Okay, the Orientation

I was away Thursday and Friday to attend the Orientation organised by JET at a university. The seminars were great and were packed full of info about living/working as a JET in Japan. There were Japanese lessons too! Wasn't keen on the fact that it was all in romanization without the Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana... in the end, I asked the Japenese teacher to write it properly down for me. There was a guy who talked about his experiences in Japan, how his colleagues kept on ordering strange things for him to eat then observing his reactions; his fav cafe in Sendai is Mister Donuts; his commentary on slippers and toilets; and his story of his first Hanami festival involving 20 hours of drinking which ended with a puke on his boss's shoes to thank him for helping him home. By the end of it all, it was complete information overload, originally, 20 years back, the orientation lasted for two weeks not two days!

Info overflow-aside, I met loads of nice people from all over the UK. I found out that I was the only person placed in my prefecture this year, although there are loads of people placed in Shizuoka, Hyogo, Hokkaido and Kagoshim. Accomodation was on site in the halls, they were ensuite, but were really, really hot and stuffy, and sleeping on the floor or the chair wasn't any better compared to the bed!