Part 1: Arrival, Hotel, Homestay
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2008
1
43
Trip End
Ongoing
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Okazaki,
Chubu,
Japan
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Our first meal on the plane! Yummy!!!
It was cool I got to watch the Sex and the City movie in Japanese and amazingly enough understood it
Personal Airplane TVs!
. I also saw the movie Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and Bruce Li, I thought it was cool that there was a monkey king. I arrived at Tokyo Airport at around 2:30 Japan time. It was confusing finding our way to our next flight and there was confusion on where to pick up our luggage. Turns out after all the wandering around we somehow lost two hours and so only had an hour left to wait for our connecting flight to Nagoya. We totally brought Vancouver weather with us, it was torrentially downpouring
Our second plane from Narita to Nagoya
.That flight was far more comfortable, too bad it was only an hour and a half. There were bigger comfier seats
The size of the chairs!
, tons more leg room, bigger screen tvs
The size of the personal tvs on the 2nd plane
, personal reading lights, foot rests and comfier pillows too. We all just slept through that flight. By the time we got to Nagoya airport we were exhausted. Luckily we all found our luggage and Nishio sensei was there waiting for us. He treated us to the bakery and then drove us to the Okazaki Sun Hotel which took an hour by driving and so we didn't get to our room until about 10:00pm. We got to stay on the top floor which was cool and I stayed in the single room
My hotel room!
Note that this is only a single bed...
The tiny interesting shaped shower head.
The robe we were provided with.
me making the bed feel like home!
while Emily and Roxy stayed in the double room. It took us a while to figure out how to turn on the lights because the key had to be put in the in slot in order for the light switches to work
The light switch!
. I slept pretty well only waking up at 5:30 am and drinking lots of green tea. Breakfast was complimentary and so I had spaghetti, pasta salad, thick white bread toast (it was very good) and soup. We took a walk around and ended up buying notebooks for school (they were only about $1.50 each) and then Nishio came at 10 to drive us to school. We got our class schedules and met some of our teachers. I was given a key to use a school bicycle since I live close to the school, about a 15 minute walk. Nishio treated us to the buffet in the cafeteria which was EXCELLENT. I can't believe how cheap most of the food is, the most expensive meals would be the buffet which is by weight but the pre-made meals are at the most $3.80. After that, my host mother came to pick me up. There are two tiny dogs, one which looks like a chihuahua mixed with something and the other a pomeranian. My room is a lot bigger than I expected. Here are some pictures:
My room at my homestay
the couch in my room
My closet
My drawers
I went grocery shopping with my host mother and then got home had green tea and tried odango with my host mother and watched a Japanese drama before taking a nap. Dinner was at 7 and was extremely delicious. I had egg tofu, egg plant, miso soup with little white mushrooms and I think chicken? In any case I liked all of it, although the umeboshi was a lot less sweet than I would have thought. I met the rest of my host family at dinner, there is a grandfather, father, two daughters one of them which has a son (age 2) named Raiki. They all speak very little english so I have had to use my Japanese a lot, sometimes it's confusing but so far I have survived. I made Raiki an elephant with origami and my host mother showed me how to use the shower before I headed back to my room.Oh yes and it's still raining, Nishio said that a typhoon is expected soon. Tomorrow I have one class with Sasaki sensei involving Japanese grammar and then I plan to find a post office. That's all for now. Oh and if anyone wants anything from Japan, speak now so I can start looking :P Until next time!
