We Are Now In Japan

It's 9PM on a stupidly humid evening, and as I write this, you are most likely tucking into your lunch. How is your sandwich, anyway?

Back to Japan related matters then, and we got here safely yadda yadda yadda (Mothers always worry about this, I got your back fellow Japan-ers [I'll think of a better term to call them, give me ideas people]). Dad, you were right, Lufthansa kicks ass. I drank way too much orange juice, listened to Phoenix's new album on repeat (highly recommended) and learnt how to use chopsticks (Sidenote: my chopstick form has been absolutely top notch today, the only time I used a fork to was to cut some chicken up)

That piece of melon was disgusting. Notice I am using chopsticks, though

So we land at Tokyo Narita at about 8AM local time (about midnight BST) and everything's fine yadda yadda yadda. But then we get out of the airport, and the phrase culture shock doesn't come close. Firstly, I buy a bottle of Coke from the airport, and it equates to roughly a pound. Granted, it's not a total culture shock, but a pleasan surprise nevertheless.

We then start to get a series of trains to the temple in where we're staying. When the train came out from deep below the airport, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. In a media saturated world, I expected, scratch that, I was pretty damn sure to see Japan filled with towering skyscrapers, bright lights and barely any room move. I was wrong.

The train came out to the complete opposite. On one side was a green, grassy hill, to the other was paddyfield upon paddyfield upon paddyfield. The building's weren't as advanced as I thought they would be either. It's probably not the best choice of adjective, but they looked rather... Communist.

Eventually, we get to Matsuo, where we are now. We were greeted by a lovely group of Japanese people. These are the some of the people who we'll be sharing our home stay with (Eugene will write about this later. It's also Eugene's fault there's a lack of photos of rural Japan. Bad Eugene.)
The three guys in our group, including myself, start talking to a guy named Takashi, but were refer to him as his nickname 'Angel'. He's a lovely fella too. Turns out he's coming to Sheffield for  Uni too. Then a few more people from the home stay group, called the 'Hippo Family Club', and it turns out they're driving us to the local mall to get some lunch.

I tried tempura for the first time. It's rather hit and miss, to be honest. Shrimp bad. Rice and spring onions are very very good though. We then all got some free time to go do.... stuff, so I got ice cream to try and combat the lack of sleep. The more E-numbers the better, I decided. If you get ice-cream that is neon green and neon orange, you know the criteria is met.

Then a big group of us a dragged off into the arcade, and into a photo machine. This thing is weird. It photoshops you. Japan has photoshop booths. I don't have the photos yet, but when I do....

I also found Japanese Poundland too, even though it's the 100 yen shop, but still, that's cheap as. I might have got my sister a present from there....

Anyway's, too much humidity has made me a sweaty boy. I'm gonna get showered and stuff, but I'll leave Eugene to tell you what happened. tonight.

Arrigato!
Niall