Google is in Japanese

All of the Google websites are in Japanese, yet no other websites are. It's interesting. Hopefully I can navigate around enough.

Anyways, back to Japan. I obviously arrived safely. My luggage arrived safely. It was a long, tedious journey, but alas I am here and thankful. After arriving at the airport, we waited for a bus to the Sheraton Miyaka Hotel where we met representatives from TUJ. Then, Chloe and I took a taxi to our dorm, Ontakesan. Between the two of us and our luggage, there was hardly any room in the taxi for us to sit. I got to use my first "real" Japanese, saying Samimasen, meaning excuse me, to the taxi driver. I was proud of myself, haha.

Our dorm is quite nice actually. We have to take our shoes off in the lobby and put them in the shoe room, where we each have our own locker. There is a massage chair in the lobby, which is free and wonderful. Our dorm manager is named Aki and he seems great. Most of the students in the dorm moved in on Monday because they aren't necessarily part of the same program as us. It was a little awkward since they all knew each other and we were the "new people."

All of the girls live on the 2nd floor, me living in room 203. The room is really nice. Bed, desks, chairs, tv, fridge with freezer, air conditioning, closet, drawers. There is a bathroom on the floor with toilets and sinks. Downstairs is where the boys live. Then also downstairs is a common area with large tables, a tv, computer, bored games, etc. The showers are downstairs, which is slightly inconvenient, but do able. There are laundry machines. The kitchen is a decent size and has everything we would need to cook. There is also an outside patio for people to smoke.

One thing that is very important in Japan is recycling. They separate things into two main categories: burnable and non-burnable. It takes some getting used to to figure out which bin things go into.

I will update more later, but I have a dorm meeting now.