Yep we're in Japan finally! Got on the midnight flight on Saturday night with a 4hr stopover in Melbourne (I'd love to know why we had to go via Melbourne) and then a 10hr flight to Tokyo Narita airport. Then it was a 1.5hrs drive on the limo bus to the hotel in Shinjuku. Didn't get to the hotel room until 10pm last night. Had a total of approximately 3hrs of sleep during that period. Add that to the lack of sleep and stress since my last day at work a couple of weeks ago - packing, boxing and cleaning the apartment. So yep I am pretty exhausted. Nevertheless, we are in Tokyo, and we ain't gonna waste time catching up on sleep. Spent a few hours today exploring Shinjuku (yes, I chose to not attend some workshops) and my legs are tired! Had a bit of time to relax before dinner so I thought I'd give a quick journal update.
A few things I noted during our exploration:
- in the morning before between 8am and 9am, streets are busy with people walking around in a rushed sort of manner, then at 9am sharp I noticed there were hardly anyone around!
- none of the Japanese females aged between teenage years and early thirties have their hair in their natural colour
- the streets are noisy from shops playing promotional material - ranging from tacky jingles to people yelling in loudspeakers.
Of course I took lots of photos and will post them up later when I have more time :) Okies, I'm off to shower then join the rest of the 1300 JETs for the reception dinner (there are a total of about 4400 JET participants and the orientations are held in groups held at different times). Sayonara!
One might say "ja mata" instead, the difference being that Sayonara is a kind of "final farewell, I'm never going to see you again because you kicked my dog" as opposed to ja mata being, "See you later".
ReplyDeleteJust so you don't confuse people when you nick off :D