The time I dreaded soon arrived. I had to leave for school. I had orientation that day, but I was less worried about that than the actual commute. You see, most everyone in Tokyo (and I assume most of Japan in general) commutes to work, school, and widget shop by train. The train system here is EXTREMELY efficient and well developed, but more about that in a later post. My personal commute consists of roughly 45-75 minutes on a train depending on what train I get on (express or normal) and how lost I get at my switch overs. You see I have to get off at Shinjuku Station, which I believe is the busiest train station in the world. For all you naysayers out there who believe their respective nation's biggest train station is the most populated, its not true. Shinkuku has 2 MILLION people pass through it every day. Somehow I managed, with a little help, to get to Yotsuya station which is near my school. Of course, I got lost while finding campus (I think this entire trip will be me asking people how to get to certain places in 2 minute intervals). I assure you I was happy to get to a location where I had a map and a clear destination (Sophia's Yotsuya campus). I arrived at orientation and was surprised to see how many Gaijin students were there. I sat down in the back, more because there were no other seats than anything else. Before orientation started I introduced myself to another American next to me. Why don't we call him Foreman, since he's from Wisconson, and he's a pretty chill guy. As we were talking, a guy sitting right in front of us introduced himself as Dilon (I think). Dilon's Australian and has been here for a few years and is, also, a chill guy. We spent some time just introducing ourselves and talking about things we'd like to do while here. Of course we ended up spending most of the orientation talking and crackings jokes about what was being said. However the thing that got us laughing the hardest was the warning from one of the speakers (which was also officially written down on one of our packets), to watch out for cults! Of course, the speaker had a hard time keeping a straight face at this as well. I'm sure that UConn should start issuing cult warnings since several cults have appeared such as: The Ugg cult and the Cult of Craig Austrie. However, at UConn it is usually customary all students to drink the punch :)! After this thrilling orientation, the gaijin students were assigned to a resident student guide. The guide assigned to myself and another foreign student was a Japanese student named Machiko-San. She was really sweet but you could tell she was shy or not confident in her English. Machiko-San, myself and the other girl teamed up with another guide, Tomoe-San and her gaijin. Together we bought commuter passes so we could pass through the gates at the stations along our train route without the hassle of buying tickets. I decided I needed to go to Shinjuku to get myself a power adapter, and I started asking people if they wanted to go along. Only Tomoe-San's ryugakusei (foreign student), needed to go. But that is a story which requires its own post entirely...
This is me and my very exhasperated Jim (the office) face after getting on a random train which may or may not take me to campus...
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