JET lagged

It is nearly 6 in the morning and I have been up for like 3 hours! Ugh! Yesterday I almost died of sleep deprivation. I think it may have been then boringness of the lectures as much as the 12 hour flight the day before.

The Welcoming ceremony wasn't bad. The ministry dudes were cool. And the CLAIR PC's gave some good advice. The feature speech on Culture Shock was excellent. Not just informative but fun. We had to sit by prefecture. My prefecture only had 4 new JETs for this orientation, and one dropped out! Landmass we are the biggest on this island- the main island of Japan. To show you how few my prefecture has, Hokkaido has like 50 in all. The workshops I pretty much slept through. Travelling for 4 days (and losing one) is not easy.

In the evening, there was a Reception for the new JETs. In Japan when you go to a formal reception you can't do anything with the food or drink until someone makes the speech and the toast. So all 800 of us, plus the Tokyo Orientation Assistants (TOAa) plus the Programme Coordinators (PCs), Ministry staff, CLAIR staff, etc, are packed into this room staring at this huge feast and we can't touch it. Then the Education Ministry gauy, Mr. Suzuki, makes the toast and everyone digs in. But at the same time the TOA from my prefecture wanders over and starts talking, so I didn't get to the food for a while. Then, when we finally go to eat, a girl who used to be in our prefecture who now works for CLAIR offers to introduce us to the Chairman. CLAIR is the office that runs JET. So we met him. He spoke to us through an interpreter, but I was fussy because I understood when he asked where we came from and answered him in Japanese. Yay me! When we finally got to the food all the dessert was gone but it didn't bother me, because I don't like most things people eat for dessert and there was still lots of fruit, which I love. I am soooo going to itch for weeks from all the fruits I ate. Fruit is great here. The chicken was awesome. It was in some white sauce and had berries on top. Yummy!!!

I also met a Jamaican who had been a CIR for 5 years and is now working with CLAIR. He wanted to meet the other Bajans. I couldn't find them but I did find 2 Trinis to introduce him to. The Akita TOA came over and invited us lonely Iwate JETs (all 2 of us since the CIR had wandered off) to come out with them. I told him I wasn't sure because I was tired. They shut the thing down at 8 and I went upstairs. The moment I go to my room I knew I wasn't going to be going back down at 10 to meet anyone and it was off to bed. I wokoe up at like 2 unfortunately. Oh well!