Tokyo touchdown

All is well here in Tokyo Japan. An over-hyped typhoon ruffled a few leaves last night in Tokyo and just like in the U.S., the media stations worked everyone into a frenzy before the typhoon's arrival. We've spent the past three days attending workshops in Tokyo to prepare us for everything from team-teaching with a Japanese English teacher with horrible English to mandatory drinking parties with co-workers. My brain is full and tender at the moment because of all of the information that has been forced through my ears in the past few days. I'm staying in a hotel with 1,500 other new J.E.T. participants and the hotel has assumed a first-day-of-college type feel with hundreds of twenty-something year-olds trying to maintain bubbly demeanors to meet as many new friends as possible.

Jet lag (I`m writing this at around 4:00 am) has turned me into a anti-social zombie. I was able to muster up enough energy to socialize the other night, however and I joined other J.E.T. participants from my "ken," or state, of Nagano for a night of sake and introductions. We rented a room in a local karaoke bar and enjoyed two hours of all-you-can-eat/drink revelry. It was comforting discovering that most of the other J.E.T.s know absolutely zero Japanese like myself.

Tokyo is the most futuristic city I have ever visited with multi-level roads snaking through an abyss of massive apartment buildings and looming office buildings and skyscrapers. Men in suits seem to buzz around the streets like well-dressed worker bees, hungry and ready for sleep, at all hours of the night and I can't help but wonder if most people in Tokyo only sleep and eat between 14 hour workdays. Neon signs flash and blink and flicker up and down the sides of buildings and adults play arcade games with passion in arcade parlors that dot the cityscape. Hyper-fashionable young people walk the streets in pairs and groups, smoking and staring at passerbys with confidence.

Two American male J.E.T. participants have just met behind me and are softly whispering about homesickness and gut-wrenching anxiety. They both have just admitted being very close to crying and they both have constant fuzzy vision from lack of sleep. They are sharing quotes and advice with one another that cover topics like meditation, zen, being alone and Jewish in Japan, Japanese body language, and Japanese survival tips. They just met each other 15 minutes ago and they both have just saved each other from committing suicide here in Tokyo. Their conversation has been inspiring. Two strangers have just attained a level of intimacy that is foreign to many mothers and sons, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. They walked away from their conversation before exchanging names.

more to come as life unfolds,

Andrew