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Published: August 25th 2006
The road to Japan started in Chicago of all places. That's where we had our pre-departure orientation for the JET Programme. The orientation itself was a whirlwind and I was sad to leave my parents, but I was also really excited to finally be on my way to Japan. Of all places, my flight from Chicago stopped over in Minneapolis/St. Paul Int'l airport because that's where a lot of us would be getting on our flight to Tokyo. The actual flight wasn't too bad. I watched episodes of My Name is Kim Sam-Soon and Autumn in My Heart as well as the movie Windstruck. Here's the kicker though...after oooh 10-12 hours we find out that we are running low on fuel, something about burning more than they thought, so we have to stop over at Sapporro to re-fuel. Thank goodness we made it over the Pacific before we were running low. That made our journey last even longer and we finally made it to Tokyo on Sunday night after leaving the US on Saturday afternoon.
Orientation was also a whirlwind affair. I was too tired and intimidated by Tokyo to go out much. The only night I really went out
was with the other Tottori prefecture ALTs on our Night Out. That pretty much consisted of dinner and karaoke which was a lot of fun. Workshops were sometimes long and boring, there were many speeches and a lot of superficial people running amok trying to make friends and look cool by talking about how they had been to Japan before, etc. Basically people at orientation tend to behave like college freshmen or that's how it felt to me. I have definitely seen people in a different light after orientation just because they've been removed from that environment where you feel like you have to impress others.
BUT! I digress...I did meet a few other Filipinos at orientation and some other nice peeps who I haven't contacted yet. I say I will and I might once I get internet at my apartment. One of the more interesting sessions was the one for Asian JETs where they basically say that life will be great for you because you look kind of Japanese so they won't bother you as much as other foreigners. You get to blend in better, etc. There are definitely pros and cons to being of Asian descent here,
but I'll talk about those another time.
After orientation, us Tottori people got on an ANA flight to either Tottori City or Yonago City.
The crazy adventure continues....
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Aria ^-^
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How cool!!!!!!!!!
I'm so happy for you ^-^!!! I will live ur adventure through ur blog entries, so don't forget to update!! *bookmarks page in favs*. The "running low on fuel" happened to me once. What a pain!!! in my case we had to wait a day for them to get once again in the air <..<', and I'm one of the naive ppl that usually believes them at first. <_<' I hope you make nice friends there!!! :)