San Jose Orientation

Sorry for the lack of updates; I've only used a computer for about 5 seconds since I left. Right now, I'm with friends playing cards in our room on the 23rd floor of our hotel in Tokyo with an incredible view outside the window. Life is good.

Now, back to where I left off. I arrived in San Francisco after 7.5 hours in a plane (about 6 of which were spent sleeping) only to find we had to wait at the airport for two more hours -.- It was ok, though, I met some people, played some mafia, etc. Eventually, we got on the buses to head to San Jose.

Upon arrival at San Jose State University, we got our rooms and got divided into kumis (kumi is Japanese for group or class) of about 12 people each. I was in the kiiro gumi which was, naturally, the best of them all. I mean, look at this stud (my boy "Big C" Caden from Denver).

We spent a good deal of the time in the classroom, learning stuff like how to not bring shame upon your family by turning your shoes around in the genkan and how to deal with chikans on trains. We also had Japanese classes. All I have to say is, AJATT is where it's at, man. If you're still dubious, um, don't be. I was feeling pretty good about my Japanese by the time of departure.

Keiko-sensei and Lance (our alumni assistant)

However, they had a good deal of genuinely fun/novel activites planned for us as well, like the cultural activities, bafa bafa, barnga, and rajio taisou (radio excercises). I also made a lot of friends at orientation, and we did a lot of fun stuff on our own as well. Note to self: whenever you go somewhere, bring a frisbee. Here are some pictures of various things I did/things I saw/blah blah blah:

Finally, Wednesday morning, we headed off the the San Francisco airport again. Off to Japan :D

(this is a pretty condensed version, but these take forever to write up and, well, I'm in Japan.)