I Saw The Sign.

Today was, all in all, an excellent day. The group got closer today both through the sucky and the celebratory.

We started off with our orientation activities. During the morning, our director bored us to death and quite frankly began creeping me out with his shoulder twitches, winking, creepy smile, and Nixon-administration glasses. Everyone's frustration reached a pinnacle when he began to take us through an almost entirely irrelevant and redundant lecture of Japanese political, economic, social, and educational history over the last 50 years. Naturally, by the time we reached our lunch break, we were ready to throw ourselves in front of the Ginza Line subway. We grabbed a quick lunch and came back.

The day was made lighter by two things: first, former Fulbright Fellow and current Fulbright-Hayes Columbia PhD student Dennis Frost was there for the day to offer some advice, anecdotes, and insights. He seemed like a great guy - and actually got engaged on his Fulbright six years ago to his wife Kelly, buying the ring with grant money! He lives here now with Kelly and his son Dominic on his new Fulbright grant. The second thing that made the day tolerable was that Satterwhite, after sensing from our body language that we were disgusted, asked us after lunch "Should I launch into chapter 2 or is this boring" to which we basically responded "for the love of God, stop now." Instead, we spent the afternoon discussing more practical matters to help everyone settle - registering as a foreigner, renting apartments, getting our utilities set up, paying taxes, etc. Things the orientation SHOULD have covered more in depth without our asking I might add. After shrugging off one more Satterwhite attempt at giving us a history lesson (thank you, Laura!) we finished up the talk. Dave Follette has a series of hilarious pictures from the morning when we're chipper and smiling and the last hour of the day when we look absolutely sick and broken from our marathon of orienting (pictures to come).

It seems like Jen and I are the social directors of our group; I mean, everyone was sarcastically apologetic directly to us for not going out last night (and for the record, Dave, Jen, and I had drinks in Roppongi and it was GREAT). Jen and I are suited for the job for a few reasons; not just because we love partying and drinking more (or are at least most outspoken and proactive about it), but also because she speaks the best japanese by far, and because I seem to know Tokyo the best. Tonight I led the group out to Shinjuku to eat yakiniku and do karaoke. We had a really, really great time, and I think it brought us closer to eat, drink, and be merry together. Since my only goal for this orientation was to get close to these nine other people quickly, I was very happy with tonight. We ended karaoke with everyone standing on the couches in our room singing Ace of Base's "The Sign." It was a moment to behold and honor.

Afterward, our train only took us part way home because it was the last train of the night, so some people took a cab back and the other half walked. I chose to walk. After getting kind separated, we were on our way and it took FOREVER. I'm exhausted and I'm going to sleep. Oyasumi.