Tokyo

Okay, well, before you get excited, you know how adventurous I am? (correct answer: not) My hotel is situated in the heart of the Shinjuku region of Tokyo, one of the most vibrant cities of the world, and I have spent my nights passed out in my hotel room instead of going out to karaoke or whatever else my fellow JETs have been doing. Ergo, this post has a disclaimer: I haven't seen much of Tokyo.

Maybe at some point in the next year or two I'll come back to visit. My bet is that unless I find a group to go with, and that group has ideas already of what they want to do, probably not. I'm not much of a city girl. Urban areas don't excite me.

Anyway. You asked for pictures, and here they are! This is what I HAVE seen of Tokyo!

But first, orientation!

I promise I won't bore you too much with this. I'll make it brief, and this time it actually will be, unlike the last time I said it would be brief and then I wrote a novel on the subject of flying to Japan. (cough)

Basically, orientation is a bunch of meetings, panels, and workshops in various rooms in the hotel. Each are 50 minutes long (with exceptions on both ends of the scale) with about a 15 minute break between each one. We've gotten lots of handouts and tons of really helpful information on teaching and getting involved and all that.

Unfortunately, there's also the issue of jet lag, and the fact that we went pretty much straight from the twelve hour flight (sitting down) to two days of workshops (sitting down). We are all so done with sitting and listening, to the point that when the last presenter on the first day mentioned he really wanted to go for an hour instead of his scheduled thirty minutes, the person behind me whispered, "No, please, anything but that." That said, I'm really glad to hear it all. It's taken a lot of the mystery out of teaching as an ALT (alternate language teacher, our official job title) and given us some great ideas to use.

There's about 2600 of us here, by the way. About 1000 of us are from the US. Lots of people. Hot, sticky, and we're all in formal business attire. These last two pictures I took on the first day in our first meeting.

What is this, I hear you ask? Why, this is the hotel lobby. Yes, that is a five foot tall vase over there, in front of a display of smaller china.

Another view of the lobby. There are those gorgeous chandeliers and various other beautiful lighting all through the building.

The Keio Plaza Hotel, where we're staying and where orientation was held, is enormous. There's about 50 floors, and I'm only showing a small portion of the lobby. This place is so big, we could probably fit Tooele in here.

Well, maybe I exaggerate.

This is the hotel room. (The cleaned-up version, after we've all repacked our suitcases and everything in preparation for leaving tomorrow morning.) Maybe not very inspiring after seeing the lobby, but it's comfortable. We generally keep the curtains open to take in that amazing view. Not that we've spent much awake time here, really.

So enough about the hotel. Let's talk the surrounding area. This is where my lack of knowledge really shines.

I've left the hotel twice since arriving two days ago. Once I went out with one of my roommates to visit the 7-11 and its ATM. It's one of the only places with an ATM that services foreign debit cards. The second time was about half an hour ago, when I left alone to find dinner, and that time I brought my camera.

Here is a view of a Tokyo street. That building at the end of the street, behind the tree? That's the hotel. This is a street you can drive on.

This one is not.

From my very limited experience, it seems to be that the city is divided into larger blocks that are accessible to cars, and then smaller blocks that are only accessible on foot or bike. Stores are very small, in the bottoms of buildings, and storefronts are colorful with big signs to attract attention. There was one I passed with employees outside shouting slogans.

I didn't explore much. I literally walked a few blocks down in one direction and then made a turn and walked until I hit the road, then turned around. I was alone and I didn't want to get lost, and like I said, I'm not adventurous to begin with, nor do I have a burning desire to experience Tokyo.

Besides, there was a Subway on one of those streets, so I didn't have to go far to find food.

 

I had the teriyaki chicken sandwich, the same one I had before I left for Japan. And, dare I say it, the Japanese version was far, far better.

I took this picture of the moist towelette package (that's a thing) because of the slogan, which I see now is pretty blurry. I've still got it here, so I'll type it out. It says, "The Natural Ideal style of eating vegetable." Because, you know, you go to Subway to eat vegetables. Duh.

Okay, that's it. Tomorrow morning I'm leaving Tokyo for Nankoku, the city where I'm placed. I'm finally going! Can't wait!