Arrival at its Hottest

So I'm finally in this rising sun land. Maybe they decided to call it land of the rising sun because it's closest to the sun, this being one of the hottest damned places on earth. But alas, I can't even blame it on the heat; it honestly is the humidity. So let me backtrack a bit on my journey. It comprised of doing three things:

1. WaitingThis is post arrival at Narita airport. Before this there was even more waiting.. the 11 1/2 hour plane ride wasn't exactly 'fun', but at least there were a lot of people to talk to. This is waiting in line for the buses to take us to Tokyo.. another two hour ride.

2. More waiting


Orientation was long and drawn out. It was nice that we had three days in Tokyo, but unnecessary. Monday morning consisted of sitting and listening to a lot of people speak about things most of us would forget the next day. There were some funny anecdotes, but most of what was said wasn't new information.

Though during those three days I got to explore a bit of Tokyo. Tokyo is divided up into major districts; I visited the interesting ones. Harajuku is where girls dress themselves up like little dolls.
Well.. little dolls that mommy probably didn't let you play with. The most surprising thing about Tokyo are the masses of people that inhabit it. This city is crowded. Very, very crowded. The main crosswalk in Shibuya has hundreds of people crossing it at a time; this is certainly one city that I would never drive in.


3. And even more waiting.

Wednesday morning we head out to our prefectures. If was only going by myself, it would only take about an hour and a half by bullet train, but unfortunately everyone in my prefecture had to get dropped off at different locations, so it took about 3 or so hours to get from Tokyo to Nagano City.

But I'm finally here. Luckily some neighbor has their wifi connection on free use, so I can use the internet right from my apartment. I would be waiting about a month otherwise; I need to obtain my foreigner card in order to do things like set up my bank account, get a cell phone, and of course, get some internet in this place. I suppose it's good karma at play; at my house in San Diego I always left my internet connection open for anybody else to use. Now I'm finally on the receiving end of the deal.

Well, of course there's a lot more to write about, so I suppose I'll get to that. There's a storm a'brewing, so there isn't all that much I can do outside.

I just wish it wasn't so damned hot!