Arrival!

I flew out of Newark the day before yesterday on a flight that coincidentally included Rene, my next door neighbor. We got into Japan yesterday afternoon and soon made it through customs and initial quarantine (see left), leaving me plenty of time to explore in Tokyo with fellow program participants. We wandered around Shibuya and Harajyuku and even stopped for karaoke. The amount of English that is everywhere is ridiculous, especially once you include everything in katakana, but not all of it makes much sense--why would you want a shirt that says "drug abuse"?

I keep being surprised by the small ways in which Japan differs from the US--I knew to expect crowding, greater politeness (Everone bows so much, even to buses!), etc., but the minor differences are what catch my attention. The toilet in my hotel room has a bizarre array of options, and those in the lobby play music! The Gideon bible shares a drawer with a book on the teachings of Buddha, and my airplane was painted with teddy bears.

I'm currently on break during my placement exam, which is making me painfully aware of how little Japanese I know and how little I've slept in the last three days. At least I'll have the weekend to recover -- nothing is scheduled, and I don't even get to meet my host family yet due to the swine flu scare. I am being "quarantined"to protect them, but this just means that I live in a hotel and am free to come and go as I please so long as I don't meet my them. It's a measure to keep host families from pulling out of the program--if the density of face masks is any judge, people here are really scared.