Japan

It's been a wild past two weeks with packing for Japan, living through a 12-hour plane ride, "orienting" myself in Tokyo, Shinjuku district, and setting up my new life in the city of Kyoto. For those who don't know, I am spending the year teaching English to Japanese high school and middle school students with the JET Programme. They placed me in the lovely and historic town/city of Kyoto, Japan, and so far I'm loving it and soaking it all in. The worst part about this city: Carly is not living here permanently this year. My beautiful and talented wife will be studying in Yokohama, Japan for the year, a little over a 2.5 hour Shinkansen (high speed rail) ride from Kyoto. Yes, a big bummer, but this gives us only more incentives to spend our weekends together gallivanting around the islands that make up this small but densely-populated country.

Skipping the boring part of planing it to Tokyo on Delta airlines... We arrived in Tokyo around 2:00 pm on July 25, immediately after which we were shuttled to Tokyo to check into our swank hotel, the Keio Plaza Hotel. Some pictures:


That night a bunch of us went out for our first meal in Japan. I had udon noodles, and as you can surely see, I was pretty exhausted. Everyone was on a high just being there, so all were completely chill with dining in a large group among whom few had known each other 24 hours earlier, myself included. Despite the exhaustion, it was not an early night! Must have stayed up until 12:00 exploring Shinjuku district. When I asked a new friend who had been to Tokyo before if this was the "downtown" of Tokyo, I was politely informed that there are multiple "downtowns," and that we were in just one of them. Having visited a number of metropoli in my time, I can tell you: this is not the case in every city. Here are a few of Shinjuku:



New friends roaming the new district, and Japanese bar signs signaling our arrival, the proprietors of whom were waiting to prey on any unsuspecting JETs looking for food and drink. We did not enter this place:


There were some official JET Orientation programs we had to go to during normal business hours and politics and guidelines we had to absorb, observe, and record...

...BUT, I think most of us were interested in getting out again for some long hours of Japanese K A R A O K E!

Sorry, J and Molly. This one was too good not to make it onto my blog. The kyoto-fu (prefecture) JETs all went out the second night for karaoke, mild drinking, and exploring. Here is the Japanese convenience store I dropped into that night on the way back to the hotel



Tokyo orientation was one big blur. The 2 days were gone before we realized we were in Japan, and for much of it we were inside a "Western bubble," as one presenter put it. The hotel was pretty normal and what one might call Westernized. On Wednesday the 28th, the hundreds of JETs that were in Tokyo for the orientation were sent to their respective prefectures, where we would meet out daily supervisors and home school officials for the first time. The 16 Kyoto JETs trekked a mile to the train station in Tokyo that would take us to the central artery of the city's transportation system, Tokyo Station, from which we were shot out of the city on the bullet train toward Kyoto, only 2 hours away. Here we are:

And my bento lunch (sufficient and new, but not really exciting):


That afternoon, I met two new teachers with whom I will be working, Kusakabe-sensi and Okamoto-sensei, both English teachers at Rakuhoku senior high school. They drove me to the school, where I met the principal and signed my apartment lease. We had to do this before we could get the key to my new apartment, but all went smoothly and we were in my new place in a jiffy. My predecessor, Christine, left me a lot of great stuff for my place that was moved over before I got here, so that night I spent most of my time rearranging everything, unpacking, and sorting... I was asleep by 12:00, but unfortunately up the next morning at 5:00... that's JET lag for ya!

So anyway, I'll stop here for now because it's getting late, but I have a lot more updating to do and pictures to share, many of my new town, some shrines we visited, places we've eaten, and many unusual and ridiculous things the Japanese do and make here in their country (no, really, Garrett!?!??!... yes) . Check back with me soon and you consider yourself informed. For now, oyasuminasai!