Everything is in Japanese

I`m using a Japanese computer, which means a lot of the text on the screen is in Japanese. I don`t really know what I`m doing, and I`m having trouble finding the apostrophe key! But, the good thing is that I`m actually in Japan! Tokyo, to be exact, at my orientation. One more full day here tomorrow, and then I head off for Toyama-ken, Takaoka city, my new home for one year!

In brief: the plane ride was great; they had video games on the tv monitor! I played a lot of tetris. Then, there were some complications upon landing. They made me repack my luggage to take to Tokyo because I could take only one bag when I thought I could bring two, and then I found out someone else had mistakenly taken my duffel bag, and I had hers! That meant I had to stay another 2 hours at the airport, trying to sort it out. It actually didn`t really get sorted out until this morning, when I laid eyes on my bag here in the hotel, to my great relief. They shipped it out to Toyama for me, so it should be waiting for me, along with my other large suitcase I shipped from the airport, on Wednesday. Needless to say, it was a very frustrating start to my time here, and I was pretty upset Sunday night. Luckily, it was really easy to find other JETs going out to dinner (there are 1,000 of us here in the hotel!), so I tagged along with them and distracted myself from my distress. Soon enough though, exhaustion set in, and I was in bed by 10:30. I slept through the night, and started up bright and early at 7am today! It`s been a long day full of meetings and lectures, and we have our formal Welcome Reception Buffet Dinner in about 20 minutes. Then, I`ll be heading out for some karaoke with my fellow Toyama JETs! I`ve never done karaoke before...

All in all, it`s been a hectic, stressful, exciting start. Just as I expected it to be!

PS: The toilets here automatically fill with water when you sit on them! It really creeps me out.