first day first night

6500 miles. 24+ hours spent traveling from Detroit, Michigan to Hikone, Japan.

Highlights of the trip!

Japan Airlines provided two shockingly delicious and very compartmentalized meals, as well as a wide selection of drinks and inflight movies/music/entertainment. Ashley and I watched Tangled for the 209876th time, got a fix of K-pop music (Korean pop) and videos, and refused to sleep. A smart idea? Probably not, but it was fun, regardless. (There is something about Asian music/performances that just makes me want to dance.)

In country, we were immediately immersed in the language, and eventually made it to Hikone View Hotel just before we collapsed from sleep deprivation. (below is an example of just how tired we were even the morning after in our hotel.)

New challenges!

The train system in Japan is very efficient and managed so that it is on time all of the time. This is great if you know what you’re doing and understand the system.

That however, was not the case for us. We got lucky that we were able to hop on a flight 4 hours earlier than our scheduled one to get into the Nagoya area. It took us three tries in the train stations to get from where we were to the proper station so that we could take a taxi to our hotel. We got there to check in with a half an hour to spare.

Also fun and not really realized before hand, taxi drivers have hard to understand accents!

You can just see the excitement on our faces, can't you? Missing your train/taking the wrong one/being confused in a fast paced world with no sleep under your belt will do that to you.

Now that we are at the Japan Center for Michigan Universities and checked into our apartment like dorm rooms, things are looking up. After a quick breakfast at ココス (Cocos) next door to the JCMU buildings and checking in with our loved ones at home over skype, we went for a short walk around the corner to Lawson, a cute little gas station like store. Snacks, drinks, fashion magazines and sunscreen were bought (true essentials for any study abroad student). We also took a quick stop at the shore of Lake Biwa, Japan's most prized fresh water lake.

I'm still not very good at using yen (Japanese currency) since the smallest bills are 1000 yen (the equivalent of around $10) and the rest is in coins. I fumbled my change in front of the cashier at Lawson for about two minutes. Not the best impression for a foreigner who has traveled many a time before. I have three months to improve that.

At the moment, we are all winding down and figuring out this blogging business. We are officially moved in, set up and ready to learn. Tomorrow is our Orientation for the program, so we'll get to meet our classmates (we've been spoiled, all day today we were the only ones here), get our bikes (that they provide for us, free of charge) and schedules for the course. Not to mention a breakfast of donuts and juice (which I can already hear calling my name) at 8:15am, so it's bound to be an early night.

Until next time!