Ohayo. Ohayo. New Jersey.

On July 26th, at 11:45am, 70 other JETs from the Pacific Northwest and I took our Northwest Airlines flight from SeaTac to Narita Int’l Airport. The flight was supposed to be about 10 hours, but it was more like 9 and a half. We had the second shortest flight out of all the other JETs that arrived in our orientation group-the folks from Sydney had a nine hour flight, while others from New York or Atlanta had 14-16 hour travel times.

Once we made it to Tokyo the first thing you notice is the molasses-like heat and humidity. It’s gross. It had been a while since I felt anything quite like this so it definitely took some adjusting to get used to sweating while I was merely standing, or sitting. Oh and lucky me, there was a video crew interviewing random participants as we came out of customs. It must have been my dashing good looks after a nine hour plane ride, but they stopped me for my first impressions and first anxieties. I don’t think I gave them the answers they expected as I quickly blurted out, “My luggage!.” By the way, for anyone that was there during the last two days, they know that I was pretty high strung about all the packing, particularly because the packing logistics proposed by JET was mind boggling. Luckily everything turned out just fine.

We took a bus into the Shinjuku district of Tokyo to our hotel, the Keio Plaza. It was swank and had all sorts of stuff to do all around. My first night there, I had an awesome ramen dinner with some rice and chicken karage (Japanese fried chicken = bomb dot com). I also saw the most amazing sunset I had ever seen. Granted that I had to climb through some blocked off areas of the hotel, but I think it was worth it.

First meal in Japan. And no, this is not one of those plastic displays.

Something out of a science fiction movie. The sky is actually more purple than the picture shows.

The food was great. The scenery crazy. The people bountiful. But what was it that caught my eye right off the bat? The toilets.

Bidet. Water trickle function. What more could you ask?

My roommate and I fiddled around with the control panel and almost got sprayed in the face. Check out a fellow JET’s blog on her brave experience with a toilet. Awesome. http://whereiscallie.blogspot.com/