Travel and Orientation: day 1

Well, I've finally made it! From Phoenix to Seattle and Seattle to Osaka, my nearly 15 hours of travel are over. Thankfully, everything went pretty smoothly and I managed to arrive without issue. Sure, there was a little bit of awkwardness with bags and a few concerned customs agents (much 大丈夫,  "It's ok!" was said), but otherwise the travel was incident free.

They were showing the avengers in Japanese on the plane!

My first glimpse of 日本（Japan)!

Finally there!

And here we have the heard of 大学生(college students).

When we arrived in the Osaka airport at 4:00 PM on Tuesday members of the AKP staff where there to welcome us and we were shuffled of to a bus that took us to Kyoto, where we would be spending the next 4 days of orientation at the Kyoto Tower Hotel. We were warned ahead of time that the rooms would be small, but it also come along with the caveat "Well, it is Japan. Things are..a little squished." When we arrived, we entered into a clean, but aging hotel and one of the premier landmarks of modern Kyoto with a large white spire reaching into the air. Our group of 26 was then randomly paired in to groups of 2-3 and assigned rooms. They were small, as warned, but certainly not unbearable. And each bed came with a neatly folded yukata (a summer kimono) lying smartly on the covers. A definite plus!

The country side on the way from Osaka to Kyoto

Three beds in a room the size of your average dorm AND a full bathroom. Yeah, it was a little squished.

Bathroom, complete with funky shower and super toilet.

Super comfy yukata!

We were then left to our own devices to find dinner and my group ended up in the department store of the train stating across the street from the hotel. You might think, "Oh, department store. Like Macy's right? Nice and compact." Well, think again. This beast is 11 stories tall with the top 2 most having a variety of restaurant. I ended up at an (empty) traditional-style restaurant with two other AKP-ers and the rest of the group opted for okonomiyaki (a type of Japanese meat-pancake). Feeling like I wanted something light after a few meals of plane food, I opted for salmon fried rice. A tad on the fishy side, but good none the less. Afterwards we all headed back to the hotel and ended up crashing around 10 PM.

Can't go wring with fried rice! Note the roe.

Alex and her mapo tofu.

The next morning my whole room of three was up around 5:30 AM and as ready as we'd ever be to take on our first real day in the Old Capital. We headed out of the hotel and found breakfast at a cute パン屋 (panya, or bakery) close by. With chocolate croissants at only 178円, who could resist!?


We were expected to be at Doshisha University by 10AM which meant a collective effort to try and navigate Kyoto's public transit for the first time. Also surprisingly this went off without a hitch and we managed to make it to the room for orientation in time. For the next few hours it was information overload as we were introduced to the faculty and staff of the program and give more identification cards than could fit in a mammoth's wallet. However, we were finally given a welcome break for lunch.

The cafeteria at Doshisha was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was small, with narrow walls and a low, white roof. The lines for food were broken up depending on the type of food you wanted: one line for noodle dishes, one for rice, and one for tonkatsu (breaded and fried meat). I decided on a bowl of kitsune udon and found my seat next to some AKP students and faculty. Another interesting thing about Doshisha's cafeteria: the only drink available is green tea, in either the hot or iced variety.

After lunch, we had to introduce ourselves and our roommates in Japanese and then we had a tutorial on how to connect to the internet at the college. I finally managed to answer that age-old question: what the heck do keyboards look like for non-roman alphabets?! After a quick tour of the AKP offices and student lounge, we were free to go on our way. I decided to do a quick self tour of the campus and headed back to the room. Just two more days of orientation and then we finally get to meet our host families!