Day 2: The Holy Crap I'm in Japan

One of the university's side gates.

Today was busy busy busy. Woke up at about 5 a.m. and tossed about for a couple of hours before getting up for breakfast. I finally met the group, and it's a really awesome bunch of people. There are 15 of us, plus the staff. We got breakfast in the hotel's restaurant, which consisted of some American staples like bacon and eggs, plus quite a bit of Japanese food I didn't recognize.

We then headed to the Sophia campus for a brief tour and short orientation about requirements and safety. The campus has a ton of buildings; it seems like it will be hard to keep track of.

Afterward, we headed off to an enormous buffet-style lunch. There was far too much available to try everything, but the standouts were rice-filled squid, bamboo leaf-wrapped rice balls, pumpkin everything, cream puffs stuffed with green tea ice cream, multiple chocolate fountains, and the drinks. Oh god, the drinks. The neon green melon soda was probably the best of the bunch, but the soda fountain was filled with all kinds of delicious, strangely colored, unknowable fluids.

This is WATER. Fukushima really did a number on this place.

The next stop was a sort of disaster preparedness museum, where we took in a video about last year's devastating quake. Next came a number of practice scenarios. In the span of about an hour, we experienced a simulated 9.0 earthquake, sprayed out a fake fire with water-filled fire extinguishers, donned full rain gear and persevered through the wind and rain of a hurricane chamber, and crawled through a smoke-filled maze of doors and exit signs.

Surely, they must be done by now, you say, but no! Actually the scheduled activities technically were over for the day, but that didn't stop eight of us from taking the train over to Shinjuku by ourselves. That was probably the highlight of the day. Shinjuku. Is. Nuts. The place is absolutely overflowing with shops and people. I can't fathom how we didn't all get separated, lost, and end up sleeping on the sidewalks tonight. The stores are so much more crammed than back home. You can't see the walls, there are so many products. Also, I briefly got to look around a Japanese game store. Paradise.

Follow the lights!

We got dinner in Shinjuku in a tiny restaurant about four levels below the ground. Actually, on the third basement level, we ordered our food via vending machine. Kind of. You put in your money, press a button showing a picture of...whatever the hell it was I ordered, receive a ticket from the machine, then head down a level, sit at a table, and pass your ticket off to a waitress. She brought us our food shortly thereafter. Mine was a rice bowl with chicken, seaweed, egg, and some form of sauce. It was surprisingly good.

Against all odds, we navigated the trains back to the hotel, showered off the insanity of the day, and prepared for bed.

Tomorrow I meet my host family.