Stuffed myself at breakfast this time as yesterday I got hungry so early! The yogurt with strawberry jam was super delish. I ate with some new folks from Boston and New Zealand this time. The day continued with many more workshops. This time, lunch was curry. This was a sweet version of what I had in the city the other day. I can definitely say I prefer the spicy over the sweet! At the end of the day, we finally had a prefecture meeting to get some more information. I was anxious about all the emails they had kept sending me and wanted some clarity. Apparently, at this stage they wanted us to drop off our big bags to get loaded on the bus that evening! A lot of us couldn’t do it. If I had known, I would have taken a smaller backpack as well for this part. My laptop, toiletries and clothes wouldn’t just fit in my purse. Gunma folks were told it was okay. We would have 30 people on the bus so they were trying to save space.

Our bus would leave at 9 am the next morning and drive us all to the capital city, Maebashi. I also learned that for us Senior High School ALTs we could practice our introduction speech on the bus, whew. That has to be completely in Japanese, eek! With zero Japanese knowledge, I definitely wanted to write that down. That evening I went to a US embassy meeting held at the hotel. Three people from the embassy attended including one guy who used for be a JET before joining the state department. He was interesting to listen to. Started pondering future career tracks again, ha.

Afterward, I met up with a large chunk of the Nashville group, thirteen of us, to go search for some dinner. One thing I had quickly realized from my first excursion out, Japanese restaurants are small! We’d never all fit. But we headed off into Shinjuku anyway. As we stood in the middle of street discussing our options, a Japanese man stopped to ask if he could help us in English. Bam, my first experience with the extreme kindness of these people. He then told his wife to come on, turned around and went back the direction he came from with our whole gang trailing him. He led us to a nice restaurant, but they could only seat six of us. Our group divided in two with one cell phone carrier in each group.

Night view of Tokyo

Our smaller group of seven went back around the corner to a gyudon (beef bowl) shop. We sent B inside to ask if there was enough space as he had a good chunk more Japanese ability and confidence. We managed to all fit upstairs after some customers left, taking up all the spaces, but four where a French family sat. It was rather nice to be able to eavesdrop and understand a conversation ha. L2 helped me order and understand what everything was, basically pointing and saying please. The food was yummy and cheap again, $4. Afterward, we walked back through Shinjuku, stopping at an arcade. I found a gatsupon (turn the handle and get a surprise) that had Natsume-sensei! What cost me $8-10 at conventions was $2 in Japan. Sigh, shipping mark ups. The inside of the arcade was filled with different types from of games from the claw machines featuring super cute stuffed animals and anime figurines. There was also some type of music note game, and tapping game where two pros hit so quickly their arms were a blur. They were even wearing gloves! I also watching a guy play a taiko game where he brought in his own drumsticks. He was getting perfect scores as well, such talent.

Then we stopped at 7-11 for some drinks and ice cream and wandered back towards the hotel. I really wanted to go up in the Tokyo government building that lay across the street from our hotel. We ambled around a bit, ended up going in a circle to find the tucked away entrance. The building had a very impressive plaza. We went through a small security check and rode the elevator up to about the 40^th floor. There was a souvenir shop and a restaurant, as well as an almost 360 glass window view. You could see all the sparkling lights of Tokyo. It’s so huge! We ended up outside the hotel convenience store after that. This was our last night together so we chatted a bit before I gave my goodbye hugs.