Arrival

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First Day

Whoo it's my first day here. So tired.
Got off a 14 hour flight, ears didn't pop as badly this time.
I made a friend, a Japanese lady sitting next to me, her name is Misa. I got to practice a little Japanese since she didn't know English. When she saw me cover my years, she offered me yummy grape candy =D

Then we got through customs, I saw two people holding a Thai passport and asked in Thai if they've ever been here and to direct me to the luggage retrieval place. They saw my passport and was like "why is your passport like that?" great... so i can't pass for Thai. Oh, but i did pass for Japanese on the plane cuz multiple flight attendants spoke to me first in Japanese.

We were greeted by IES people, there's this one girl named Jenny, shorter than me with short whitish blond hair who knew everyone cuz she was here last semester. So she went about jumping and hugging while me and this other guy Daniel awkwardly walked away.

We then took a 40-minute bus to OVTA ... overseas vocational training association...? which looks a lot more like a hotel. The doors here are shorter, lol. Makes me feel slightly claustrophobic but i guess it's my size. everything's so expensive here. the bus ticket was 1,100 yen, to top it off the exchange rate was 87 = $1 . To get internet was 500 yen and to send my luggage to my dorm was another 1,400.... so i basically spent over $30 in the past two hours.

Oh so on the bus ride, I learned more about Daniel... a German international student in NY who is into finance. Let's see.. then there's also Amy from NJ who is a music major and Kevin who goes to school in Rochester. As for the Japanese people who greeted us, there's a girl named Miyuki who is an English major and Yuki. Aha! i remember... wonder if this is breech of privacy, i'm sure first names and majors isn't a big deal.

Found out my housing situation! it's a triple with single bedrooms, apartment style. so awesome, but i have to cook.

As for the rooms here in this "hotel", there's a stick on my key that i have to stick into the outlet in order to get the electricity to work. I guess that makes sense, it makes it so that I have to have all of the electricity turned off in order to leave my room. I like Japan's effort to be eco-friendly.

I apologize for being boring or incoherent, my ears are still ringing from the flight... I feel disoriented and it's technically 3:30 in NY so a bit sleepy too. Going to go take a shower, am expecting a group dinner at 7 and then sleep.

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