Health Checks, Love Hotels and Earthquakes

This is my first post from Japan! I still can't believe I actually live here! The plane ride from Vancouver to Narita was blissful as I had three seats to myself and stretched out and slept part of the way. Once in Narita there was an Interac person waiting for us and I got to meet a lot of awesome new people! When we got to the hotel the power was out because it is in the area that is currently having the rolling power outages. That's the reason we didn't stay in Tokyo... not the radiation. I met up with some people and we went into town to explore and found a cute ramen shop to eat dinner where I felt my very first earthquake! Okay it was more of a tremor. And it only felt like riding inside a train except we were in a noodle shop. It was really bizarre.

Had an amazing sleep since I had been up for about 32 hours and woke up in the morning to a very Japanese breakfast (I really need to adjust to the food) and two more tremors. Apparently there was a slightly bigger one while I slept. Apparently I was that tired!

But enough of Narita. The next morning we drove into Tokyo to catch the shinkansen (the bullet train) to Osaka. I had just enough time to have a Japanese Starbucks caramel machiatto and gush about the really awesome sakura starbucks mugs before we caught the train. (But I'm going back for those mugs)

The train was awesome! We got to ride the nozomi which is that fastest of the Japan trains. Last time I only rode the second fastest which is the more affordable option. However lugging over a 100 lbs of luggage around was exhausting and I'm really sore now for it. We didn't do much after we finally got to the hotel here. Just went to this pretty cool department store that housed every electronic possible and out for udon.

Today was the first day of training. Got to see some example lesson plans and get an idea of what the classroom setting would be like but I'd half to say the highlight was the health check. (note: sarcasm) For the health check we had to go to a hospital and get poke and prodded for a while. We gave blood, urine and good view of our naked upper half. The nurse kept gesturing to my shirt and I nodded and lifted it a little but she gestured higher so I lifted it around my neck but she kept gesturing. I didn't think I could get my shirt any higher until I realized she wanted my bra off too. Good thing I wore a brand new one today!

Later a few of us went looking for the aquarium and failed but we did get some great exploring of Osaka in! It's a pretty neat city but I still like Tokyo better so far. We did however find out how to get to the aquarium for later. I led us out thinking we could walk there but no luck. We did come across some  famous sights though and a row of love hotels so the night wasn't a total waste! Nah, it was a lot of fun!



Now I'm in my tiny little hotel room where there is about a foot of space between my bed and everything else drinking milky tea! Soon I'm off to bed!

Oyasumi!