Going to a funeral

I've been in Japan for almost a week now and thankfully things are starting to even out a little bit. I am writing this on my smart phone so unfortunately I won't be able to post any pictures, making this a rather boring Post.

My first impression of Japan was, I think, atypical. We arrived at Narita airport at half past six on Sunday morning. The airport was huge, and we taxied for about half an hour before reaching the terminal gate. Twenty minutes in I still had not seen another person or plane, it was like the airport was completely deserted! No other planes were taking off or landing, and nothing was moving on the huge expanse of tarmac. This made quite an impression on me, I was expecting Tokyo's international airpOrt to be as busy as LAX, which is always swarming with people. The other thing that struck me was how lush and green everything is. There is a very clear distinction between the airport, where every square centimeter is paved, and the surrounding hills, which are covered in thick vegetation. I was very glad that I had planned ahead and brought a fan with me, because it was stinking hot, despite it being early morning.

Tokyo was jaw dropping in it's size and density. Unlike anything else I have ever seen before. The only thing I could think to compare it to was Canyonlands. The hotel we were staying in jwas in the skyscraper district, near Shinjuku station. It was teeming with participants of hthe program, and I felt very sorry for the People who were paying guests on holiday. After hthe welcome reception, which was attended by about 1000 people, it took half an hour to get tinto an elevator. Pretty crazy.

On the first day, Sunday, I went exploring with a group of fifteen Aussies. We had a traditional Mexican lunch and I was able to read the menu (because the dishes were all foreign the names were written in katakana). I had a べギタブル ブリート (be-ji-ta-bu-ru bu-ri-to) and the e perience of being able to identify something correctly gave me a whole heap of confidence that getting by only knowing Katakana would be a breeze. This false confidence led me to seperTe myself from the group of fifteen Aussies to make it back to the hotel by myself, giving me my first taste of being alone, unable to orient myself, or ask questions, trying to accomplish what would bE a basic task in Australia or the US. It didn't end badly or anything, it just opened my eyes a little bit to the exact nature of What I had got myself into by moving here without any Japanese.

The rest of Tokyo orientation was good fun, though some poor choices early on which resulted in blister festooned feet and a raging hangover, dampened my enthusiasm somewhat. The speeches on the first day were really good, and put a shiny gloss over our expectations for the program. I didn't explore too far out from the hotel, the furthest I got was Shibuya, but there's plenty of time to go back and explore later in the year. There were lots of things that I saw, and wanted to write about but ive forgotten them all now, perhaps I should start carrying round a notebook.