YFU Orientation #2

Today I went to an orientation for YFU Japan students who are about to leave for a year to help out with English conversation; I can do that very well. There were several surprises waiting for me.

First: the YFU Japan orientation is far more rigorous than the YFU USA orientation. They go to the orientation several times over the course of several months (I think), and there were only 25 students (going to America AND Germany) so they accomplished much more in a shorter amount of time than we did at JPDO. They take English tests! And probably German tests too, but I wasn't with the German group for obvious reasons. The practice speaking and introducing themselves, and they get feedback on how well they did.*

Second: There is a YFU Europe. I didn't know that, but I guess it makes sense. YFU students can't travel to a country without a YFU office to take care of them in that country, and there are plenty of YFU students in Europe. Not knowing that there were any students in Nagoya other than from YFU USA, I was a little confused when a girl at the orientation who appeared to be there for the same reason I was started talking to me in Japanese. She was clearly not Japanese. In fact, she was German. It was me, two German girls (who spoke a little English) and a girl from Holland** (spoke English with barely even an accent!), all three of which are in Nagoya for the entire school year.

Third: I'm pretty sure my host family knows basically everyone. All of the orientation staff knew my host sister because they went to America together several years ago through YFU. This is like the sixth person/group of people that my host mom has run into in seven days. It's getting a little ridiculous.

Today's big accomplishment: read 名教 (めいきょう/meikyou)　kanji correctly the first time I looked at it!

*I managed to make a fool of myself. Shocker. We were separated into tables when everyone practiced introductions, and when one student finished the staff member at my table asked for some advice. I didn't know she was talking about the introduction, so I gave some weirdo life advice for when they go to America. And instead of stopping me, the girl running the table just let me go on and sound like an idiot. I hate language barriers.

**Holland beat Japan last night in the World Cup. Or yesterday I guess, if you're in America.

Also, YFU staff are the nicest and friendliest people ever.

Recap: JPDO and Tokyo

A week ago, I had just finished school. Now I am in Tokyo and it feels like it's been about a month instead of a week.
The three-ish days in Berkeley for orientation were pretty great, except for the weather. June in San Fransisco seriously feels like November in Texas, and I'm not even exaggerating. But it was canceled out by the fact that San Francisco is the prettiest city ever. The houses are all sorts of pastel colors and they're all close together and up on the hillsides like stairs and there so much GREEN! The first thing we saw when we got out of the airport were rolling green hills on one side and the bay on the other side. And Berkeley isn't bad either. We could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the dorms!

The plane flight was pretty uneventful. I saw four new movies; "Alice in Wonderland" (okay), "How to Train Your Dragon" (loved it), some movie about Tolstoy (sad and confusing), and "Leap Year" (major chick flick, but cute). And while on the plane I'm pretty sure there was some sort of time warp. We left San Francisco at around noon on June 9th and arrived in Japan at 2:30 on June 10th, but there was no nighttime. I'm not sure when it changed from Jun 9th to June 10th, but I'm a little sad that I missed the night of June 9th, 2010. I never know what could have happened!

We got into Narita and were greeted by a giant hot dog, and then we drove for about an hour past rice paddies, a hotel called the Rainbow Hotel, and Tokyo Disney.





Everything is amazing here. Even the construction equipment is colorful!



And the toilets? Just like everyone says they are. The button are pretty self explanatory, but we still decided to experiment with them yesterday evening. The wall got a little bit wet.

We went to the U.S. Embassy today to thank the people who gave us our scholarships, and then we went to a museum that had all sorts of Edo exhibits. We ran into about five school groups (mostly elementary school, but one high school) and they were SO CUTE. We're staying in a really nice hotel in Tokyo with an awesome view:


(Those big buildings are the Tokyo Metropolitan Buildings, big government buildings)

I get to ride the bullet train to Nagoya tomorrow and meet my host family!

Itinerary

I'm leaving for Berkeley at 4:41 PM on Sunday for my orientation. I hope I'll be on a flight with some other people I know so I'm not the only dork in the too big YFU t-shirt and wearing the touristy name tag/money pouch.