Niigata Matsuri!

Basically every village or town in Japan has a summer festival called a matsuri featuring parades in which shrines are carried through the streets. I was lucky enough to experience one my first weekend in Niigata! This is the Niigata City matsuri. Unfortunately, I missed the Maki one, which is earlier in the summer. 

Random pictures.

There are cicadas everywhere! Also, this is my train station.

Arrival in Maki

Daphne and I were met at the train station by three Japanese men holding a giant banner between them that said 'Welcome Laura and Daphne!' We smiled at them and they smiled back and it was then we realized that only one of them spoke English and only one of us (not me) spoke Japanese. With that established we got in the car and began the harrowing drive to Maki. Driving in Japan is frightening, partly because the roads are so narrow but also because people drive very fast.

We spent a good amount of time in our supervisor's car during that first week. During the day we were taken to get bank accounts, cell phones, cars, and registration cards. At night we would meet for dinner or a movie, and began to venture out into Niigata city. Particularly memorable was the ramen we had at a place near my house, where the owner brought us custard and ice cream on the house, and Immigrant's Cafe, where I was able to get apple pie.

Finally!

It's been far too long since I posted... 

Life really has been non-stop here in Japan. Ever since arriving in Tokyo, I've been constantly presented with new people, new places, new adventures. So much so that I'm afraid I haven't had enough time to share it all. Now I have my work cut out for me. 

Tokyo Orientation

Arrival was very, very hot. I was immediately happy that I had decided to wear shorts under my long pants. As I have since discovered, Japan is hot and absurdly humid. There have been some cloudy, rainy days and I've come to prefer them to the heat the sun brings in. 

As soon as we gathered our luggage we were ushered through the airport by current JETs wearing fluorescent shirts. There was one around every corner. They helped us onto buses which took us to the Keio plaza hotel in Shinjuku. 

I could go into orientation in detail, but that would be boring. It was mostly schmoozing and going to lectures. It felt very much like college orientation, complete with epic parties at night (I was going to post a picture from one of these parties, but I've been warned about posting anything incriminating). 

Anyway, I met a lot of really wonderful people and had a good time going out in Tokyo. Three days later I was on a shinkansen (bullet train) with Daphne, my new coworker from Singapore, on our way to Niigata.

NYC shots

I was in NYC this past weekend visiting my sister. My purpose in going was split between seeing her race in the half marathon and spending time with her before I leave for Japan. I got to both, and took some photos in between. These are still works in progress, but I thought I'd experiment with posting them here. 

Here we go.

I'm going to start keeping a blog. Why do I want to do this? On the one hand, I think it's a good way to let family and friends know what I'm up to without sending lots of mass emails. Also, I think I'll write differently if I know that other people might be reading what I post. So, as with most blogs, this will be a public journal. I'll write about my journeys in Japan (I'll be working there next year as part of the JET program), post pictures, air ideas. Now you know what you're getting yourselves into.