My Journey: Konnichiwa Japan!!!!

I FINALLY MADE IT!!! My crazy and insanely long trip to Japan has finally come to an end. I can safely say I don’t want to see another airplane for a long long time. Upon arriving at the Narita Airport the 60 or so new ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) and I went through customs relatively quickly in comparison to the nightmare that was the Miami Airport. After customs we were met by a team of TOAs (Tokyo Orientation Assistants) made up of current JETs who ushered us through the remainder of the airport to the awaiting designated buses to the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Everything was moved smoothly until we reached the airport exit and we received a huge shock to find out that a Caribbean Airlines plane had crashed in Guyana while watching the news on a big screen TV. We didn’t get the details of the crash at that time but for Tanya and I it was even more shocking because it was that Airline and the type of aircraft we took to Trinidad only a few days earlier.

Well all thanked the Lord for our safe arrival and marched forward to next stage of our journey, Tokyo Orientation. Upon arrival at the Keio Plaza Hotel we were bombarded with other weary new JET arrivals from several other countries, many of us didn’t have time to find the friends we had travelled with who got placed on separate buses. Everyone just fought to get on elevators and tried to find our rooms after receiving our welcome packages and room keys. It was easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of people of every shape, size, ethnicity, every accent and language all coming at you at once. We were herded from room to room to receive additional information and shown around the important points of the hotel and in all the hustle and bustle you forget there is such a thing as jetlag, but it was waiting in a dark corner for you to drop your guard and then you were at its lack of mercy. After seeking refuge in my hotel room for a while, it finally started to set in, I’M IN JAPAN …. no no …. wait nah no I’m not … no no I am!! I’M IN JAPAN!!! I t might seem strange to think like that but form most of us who just arrived it took us a really long time to accept the fact that we were in fact in Japan. For me it took me quite a while because it just felt I just got off yet another plane and was in yet another hotel in the process of getting to the country, everything just blurred into each other.

After a while it slowly started to set in but I fought the thought of it at first because it honestly felt like Little Tokyo in New York or something and the programme had played a cruel joke on us and we had yet another flight to go or something. Later I found my Caribbean posse and we began venturing out into the city to see what was what, my first mission was to buy a camera since my camera got damaged in the airport back in Barbados, talk about terrible timing. So with camera in hand I did watch I do best, took pictures of everything and anything in my path, I mean I hello … that’s what tourist do. As I walked around Cee Lo Green’s “Bright Lights and Bigger City” Song popped into my head and that it added an extra bounce to my step and I just soaked it all in.