Finally Here!

I haven't been able to post for a while because I've been incredibly busy or in places with absolutely no internet service, but now I'm finally in Japan!

One of the first sites on when I got here.

First though, let me start at the beginning. I thought that I would be able to keep up with updating this with the necessary information, but necessary info often came sporadically, or a mere week or two before it was pertinent, so the stress of having to be on the lookout for info, adhering to the new info we got, and blogging about it was too much, so I stuck with the former two and let this one fall by the waste side.

But, despite some difficulties, we made it to the plane. First we started off in Birmingham's airport in Alabama. We went through TSA checking through there and moved boarded the plane set for O'Hare. Cold flight, extremely small - but it got the job done. At O'Hare we are a little breakfast and then waited for our next flight, which would go straight to the Narita Airport in Japan, near Tokyo. That flight was about 13 hours long. However, the plane had many things that could keep one occupied, from movies, music, shopping apparently, your own personal items, etc. I watched three and a half movies and still had a lot of time to waste. I don't know, this was my first plane flight and although other people said it sucked, I thought it was pretty nice. Considering it was all free,of course.

The Birmingham-Chicago trip was less fancy but I did have a window seat with a clear view of the wing. 

At the Japanese airport we went through customs, which was extremely simple - they certainly don't check you for bombs or other dangerous devices, at least for my group. They did check to see if anyone had a fever though, using a pretty cool looking gadget. (This isn't saying that all customs are like that - since we were part of a group that was expected it's highly likely we got the lesser screenings.

And finally we took a bus from the airport to our hotel. It is a lovely hotel; I have never been in a hotel as fancy as this one. Everything looks gilded or gold, and large chandeliers decorate the ceiling.  There's a curtain of what I think are Swarovski crystals around where a someone prepares something. The staff is extremely helpful and it has such a postive vibe to it. Not to mention the view outside my and my roommate's room is breathtaking.

You can see the lighthouse, ocean, and a train system from here!

So far we have not done much at Japan. Which is all well and good because I am exhausted, and have been exhausted for quite some time. We started this trip on Monday at 4:15AM. We arrived at Japan on Tuesday at 1:20PM and it is now 10:00PM and I've gotten maybe two hours between that stretch of time. Still, we went to eat at a restaurant, where I tried what the escort/guide told us - break a raw egg into a bowl and dip beef, cabbage, etc into it. It was interesting, but not my thing (I wonder if I may get salmonella poisoning in the near future... I trust my guides but...).

Then me and a few other people went to a gift shop. Now that was interesting.  You know how Hot Topic can have a lot of stuff that you kind of vaguely know but it has like an entire branding of that, and a lot of times it's Japanese (think domo)? Yeah, this store had that, but with Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland. It was strange seeing sock after sock after t-shirt after do-dad that had Maleficent on there - cartoon and green, not Angelina Jolie. I kind of wanted to buy some stuff, but I don't want to waste the little money I have on the first day when something great may come up the next few days!

Anyway, I will be going to bed now. I hope to be able to give a fuller report tomorrow. 

What is the Kakehashi Project?

I know my last post was a bit of a blur.  I'm just too excited to be very coherent.

So you're probably wondering, what is the Kakehashi Project?  Well, according to the official website, the Kakehashi Project is "a fully-funded, large-scale youth exchange program between Japan and the United States."  The purpose is to pretty much promote Japan-US relationships and increase international understanding of the nation's strengths. As it says, it is fully funded, so it's almost as if I've gotten a scholarship to visit Japan for a brief period of time.  I can definitely do that.

I've always been interested in Japanese culture, ever since I was introduced to manga and anime.  That probably sounds bad, since weeaboos, also known as otakus and generally explained to be people obsessed with their limited exposure to Japanese culture, are looked down upon and viewed as annoying.  While there I hope to be very respectful.  I'm kind of glad that I won't be having a host family on this trip, as I'd hate to insult them in any way.  During the weeks prior to the trip I'll probably be reading up on a lot of Japanese culture, since it's painfully obvious I'm not going to have a great grasp on the language (I can introduce myself, say my year and major, talk about very vague interests, and ask what/where is that, but that's about it), but if I know more about the culture I'll probably be able to avoid a lot of embarrassment, right?  That's the idea, anyway.

Still, I'm so excited that I'll get to be able to go!  It's always been a place I've wanted to visit, so to be given this opportunity is a real honor, and I'm definitely going to make the most of it.

Preparation

I'm so excited! In May, I was nominated by my Japanese professor to go to Japan as a part of my university's Kakehashi Project, which is a sort of exchange program for undergraduates.  My professor had pulled two of my classmates and me aside after class to say that she was nominating us, and about a week and a half later, me and another classmate were selected to go to Japan! We were so worried because, while we were the best in our class, we were only in Japanese 101, and students from higher-level classes were being nominated as well, but I'm so happy that I'm being given this opportunity!

Right now I don't have much information at all on what we're supposed to do.  All that I really know is that pretty much everything that I can think of has been paid for, and that the trip starts on July 27.  I just got my passport a few days ago, and while I now have some clue of what we're going to be doing (I know that I'm supposed to present a 10 minute presentation on America and my university, for example), the details are a little shaky.

Hopefully more information will be coming in soon; when it does, I'll be sure to share some of it with you all.  I can't wait for it to begin!