So after crashing for 11 hours or so it was inevitably time to wake up for breakfast -___- Sadly we weren’t allowed the day off to relax and recover from our jetlag (which was utterly terrible) but what can you do?
First look out from the hotel window at Kawagoe in daylight:
Basically Japan in a nutshell: Lots of new skyscrapers going up around old residential houses whose families refused to move.
Breakfast was served in a traditional dining room but I was far too braindead to remember to take pics. It was amazing though!
By 9am we were out the door and on the way to the station to head to school to go explore campus and have a small orientation…all day.
Waiting for the other groups at Kawagoe Station (川越駅） I noticed something quite odd:
Hmmm let’s zoom in a bit…
OMG a new bakery just opened!!!
jk jk but seriously, I found it so strange that a Japanese Buddhist monk would be looking for donations around a train station during the early morning rush. He was mostly ignored except by maybe a handful of older citizens who stopped to drop a few yen/en (円) into his pot.
And off we go! The school is only a 5 minute train ride on the Tobu Tojo Line (東武東上線) to Kasumigaseki (霞ヶ関) but the scenery is spectacular:
Walking to the school from the station we get our first look at a typical Japanese home:
And finally school:
Well at least one of the buildings. It was far too humid to stick around outside to take more pics.
From inside on the 4th floor however:
Lots and lots and lots and lots of houses, as far as the eye can see. And need I remind that this is OUTER Tokyo. Also this time of year the weather isn’t that great and we had rain on and off for about 3-4 days before the sweltering heat came back.
Orientation that day was pretty standard: a tour of the school, a small tour of town, and being taught everything we need to know about Japan (homestay, safety, transportation, places to see, classes, etc etc).
Not much else the rest of that day besides dinner with the PA’s (peer assistants) who are TIU students studying English who had been showing us around.
Let’s skip ahead to day 2:
SWEET SUNSHINE!! We finally got an amazing look at the mountains in the distance, though with the cloud cover we have yet to see Mt. Fuji.
Another small orientation today followed by the most nerve wracking experience yet:
HOST FAMILY ORIENTATION…
dun dun dun….
snakelvr103 