Lost and Found

おはよ ございます!!!!!


(Mom and I at the airport)

Today is my first official day in Japan.!!!! However for only being here for about 24 hours a lot has happened. Before I begin about my initial adventures in Japan I will fill you all in about my flight. I flew on JAL and it was an absolutely amazing experience! I was seated on the upper deck which was very nice. There are significantly less people seated on the upper deck which means that there is less people to be making noise. I also was seated at a window seat, and the really cool thing about JAL is that if you are seated next to the window (on the upper deck anyway) You have a private locker under the window to stow your carry-on in. (See photo below) Like many international flights JAL also has the personal movie console to watch movies on. Something really unique about the flight was that the flight attendants brought moist warm towelettes around before bringing us our meals. Once I had boarded the plane I already felt like I was in Japan due to the fact that about only 5% of all passengers were NOT Asian. After landing going through immigration and customs was a breeze, but here is where some of the big crazy begins!!!



After getting all of my baggage I walked out into the main terminal of the building, and talked to the information desk about "the meeting point" (where I was supposed to meet with the IES people). I found out I needed to catch the free shuttle over to Terminal 1. Once there my Japanese E-pal was helping me exchange my money when I realized that my passport was missing!!!!! I looked through all of my luggage (even my checked baggage) attempting to recover my passport. My Japanese e-pal was attempting to comfort me by saying , "Daijobu" (No worries). Which try as she might was not a source of comfort. We called the information desk to see if I had left it at the desk after asking for assistance. However, they said they had not found any passport. We even went and asked the police if anyone had found an American passport. No luck!! However, after another 10 minutes, as I was heading back to terminal 2 to personally search over there for my passport my e-pal ran up to me telling me that my passport had been found! Turns out I had dropped it at the shuttle bus stop, but thankfully someone had turned it in. Last semester in my Japanese Culture class Professor McConnell had told the class that the Japanese are very good about turning in lost items, but I had still been so sure that my passport was gone forever, when I had only been in Japan for less than 30 mins. I'm so glad that my passport is now safe and returned to me!

Now today we had our first official day of IES student orientation. It has been pretty interesting. We had breakfast, which was a crazzy experience in itself. My Japanese breakfast was a piece of salmon, 2 different soups, a bowl of rice, and a strange type of lemon and an orange. Very different from American breakfast. Then we had a seminar for about an hour and a half. After that we went on a tour of the city near the place we are staying at. I'm not too sure how to describe the place we are staying at. It looks a little like a hotel, but it's not. It is called the OVTA and it is a training building but has guest rooms like a hotel. While on the tour our Japanese e-pals took us to an arcade where we took photos in the Purikura, which is this unbelievably awesome ultra Japanese photobooth.

I have been trying to get used to seeing only Japanese around me. One of the really interesting things I noticed today was that in Japan when it is raining, at the entrance of every major store/restaurant/shopping centre they have a plastic bags available which fit exactly for umbrellas, so you wont be carrying around a wet umbrella with you. Kind of interesting.


(My interesting/yummy Japanese breakfast)

Until next time!
またね！