Hotel room view

We arrived! Japan! Ahhhhh! I was pretty hopped up and excited at this point but also still super tired.
It was something like 3 am at home. I plastered my special JET identifying sticker on my shirt and we joined the mass exodus of JETs from the plane and wham the heat hit us. The air conditioning barely made a dent. I stopped to help some people fill out their customs forms correctly (those who didn’t read the instructions…) as I was one of the few with a pen. We joined our special JET immigration line. No problems for me, had my fingerprints stored, photo taken, and they printed my residence card and attached some paperwork to the visa in my passport. I headed off to baggage claim where they had already pulled off our luggage. Stuck with a fellow Nashville JET and we watched each other’s suitcases while I made a bathroom break and switched to shorts. No more jeans from the plane for me. We ended up joining a couple other straggler JETs from Nashville and went to pass through customs. Quite easy. They ask if I had a yakken shomei or anything to declare, and then waved me on through. On the other side there were many green-shirted JET people guiding the way. We stopped to buy some drinks at a small store as the heat was really intense. We joined a huge winding line of JETs from all over the world waiting for the bus to the Keio Plaza Hotel. The line started inside the airport, and slowly winded outside, down an escalator, across some sidewalks, and into a parking lot.

Waiting outside was bad. I had my heavy pack on me and the heat felt like it was dragging me down. The humidity! It was insane. I finally made it to the luggage drop off point, and gave away my two large suitcases to be shipped to my school. My backpack went under the bus. Another couple Nashville JETs were also on the same bus. They passed out water, but as I was sitting in the back, the bottle ended up empty before it got to us. It was about a two hour bus trip from the airport to the hotel. We drove past Tokyo Disney which was awesome! The huge Disney castle, and amazing hotel could be seen from the interstate.  Also got to see the Tokyo Sky Tree; it was actually less large than what I was expecting haha.

First impressions: so hot and humid! The cars are a lot larger than what I was expecting too. A lot of box shaped cars and vans. 

By the time I arrived at the hotel in Shinjuku, it was about four and a half hours after our plane had landed. Bell boys unloaded our luggage from the bus and we had to follow more staff to a separate room for a brief hotel orientation and then to tables were we could pick up a bag full of information, name tags, and our room keys! The hotel had wifi in the lobby and rooms, whee~ I kept in touch via our Nashville group on Line and made some plans for dinner. I was sharing my room with two other girls from Nashville and was the last to arrive. One girl was on a pull out sofa, but we all fit. The view was amazing! You could see really far into Tokyo. Our group met for dinner and we headed out into the wilderness of Shinjuku.

We stopped by a 7-Eleven where I withdrew more cash, partly to test my card. No problems, thank goodness. We ended up in a little restaurant where you placed your order on an automat that even had English as an option. You even paid on it. I ended up with some cheap curry that came with miso soup for about $3. Free water, yes! We sat down on our little stools and the waiters came by to collect the sheets of paper from the machine. Food was served quickly and I hungrily devoured it. Quite a large portion too. I managed with chopsticks, nothing too complicated. Learned my first rule about eating soup. No using a spoon, just drink it from the bowl.

After dinner, we decided to walk the streets a bit and just absorb the atmosphere. We even stopped by another convenience store, Lawson. They’re everywhere! I also saw so many drink vending machines, they are literally on every corner. We decided to turn back, everyone was rather tired. Perfectly timed too, as it started to rain. Upon my return to the hotel, I crashed. A proper bedtime of about 10 pm.