Home Sweet 日本

I have arrived safely in Japan.

The flight over while long and sleep free was not too ardorous. I was sitting next to a Japanese lady who didn't speak English and slept the whole time so I was able to avoid the discomfort of an enormous seat mate. They showed four movies in flight, two of which I watched, She's the Man and 16 Blocks. Both were okay but neither would be worth my time to watch again. For food, I was served some sort of beef with gravy and a mashed potato substitue for the first meal and watery manicotti for the second. Neither were very good, their only saving grace was the fresh fruit that came with them.

After we arrived at Narita, I booked it to immigration. My room mate, Josh, had forewarned me that I should get to the line ASAP or get stuck waiting in line behind all of the hundreds of other people from the plane. I made it ahead of most of the people from my flight and I was certainly glad I did because several other flights ended up coming in at the same time and right after I got into what I thought was a horribly long line, a tsunami of people came in and it backed up out of the immigration room and was lost from sight out the door.

Narita is set up to run very efficently. Everything is clearly labled in 日本語 and English, and it has a smooth flow. You get off the plane and go directly to immigration, the door out of immigration goes directly to baggage claim, all the exits from baggage claim go through customs and when you get out of customs you're in the right place to hire a taxi or get a bus or train ticket. There are also waiting areas for people trying to gather together a group from seperate flights.

I was excited when I opened up my laptop and got four bars on an unsecured wireless network while sitting in one of those waiting areas. Unfortunately, my joy was quickly quashed when I connected and was met with a screen that informed I had to pay ￥５００ to get online. I figured at that rate I could just wait til I got to my dorm.

By the time I had completed my disappointing attempt to get online, I had to hurry to catch my bus. While waiting at the curb I met two fellow TUJ students and then once we got on the bus we met another. The bus was air conditioned, a fact for which I was very thankful considering that it was nearly 90 degrees out with humidity in the high eighties, maybe low nineties and it was a long ride. It took us almost two hours to get to the hotel where we were instructed to meet with school representatives and it was nice getting to know a couple of my fellow students.

Immediately upon arriving at the school we were greeted by several student employees of the Office of International Students. They quickly checked us in and then put us in taxis, gave driving instructions to the dorm to the driver and sent us on our way instructing us to wait outside the building in the morning to be led to school.

Our taxi driver got lost. Apparently the map which he had been provided wasn't that good. He tried to ask us where to go but we had no idea. It was very awkward because he didn't speak English and neither I nor the girl with whom I was riding speak Japanese. Fortunately we were able to inidicate the phone number of the dorm manager and the manager was able to guide the frustrated driver in. It turned out that we were only two blocks from the dorm.

The manager helped us get our bags to our rooms and gave us our room keys. My room mate, Josh was alreay there. As it turns out this was very fortunate for me because the girls (we could tell by the long hairs in the shower) who had previously occupied our room had left things a mess and Josh had to do a fair bit of cleaning.

We stayed up and chatted for a bit, did a little studying for our assesment exams and then went to bed.

All in all, things went very smoothly and I am thankful that none of the myriad of things that could have gone amiss were allowed to happen.

Expect further updates as my schedule allows.