Here!

I could write a beautiful, poetic account of everything that's happened in the past 24 hours, but this will be maybe a little brief and maybe not very well-written (my apologies). It's currently 8:30 a.m. on Monday, August 2 (I'm 28!) and I've slept for the past 12 hours.

Yesterday, or rather, the day before yesterday, I left Portland, OR for a 10-hour flight to Japan. The flight was fun, I watched a fantastic movie called Serendipity (hahaha), and met a lot of cool people who will be here with me. We arrived in Tokyo at 4:00 p.m. Tokyo time (something like 1:00 a.m. Portland time) and were herded from the airplane, through customs, through immigration, to a line of buses awaiting us. We sent two of our bags on to our prefectures (that's Gunma, for me) and and kept two with us to carry onto the bus. I was absolutely exhausted, but couldn't sleep too much on the bus. It was about a 2-hour ride from the airport to the hotel. I tried to keep my eyes open to see the scenery, but I was too tired to see much. I remember the guy with us telling us to see Disneyland and some other sites, but I kept my eyes closed...I do remember that the trees look vaguely North Carolina-esque...lots of pines and maybe oaks? And, weirdly enough, what looks like kudzu all over the place!

This hotel is absolutely beautiful, extraordinarily fancy, and really nice! I'm sharing a room with two other Portland JETs. I crashed last night about 7:30 p.m. Tokyo time and slept off and on till 6:30 this morning. (For some reason, I had a hard time going to sleep, but I ended up sleeping really deeply as the night wore on.)

This morning we woke up and went to a fancy breakfast, which included super floppy bacon, eggs, various cut-up fruits, toast, coffee, stir-fried vegetables, and shoe-string French fries! I sat with some people from the U.S., the U.K., and New Zealand, and marveled at the accents. :)

We have meetings all day long and a semi-formal tonight, but I'll try to keep you updated on everything else that we do. It seems so weird that I'm so many miles from home, but it's definitely going to be an adventure!

Sorry for the train of thought post, but I wanted to let you know that I've arrived safe and soundly and that things are good. I'm still a little sleepy but I think I'll accustom myself sooner or later. I hope everyone is well! I'll post pictures soon, too.

Till next time......!