First Day of Arrival Orientation (The One with the Cold Chips)

We woke up bright and early on Tuesday for what was expected to be a pretty long day, but with a good night’s sleep the night before I was feeling pretty ready for it. We had breakfast at the same hotel café as dinner the night before, but this time it was a self-serve cafeteria-style meal. Writing from memory I can remember eating some form of scrambled egg, bacon and waffle, I also remember the distinct aroma of Natto, a traditional Japanese food (Fermented Soy Beans) which was repugnant enough to keep me from even trying to eat it. Someday, maybe. Nobody at the table bar Lilianna was brave enough to stick even the tiniest bit of the stick bean paste in their mouth!

After breakfast we headed up to our rooms and finished packing up and gathering our belongings into bags again, as we needed to take the bus from the Hotel to our next stop; the Olympic Memorial Youth Center in Shinjuku! The bus ride was pretty tedious. We resorted to playing I Spy in Japanese; it didn’t last too long. Nearing our destination the traffic started to get really congested which I guess is to be expected in Tokyo.

After way too long we arrived at the Youth Center. First impressions weren’t the best, but I did grow to absolutely love the place! Basically it’s a huge center which is currently used mostly for educational purposes, a lot of the people staying there were either students or business employees there for meetings or whatnot. Anyway, when we got off the bus we had to lug our bags up lots of stairs to the 4th floor of the main building for an afternoon of crash course Japanese lessons.

Before those though, we were introduced to the staff and some Japanese students who had studied abroad before and were volunteers helping out. After introductions and some house keeping stuff was over with we went to the cafeteria for lunch. First impression: wow. So many people in one place! Probably the most prominent people staying at the center for us (Us being our little Australia group we had going on) were a huge group of girls all wearing a bright pink jumpers and beige pants (There must’ve been hundreds of them, I swear!). They came to be affectionately known as the salmon girls at one point (And then, eventually, just the salmon). There were many amusing and fun run-ins with the salmon during the course of our stay… I’m pretty sure I could write an entire entry about just that! (And I just might do that :D)

If I could remember the kinds of stuff we’d eaten that day at lunch I’d write about it, but I can’t for the life of me. One of the returnees named Kana who had gone to North Carolina came and sat with us during lunch, we discussed the finer points of the Japanese language – haha – like the difference between お元気ですか (‘How are you feeling?’) and 気分はどう？ (Also ‘How are you feeling?’). The oddest finer details come back to me, but I can’t remember what we ate for the life of me!

Anyway, after lunch we went back to the same classroom for our Japanese language lessons, which were, admittedly, nothing new for me. They were essentially just basics revision for people that might have needed it. Nonetheless it was fun and I enjoyed myself. We worked in groups and if memory serves me I was with Sununtha (From Thailand), Kana, Samantha, and I’ve forgotten two people… but my memory is pretty good since this was almost 2 weeks ago!

After a few hours of these lessons Kana showed us to our rooms. One thing I have learnt from this whole trip is to back better! Not that I forgot anything, quite the opposite. This is my first time overseas, or even away from home for any longer than just under a week, so I guess I can be excused. Anyway, we had to carry our stuff down the to the ground level and then to the dorm building and I was exhausted by the end of it. I was talking with Kana at the back of the group and because of that I ended up getting left behind at the elevator in the dorm building (Thanks, Craig. He was to do this to other people many, many times during our stay… but that’s a totally different story altogether. I could write an entry about that too… chances are I won’t).

We got our own rooms this time! Something that made me very relieved, sharing rooms, especially bathrooms, gets tedious after too long. Since this was a 5 day stay I made myself relatively at home in my room. The rooms were fairly standard dorms. We had our own (Small) bathroom, TV and bed. Not big at all, but fair enough for such a short stay and just one person. The view of the Tokyo skyline was nice too.

I think the most fun I had during the orientation stay was wandering around with the other Aussie students every night. The first night we made a fairly routine visit to the vending machines and purchased some dry, not very appetising ‘Hot’ Chips from the hot food machine, which served other things like hot dogs, yakisoba, onigiri among other things. One of my chips was still frozen. Not recommended. The drinks were much more agreeable though, and they have hot and cold drinks in the vending machines here. So you can order a can of hot coffee or hot chocolate straight from a vending machine! Very nifty, and utilised a lot since it was freezing cold for our entire stay!

I don’t think I slept till fairly late that night, maybe around midnight or so. But it was a pretty big day so I didn’t have any trouble at all falling asleep to the crazy shows on TV.