Jetlag sucks

Let me start off by saying that I made it to Tokyo safely, all is well, but MAN did my trip start out bad.

I'm at Kei's apartment, and we decided not to bother going to bed since we had to leave for the airport at 4:30AM, and when 4:30 came along, we headed out the door. We wanted to have a little extra time in case we took a wrong turn somewhere, so that was a very good idea. We made it to the airport with no problems, but when we get there, we find that...that airport had moved. Yes, we were at the airport and the airport wasn't there. That was the first time in my life where I had a 100% genuine moment where I thought I might have been dreaming and not actually awake. Seriously, the airport isn't there? Baffled, we quickly drove into a nearby hotel to ask where the new airport was, and a shuttle guy had us follow him to it. It was pretty far away. That really freaked me out, but thankfully we made it there on time.

The flight was long. I bought sleeping pills between flights in hopes that I might be able to sleep while it was nighttime in Japan on the plane, but that turned out to do nothing. I just CAN'T sleep on planes. I barely managed to doze off for a couple of hours total. I saw the girl that was part of my program and on the same plane, and we could have sat together since there were empty seats, but we both ended up sleeping/attempting to sleep for pretty much the entire trip. That's okay though. For the times that I was awake, we had individual touch screens on the back of each seat, which had movies, games, TV shoes, music, etc., so it provided time-passing entertainment.

Our plane actually arrived in Narita about 50 minutes early, not that we minded. We zoomed through customs (seriously, they glanced at our cards and that was it) and waited for CIEE staff to arrive. When they did, they sent our check-in bag off to our host family houses and had us get on a bus to go to our hotel.

Upon arrival at the hotel, we were given an envelope of information, including info about our host families. It turns out that I have both a host mom and dad, both of which are in their early 60's, and they have 3 kids; a son that is 30 and lives in a different city, an older daughter that I think lives with them, and a 21 year old daughter that is just 3 days younger than me, but she is currently studying abroad I believe. I think it will just be me, the parents, and the one daughter (I hope). In addition, however, they have two dogs! One is a shih-tzu (I think), and I'm not sure what kind the other is since they only sent a picture of the shih-tzu. But I'm really excited about that. I was really hoping my family would have a pet, and they have two doggies. :] Lastly, my info says that everyone in the family (aside from the daughter that is abroad), has zero knowledge of English, so that is a huge relief. I'm glad I will not have English-learners that will want to speak to me in English. Perfect!

The sheet also said that the parents were BOTH company executives, which is weird since the women don't usually get jobs like that. I'm assuming they own this company. I wonder what kind of company it is. I get to meet my host family tomorrow and go home with them, so I will find out in no time. I can't wait!

Today we were given a tour of the campus, and it's actually a lot bigger than I thought. There are about 11 or 12 buildings (I thought there would be only a couple lol). It's right in the middle of Shibuya, which is awesome. A lot of hot spots are either in walking distance or just short (cheap) train rides away. We had orientation in there, and afterward, we were sent to this hotel. We had just enough time to check in and check our email (free Internet in this hotel, whoo!) before we had to head out to get dinner.

Oh my god dinner. We went to...I don't even remember the name of the place because it wasn't where they told us we would be going, but we had 100 people crammed into this restaurant and they served us SO MUCH FOOD. They had 4 different dishes of food on the table when we arrived, and from there they brought out like 5 more courses, no exaggeration. It was awesome. I had to lol though when they brought out plates of tater tots that were wrapped in bacon and topped with a pork sausage. It looked like a joke American version of a piece of sushi LOL. I took pictures, but I don't have time to upload and edit them. I really need to get to bed. I woke up at 4AM this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I am dead tired.

With that said, I am heading to bed. Good night!