice French girl. She suggested, quite cleverly I thought, that when approached by some undesirable (read: desperate host), you simply reply in nonsense Japanese. Her example: "Nihongo o tabemasen!" ("I don't eat Japanese language!") That way, they really think you have no idea how to say anything. If you try English, on the other hand, they'll probably just try to speak to you in that. The other option being to speak in an entirely third language. Upon reflection, I was pleased to realize that I can probably say that I don't speak Japanese in Polish.

The afternoon session was less entertaining, though the panelist from South Africa was pretty adorable. Already I was getting sleepy, and on several occasions closed my eyes because they felt sore. At last we were released, and after stopping by the AJET Information Center and being bombarded with free objects and flyers, Fig and I wandered about in the Shinjuku streets for a bit. I bought a cute little pocket notebook to write down anything important, we ogled some cameras, and bought a snack of onigiri.

Dinner was a crowded sort of a reception, with a welcome toast and more meeting of the prefectural JETs. I've met several very nice people in Kyoto-fu so far: Neil from New York, a guy from Canada whose name I forget, Liz who may or may not be from Colorado, Crystal from...somewhere, a cute guy from Scotland who has a very nice accent, and Todd, the guy in charge of us newbies, who has gauged earrings and recently married his Japanese girlfriend. (Shout-out to Reid: Todd is from St. Louis, and we had a nice chat about Ft. Leonard Wood, and why it was smart to be an MP!)

After dinner we finally changed out of our business clothes, and Fig and I set off into Shinjuku to meet our friend Alicia from Wittenberg, who has been living in Tokyo for two or three years. We were supposed to meet her at the station. Of course, we didn't realize until we were out in the streets getting not-quite-lost that there are something like four different train stations nearby with "Shinjuku" in the name, and we didn't know which one Alicia would be waiting at. After wandering for thirtyish minutes and making a few educated guesses, though, we finally found her! It was great to see her, and she's looking good. Tokyo (and a Japanese boyfriend) have really treated Alicia well.

We wandered into Kabuki-cho for karaoke, which was much fun. I had my first takoyaki of the trip, which made me a very happy Anna, indeed. As we left, Alicia and I were waiting for Fig outside the bathroom, and two Japanese teenagers in a karaoke booth were squatting on the floor and staring at us through the glass door. So I waved, and they waved back in great excitement, much to my and Alicia's amusement.

Afterwards, we moseyed a bit farther and stopped in an arcade to take purikura. Turns out the first machine was broken and wouldn't print, which was too bad (those pictures were cute!), but we got to use a different machine for free, and they turned out pretty cute. Fig and I dropped Alicia off at the train station, made promises to get in touch again today, and headed back to the hotel. On the way we coincidentally acquired John Neal and a drunk guy, who was a new JET looking for the hotel. His name was James, I think, and he was from Melbourne, AU.

When I got back to my room, Briana was hanging out with a very nice black guy from London, named Deji. He also had a great accent (there are a lot of them here!), and the three of us talked until 1:30 a.m. about politics and racism and the media in the US and Britain.

And that's about all so far! More orientation today, to be reported on later. :)






curry udon: thick wheat noodles usually served in soup; in this case, a spicy curry sauce specific to Japan

izakaya: sort of a Japanese tapas bar, where you order little plates of snacks to go with your drinks

host: a decently attractive young man who works at a host bar, where his only job is to sit and flirt with female customers, making them feel attractive and convincing them to keep ordering drinks (to spend money at their establishment, not for any creepier reasons)

onigiri: rice balls wrapped in crunchy (and delicious!) seaweed, usually with some kind of protein-based filling in the middle

Kabuki-cho: an area of Tokyo that abuts Shinjuku, and is known for its abundance of host and karaoke bars

takoyaki: delicious, delicious balls of fried dough that contain a bit of octopus inside, and are topped with a tangy sauce (among my top three favorite Japanese foods, fo' sho'!)

purikura: little photobooths that print out photo stickers, which you can decorate in a fashion somewhere between photoshop and mario paint