Tokyo Orientation (Day 1)

Monday, August 7, 2006

I find it a grand accomplishment that I slept the entire night through. I went to bed around 8 and woke up at 6am. The sun was up around 5ish I think. I'm just happy that I was able to get a whole nights sleep without having jet lag problems.

Speaking of jet lag, it happens to be my biggest problem at the moment. I can't function correctly which sucks. I talk to people and think to myself how boring they are and how pointless this conversation is, but I bet you the truth of the matter is that I'm so tired that the horrible conversation is probably my lack of involvement. I've never been so untalkative in my life. Though right after lunch I had a sudden burst of energy and suddenly people were interesting again!

And they really are too. There are people here from all over the world (mostly America) and they all have completely different stories. The only thing that any of us have in common is that we all went to college and we all are going to live in Japan. No one has the same reason for coming or the same history. Everyone has a completely unique story. But there are so many of them that I've gotten to a point that I just don't want to talk to anyone anymore. I don't want to tell my abridged story to anyone else unless they are of some importance. Will I see them again? Will they even be in my city? Is this information 'need to know'? etc etc

I've heard a lot of stories about how the Tokyo Orientation is so overwhelming and how I might as well skip out of half of it and they just give you so many different booklets and papers that your just going to throw away anyway. Well, only half of that is true. Yes, they give you a crap load of things that are going to really weigh me down but a lot of it is really useful and interesting. A lot of thought went into these booklets. It can be a bit overwhelming at times but I blame it on jet lag. If I were up to par, I would be able to handle all of this, no sweat.

I wouldn't recommend skipping out on anything really...except that in about an hour I have a prefectural meeting to go to that I think I'm going to sleep through. It's not mandatory and it's just a time to go out drinking to get to know one another. I (a) don't want to drink because if I do, I'll fall asleep instantly and (b) will see these people later, like when we actually get to Kochi.

I'm in Shinjuku, where everything is awesome! But I wouldn't know because I haven't gone more than a block outside of the hotel. I don't care much either. My free time in my sleep time.