2010 = the year of the tiger.

hello everyone!!

here is my first official post from japan!! how exciting is that?? oh my stars, i can't even begin to tell you all that i've been absorbing. let me start with when i left san francisco, eh? sounds good? good.

okay, we took off from san francisco in a boeing 777 which apparently is gigantic. HUGE plane! all of the stewardesses were so friendly and accommodating. go japan airlines! so, as soon as we took off, i took an ambien and i was OUT. best thing ever. i only remember about an hour of the flight and i couldn't be more grateful! my travel buddy was kellan. he knows binary. hahaha. he said i kicked him in my sleep. sorry kellan. :S

upon landing, it took us about half an hour to get through immigration and customs. and there was already a huge difference in japanese employees versus american ones! in japan, when the phone rings, they all run to pick it up. and, when my cute little piggy luggage tag fell of my laptop case, two people ran over to pick it up and hand it to me. i was very grateful. i'd be very sad if my little piggy was left in the airport. :(

after going through customs and immigration, we met our internship coordinator, ryan, who was waiting for us with a little sign that said, "interac". it made me feel pretty important. and thus began the awful journey of dragging all of our luggage all over the countryside. we went from train to train, up stairs, down stairs, up escalators, down escalators...we just went from one hellish terrain to the next. riding the trains was pretty fun though. but since it was dark outside, i didn't really get to enjoy the scenery. phooey. but our last train took us to a region of tokyo called asakusa, where our hotel is about a block away from the sensoji temple. i'll definitely be posting pictures of that one. so the hotel is really neat. i have a tiny, one-person room. i was kinda hoping i'd get to share with the other girls in the program, but we all have our own rooms. there's not even enough space for us to hang out in one person's room. they're that tiny. it's quite nice though! the bed has a great setup where it has controls for the air conditioner and tv, and you can turn the room lights off and on from the bed! there is also a radio and an alarm clock fixed in the headboard. it's quite nice! plus, they give you pajamas to use, and BOY are they comfortable!! and the bathroom comes equipped with a western toilet (YES) that has a bidet...haven't used it yet...it also has the deepest tub i've ever seen. another cool aspect of the hotel is that they the keys look like apartment keys and they have HUGE keychains attached. i thought, "sweet, i'll never lose this key!", but as it turns out, i don't even have to worry about it, because you're supposed to turn your key in before you leave the hotel anyway! and then you come and get it again when you return. kind of a sweet little setup! i appreciated it at least. one less thing to worry about!

after getting set up in the hotel, we walked down to the sensoji temple where the new year's festival was in full swing. oh man, it was so neat!! tons and tons of little booths set up with all the craziest food you can imagine; bananas dipped in chocolate, little fishies on sticks, GIGANTIC hamburgers, squid tentacles, et cetera. there was also this little booth exclusively for cell phone charms. the japanese love dressing up their cell phones...i saw a woman with three or four charms on hers! i didn't get anything at this particular festival...i'm going to wait a while for another festival. i did, however, employ one of the extremely numerous vending machines and bought some peach juice. it was SO good! there are tons of vending machines over here that dispense juice, water, cigarettes, beer...i haven't seen any food vending machines yet though...

we left the festival before 9:00 and we all came back to the hotel and crashed. we didn't even get to ring in the new year. we were SO TIRED! i went to bed at about 10:30, (6:30am utah time) and i woke up at about 5:30am (1:30pm utah time) and had THE hardest time going back to sleep!! but i forced myself to, and woke up again at about 9:00 and started getting ready for the day from there. today's activities to follow in the next post.