"Oh great. Well I'm going to go get another drink."

While eating our onigiri and waiting for the rest of the group to show up this morning (I was EARLY), Dave and I were remarking on how all salaryman wear the same 4 things: black suit, white shirt, boring tie, and a defeated look on their face. It's really sad. So overcome with the tragedy of their own lives.

Anyway, today we had orientation which was preetty slow because everyone in the JUSEC office talks REALLLLY SLOOW in English (even the director, who is American). A few good things about today: we had lunch at a really nice Japanese restaurant, they handed us a ridiculous amount of money basically all in cash that I will not disclose at this time as our first payment, and we had a very nice reception at Ambassador Baker's residence that had an open bar and buffet. It was a good time - even though Baker is in the States recuperating from open heart surgery.

The sheer number of coincidences among all of us is kind of crazy, keep popping up. Just naming a few off the top of my head: one of the men who works in the JUSEC office knew Lauren's dad in college; two of the girls have been abroad in Kyoto together before and randomly are here together; two of the guys worked in the embassy together 2 years ago; a professor on a fulbright here is also going to Tohoku Daigaku and one of his favorite students at his home school of UCSB was Brent Slonecker (!!).

I'm getting to be good friends with Jen and Dave ... Lauren and Dan too I think.. and the rest of the group is still very solid. They just .. prefer to sleep so we can go out tomorrow night rather than tonight, which is fine! except we only have 3 days together here in tokyo and I'd prefer to make the most. And I promise the next two nights will be crazy. THEY MUST BE. Especially because tomorrow we have EIGHT more hours of slow, boring orientation. And I don't think they're giving us more money tomorrow.