Tokyo Orientation

Some randomness:

The bed I've been sleeping on at the Keio Plaza Hotel is a twin-sized pull out bed. It folds up into this not quite love seat, not quite lounge chair. I guess there is some sort of mattress on it, but when I lay down it feels like I'm sleeping on the box spring part of a bed. And when my head is pressed against the back of the couch part my feet are off the end of the bed. It hasn't really mixed well with Jet lag, which I guess simply manifests itself at 2:30am when I wake up and can't really fall back asleep again.

I have been getting to bed relatively early, however. Last night we went out to nomihodai which means "all you can drink." For 2000 yen (about $17). At the current exchange rate, 1000 yen equals about $8.50. Sounds like a decent deal, but you can only get the deal for 2 hours then you have to leave. Oh- and it's all you can eat too. So I guess it was a tabehodie nomihodai. I think there's a word for that, but I can't remember it. I have been pleasantly surprised at some of the vocab words I've been able to recall at oportune moments these past few days. I went out to get dinner in the Keio Plaza with a girl named Mary Beth from North Carolina. We had no idea what we were doing- I asked a guy where a kaiten zushi was in Japanese, and he answered me in English and then started walking us to it- we talked a bit and found out he had lived on the East Coast for awhile. We ended up not eating at the kaiten, but at a place that said "290" on the outside. Here there were kanji for the prices, so my number knowlege came in handy. Also, at the end when we paid I asked, "tadashi?" which means, correct? Obviously not a full sentance, but I made sure that we weren't walking away without paying too much.

During a toast speech in Chicago the speaker gave us "3 advices." The second one was to never tip the restaurants. Really. No one tips- it isn't expected at all. I guess the price of a tip is already figured in to the prices because we were told that eating at restaurants is pretty expensive. I haven't run into that yet- I only paid 450 yen for dinner tonight. However, the portions are a lot smaller. I ordered my dish by pointing at a picture. The thing I got was kind of like ramen with ground beef (I think) and some sort of spice that was REAALLY spicy. I choked trying to swallow the soup every spoonful. I couldn't tell if it was just supposed to be that spicy, or if the Japanese were playing a joke on the poor gaijin (foreigner).

I've met a lot of really nice people, and everyone likes to talk talk talk talk talk. The people on the JET Program here really are the cream of the crop tho- all college educated, all adventurous, all highly-motivated. Most of the people I've spoken to are already world travelers. Or have even lived abroad for a couple of years or more. Most are very extroverted, thus the talk talk talk. My voice was actually kind of hoarse yesterday from all the talking I've done. I've written down several e-mails and signed up for a tatami travel site (cost 1000 yen) that will put my address on a database for other JETs looking for a place to stay while traveling. My 1000 yen also gives me access to the site so if I ever need a place to stay anywhere in Japan where there are JETs, I can do so. Already I think a guy named Daniel is coming down to Kambara in November to stay at my place for the green tea festival. I don't know anything about it, so I guess he's going to show me around.

Tonight's our last night in Tokyo. Tomorrow morning I have to be downstairs at 9:o0 for a bus ride to Shizuoka Prefecture. It's about a 3 1/2 hour bus ride from here, 2 1/2 hours by train or 1 - 1 1/2 by shinkansen (bullet train). Then in the afternoon we'll have our kencho ceremony then head off to our individual schools. Tomorrow night I should be sleeping in my new apartment! I'm super pumped to meet my principal and JTEs and neighbors. I will finally be seeing the people I'll be spending the vast majority of my time with over the next year (or 2 or 3 or 5...sorry mom).

I decided yesterday that I cannot just stay here a year. There's no way. This is too great an opportunity to just have a surface experience. After a year I think I will just start to feel like I'm getting settled. I'm also super pumped to learn Japanese. I really do want to learn it- my goal is to be functionally fluent by the end of 2 years. I went to a workshop today that gave me a lot of strategies to aid in learning Japanese while living in Japan. I haven't watched any tv yet, but I guess a lot of television stations/shows have Japanese subtitles to accompany the Japanese spoken word. Not totally sure why that is, but it sure is helpful for recognizing kanji.

Well, guess that's about all I have to say right now- I've been having trouble with my computer freezing when I try and upload pictures on here, so I won't try since I just typed this really long blog. Hopefully I can soon set up a photo account on some other website so you can all see more snapshots of my life here.

Luther