I can't think of a creative title...Day 0/1

Day 0

Leaving Hawaii was sad. It was also pretty crazy. I didn't actually sleep on the plane. Instead I got in touch with my feminine side by watching chick flicks. Yeah. I did. I turned down the opportunity to watch Avatar and instead selected It's Complicated and PS I Love You, because I am a girl.

Arriving in Narita, I followed the herd to immigration, where I had to wait over an hour in a nice line packed with foreigners. It was all very welcoming. Then waiting in line again to recheck in my luggage. I'm pretty sure that my luggage was oversized by Japanese standards. Yay for being a tourist. I got to the terminal with about 10 minutes to spare before being shuttled over to our plane where I then flew to Osaka. I was kind of nervous about catching my shuttle to the hotel, but when I stepped out of the luggage area there was a guy holding a sign with my name on it. Awesome. Nothing says tourist like a sign with your name on it.

When I finally got to my hotel it was about 8 and luckily I ran into some kids in my program who were about to go out for karaoke. So I put my luggage down in my room, and went out for a night on the town singing karaoke. Okay, so I wouldn't exactly call it a night out on the town, but we wandered and found a karaoke place and sang.



Day 1

The day started with breakfast. About half an hour before we were supposed to meet our group in the lounge to head over to the University campus I walked downstairs to the complementary breakfast area. They had Japanese versions of typical American food. The bacon. Oh the bacon was a disgrace. All flacid and not cooked. The bacon brought tears to my pork-loving heart. So opted for the Japanese route and piled my tray with rice, fish, nori, and takuan. I even had some miso soup. Yum.

Then we had the saddest tour of Kyoto ever. It was basically our director leading us to the train station and stopping at a few places to tell us how Kyoto is trying to preserve its remaining traditional structures and to tell us that the sylistic fence around some trees and buildings were erected to prevent dogs from desecrating the area. Yeah, real thorough.

At the school there was a bunch of orientation stuff. We got MONEY!! Okay, so the money was our food and travel stipend, but money is money. Lunch was whatever we wanted. I decided to head down to the student cafeteria with the rest of the flock. Baa.

After lunch we got to do probably the most important thing I've done thus far in Japan: set up our wi-fi connection for on campus. For being such a renowned tech savvy place Japan needs to catch up with the whole wireless internet thing.

After that we were divided into six separate groups and given a location to visit. Apparently we are supposed to prepare presentations of the place we visited for Monday. My group was supposed to visit Kyomizu-dera. We got lost. I mean, we made it to the general area, but were so distracted by the food and the the cherry blossoms and the food that we didn't actually make it to the main temple. Ooops. I enjoyed myself.



We then tried to navigate our way back to the subway station to get back to the hotel and ended up stopping at the cutest fusion restaurant ever. But my ramen was terrible. I've had instant noodles that I've found more appetizing. But the decor was pretty sweet so I'll let it slide. We also realized, after walking for about half an hour that we knew how to navigate our way back to the hotel without actually catching the train. So we did a pretty hefty amount of walking. Fun. Fun. Fun.


The most disgusting ramen EVER.

By the time I got back I was so exhausted that I took a shower soaked in the ofuro and passed out.