Orientation Day 1

At around 11 or so last night I was woken abruptly by a doorbell ring. At first I thought I was dreaming, since I was in a hotel room, and they usually don't have doorbells, but figured it might be best to check the door anyway. Turns out it was my roommate, arriving late due to a delay in her flight. I barely managed to explain to her how to turn on the lights (I will explain this later) before crashing into my bed again.

At around 3, I woke up but managed to fall back asleep and dreamed a small earthquake hit the area. Already fearing the worst I guess. -_- I got out of bed around 7 AM and made proper introductions with my roommate, Hannah. With breakfast coupons in hand, we headed down to the lobby for some food before the orientation started. The breakfast buffet was pretty impressive. It had your usual bacon, sausage, and eggs, but also had miso soup, Japanese omelette, grilled salmon, chicken and vegetable stew, and salads. Their drink machines offered many different types of coffee, juice, and tea.

Orientation was rather typical of orientation and not very exciting so I will spare you all the details. We did take a lunch break at the nice little restaurant called As Domani (I forgot to take pictures) and I had probably the best salad there that I ever tasted. I am not a salad fan, but whatever sauce they put in it made it pretty delicious. (I know what you are thinking, Skylar...) We were also served a thin crust pizza for the appetizer, pasta with cabbage and oysters for the main course, and cake for dessert that reminded me of pound cake, only lighter in sweetness and smoother in texture.

Given a break to do our own exploring, Haruna took Hannah and me back to the mall we went to yesterday and used one of the photo booths. And these were some pretty crazy photo booths. Not only does it take a ton more pictures in one session, it automatically photoshops your face so you look oddly model-like, and lets you write or stamp on silly pictures. It then prints out the pictures, and sends you two of your choice to your phone.

Silly faces.

Afterwards, we met back up with the IES group to do a tour around the area. I think the word tour was slightly misused in this case though, because it was more like a scavenger hunt. We had to find our e-pals at different places within a 3-4 block radius around the hotel and get short lessons on important places to be aware of when wondering around the city on our own.

Called a kouban, or police box. These are found around every few blocks, and crazy enough, the officers are really kind, knowledgeable, and helpful.

This place just made me think of Skylar. Another sign advertised they sold alcohol and cigarettes.

None of the other places were interesting enough to take pictures of (a bank and post office). By that time, I was almost soaked through with sweat from the humidity so Hannah and I settled back in our room. She set up her phone (which is a Japanese android phone) as a wi-fi hotspot so, yay! I can finally get caught up on this blog.

And yes, I wanted to talk about the toilets, but now I am just too tired now and my laptop battery is running low again, so perhaps next time.