Arrival: Successful! Mostly...

So! I have officially been in Japan for about 40 hours after traveling for just over 20 and can now say, with certainty, that I am an obnoxious person when I have difficulty communicating with the people around me while dealing with over seventy pounds of luggage and less than two hours of sleep. But, as soon as you get either some sleep in me or get rid of the baggage, all I really want to do is talk to everyone. On top of that, I can also that being in Japan negated most of the feelings of utter, irrational anger of the travel!fail of the first night within about two hours and I am now TOTALLY loving being here. Still, I know that if I tried to describe Thursday night’s adventures the majority of this entry would be made up of ranting and raving and whining and moaning, so, in order to avoid unnecessary brain damage to all involved, this is going to be the brief-explanation-of-my-coming-travels-plus-an-even-briefer-list-of-highlights-from-my-first-40-hours-in-Japan entry. You can expect a more detailed entry on what I’ve done since getting here later today once I’ve gotten some essential shopping out of the way (Read: CELL PHONE).

For those of you who have already been regaled with the plan for the upcoming months, you can feel free to skip down a bit instead of read this explanation or even skip this entry altogether and wait from the real meat of the story. For those who have not, here’s the rundown:

July 4-August 14: Summer Courses in Japanese at the International Christian University in Tokyo (ICU)

(approx.) August 14-August 29: Hokkaido home stay

September 2-November 19: Continued language study + 3 Japanese culture classes at ICU

November 20-December 15: Wander the country, looking for the meaning of life.

Some highlights of my adventures so far include:

The shower at the hostel,

Chatting with a drunken Japanese man who assumed (correctly) that I spoke Japanese and then proceeded to complement me on my speaking ability,

Successfully riding the train from Shinjuku to Musashi-sakai and the bus from Musashi-sakai to ICU,

Chatting with small Japanese children and their parents,

Successfully finding and ordering at the awesome soba place IN JAPANESE,

Having crazy awesome suite-mates (at least the two I’ve met),

And, my favorite,

BEING IN JAPAN.

YAY!!

Expect another entry later today.

~ Anna