Ohayo gozaimasu!!
Im here in Shinjuku, Tokyo staying at the Keio Plaza Hotel (5 star hotel). 184 JETs from Chicago arrived at Narita International Airport around 3pm Sunday afternoon and then we all hoped on buses and sat the 2 hour drive to the hotel. When we got to the hotel we were greeted by tons of former JETs and given massive amounts of papers and books and sent up to our rooms. I have two roommates--Danielle, who went to Madison and is in the same prefecture as me (there are 4 people who graduated from Madison in the same prefecture!!) and Ashley--and the room is so nice, a lot different from where I will be living tomorrow! Then a couple of people and I went exploring around Shinjuku--lots of lights, karaoke bars, pachinko parlors, etc etc etc...Monday we had conferences all day and workshops on how to adjust to life in Japan and cultural shock...unfortunately I slept through most of those (I blame it on jet lag not the fact that they were SO boring) and then we had some pretty cool seminars on japanese popular culture--telling us all about the popular J-pop bands and manga/anime to watch and discuss with the kids. Then we had a huge dinner with all the big wigs of CLAIR (the gov agency that not only sponsers but basically runs the JET programme). We were not allowed to drink or eat until they said kanpai (cheers) and then proceeded to drink lots of japanese beer. During dinner I met all the Irish Jets and have decided they are the ones to hang out with, since Irish are the best after all. After that everyone from our prefecture (Aichi) went out for karaoke, which let me tell you is AWESOME in japan! They take you to a small room with lots of black lights and disco balls and its all you can drink for 2000 yen! We sang for hours--mostly backstreet boys and awful american music and even tried some japanese songs...those didn't work too well! Then came home went to bed and am now getting ready for breakfast and another day of conferences, cant wait!!
6 comments:
Sounds like you had a great time!! Miss you like crazy already! Good luck with everything and love you!
I'm so glad you got there okay! (I hope the plane flight went smoothly) And I can't believe you're over there. I have to figure out the time difference so I can talk to you!!
Oh, and this is Annie!! It let me use my gmail account to comment but then it showed up as "andrea" and I was like, oh, that's confusing ...
The conferences sound more like a party than work!!! Glad you got there okay. Keep the blog coming. PS Brianna had her wisdom teeth out yesterday...OUCH! Love Lynnie, Brian and Brianna.
Lauren! I miss you! I'm so glad to hear you got there safely and it sounds like you're having a great time! I'm happy for you! I have been watching the oc non-stop since i cant do much...my mouth hurts :-/ Hope you have fun at the rest of your conferences!!! love you!
thanks for the comments! I miss you guys sooo much and I think that you all need to come visit, its sooo awesome here you would love it!! I promise to write as much as possible and i will get an email list set up once my apartment has internet!!
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