The Program Begins

Watch your fingers...

zip

 

Tuesday the 3rd, the first day of the program, was an absolutely amazing day. After 12:00, people started to show up. First were Jackson and Sean. About an hour after they joined us, members started streaming in one after the other. It wasn't long at all until we had a full group.

A little after 4, a couple of Japanese women showed up and started taking a head count. Our program director, Shoji Azuma, wouldn't be showing up until Wednesday, apparently. After they had introduced themselves (I'm bad with names, so don't ask), they told us to go take a walk for 40 minutes; we would be leaving then.

Arrival!

Land Ho!

After about 10 hours, I noticed that the display showed that the plane was above the coast of Japan.

The first time I saw Japan.

I opened the window and saw the most awesome thing I've ever seen in my entire life. I was literally looking at Japan. I slowly started to realize that I was technically now in Japan, and that I was seeing it for the first time, physically right below me. I know it probably doesn't seem like that big of a deal to somebody reading a blog, but I had tears welling up in my eyes. It was such a moving experience to see what was literally the place of my dreams appearing before my eyes.

There were still 2 hours left of the flight, and I spent nearly every minute of those 2 hours gazing out the window, watching the tiny cities and mountains slowly float by. This was it. I was was there.

A random city who chose to remain anonymous.

I saw lots of cities and mountains, and even more clouds. I tried to figure out what cities I was looking at based on the location according to the monitor, but I was none too successful. As we neared Osaka, the clouds thickened.

It's hard to believe that underneath this beautiful,
white blanket of clouds is a "gloomy," rainy day.

Almost there...

Sitting Around, Doing Nothing... On A PLANE!

Learning to Fly

Yesterday (or was it today...?), I finally set out on my journey to to the land of the rising sun. By airplane. What does that mean? MORE WAITING!

Exciting.

That's right! "The day" might finally have "come," but really it all boils down to the same thing. Sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, waiting to be in Japan.

Friendly Bunch.

I began in Salt Lake City, of course. My dad took me to the airport and helped me get checked in for the first time, because he's cool like that. The TSA were surprisingly cheerful. They were all laughing and smiling and cracking jokes. I took off my shoes, I emptied my pockets and half of my backpack. I walked through the scanner. I put on my shoes, I filled my pockets and half of my backpack. When I got to the terminal, I realized I had shown up unnecessarily early, and so the waiting began!

Leaving Soon

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH
I'M SO EXCITED!

Well then...

The Real Preparation

So, I'm leaving tomorrow.

I've had my stuff packed for about 4 days now. I just couldn't help myself. Supposedly packing early is also one of the commandments for packing light (I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere on that site). Anyway, I've got all the essentials. Several changes of clothes. A change of shoes. A swimsuit just in case. Candy. Drawing materials. Okay, I guess I'm not exactly "packing light," but that doesn't mean I haven't used some suggestions from light packers.

Sitting Around, Doing Nothing

Hello again, readers! I bring to you a relatively unexciting post!


Passport

Well, it may have seemed like a terrifying process at first, but here I am, about 6 weeks later, with my passport.

Ta-da!

It feels pretty good to finally hold it. Apparently I'm supposed to sign my full name on the line above the ID page. They did specify full name, so I suppose I shouldn't use my normal signature, just to be safe. I'm kind of nervous though. What if I screw it up and it comes out sloppy? This is some hardcore stuff!

I suppose I'm pretty much ready now. There are a couple forms I'm able to fill out now that I have my passport, and I still need to pack, but it's kind of early for that :(

Orientation the Second

Today was my long-awaited second (and last) orientation meeting. I now have all the information I will have about the program until I meet everybody at the airport on June 3.


The Room

You are tearing me apart, Lisa!

One of the first things we talked about today was the room assignments. He wrote out a bunch of room numbers on the board, like such:

101 (3) 洋室

102 (3) 和室

201 (2)

202 (2)

203 (2)

204 (2)

__________

和 1 (2)

洋 2 (2)

洋 3 (2)

The line there separated the two different dorms, the boy's and girls' dorms. The number in parentheses was there to represent how many people each room accommodates. 

I immediately started to get excited when I saw that 和室 (wah-sheetsu). I had originally assumed all of the rooms would be 洋室 (yo-sheetsu), since the dorm is called 和交寮 (wah-ko-ryo), which roughly means "Japanese exchange dorm."

Oh wait, you don't know Japanese? A washitsu is a Japanese-style room (as opposed to the western-style yoshitsu), with tatami mats and futons that you get to lay out every night and put away every morning. I'm not sure what is going to be available in this particular room, but traditionally you basically change the room as needed. In the day, you might put out, for instance, a chabudai. A chabudai, being one of those low tables with floor cushions (zabuton) that you may or may not have heard of.

Yeah, kinda like that.

The Places I Will Go

My favorite part about this blog is that I can vent all I want about how excited I am to go, but I don't have to annoy anybody who might not care. Everybody reading this is reading it because they care at least somewhat (I hope). My first post wasn't a very good introduction, so perhaps I'll explain myself a little now.


Phase I

This bulk of this trip is a study abroad program that I'm doing through the University of Utah. The Japanese school is called Shitennoji. There is a map at the top of that page I just linked. It is wrong. This is a bird's eye view of the school:

Image from Google