Day One of Orientation, and the First Day with Ramen!

Today has been a great day! It was probably the best first full day in Japan I could have hoped for. The day started off well, when I woke up bright and early, and had lots of time to Skype people before heading to breakfast. Then at around 7:00, I went to get 朝ごはん (breakfast - asa gohan), which was so much more than I could have ever hoped for!

Udon! Yummm~

Condiments! Ume and everything!

Rice and miso soup!

See the little mini waffles? They're so cute.

Doesn't this just make you so hungry? I could definitely get used to this every morning. They had curry too, which I took full advantage of. Dad says that he wonders whether or not I'll come back fatter or thinner, and I think that the answer is obvious. There's nothing that can get in the way of me and good food.

After breakfast, we took the train from Kichijoji Station to Yotsuya Station, from where we then walked to reach the CIEE office. I got myself another Suica card (uncle Jeff gave me his before I left), and I also found out that I need another card called the Passmo card, which can be used with another type of train line.
There are like, four different types of trains that run around Tokyo, and they're all equally confusing. This (http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/15/JR.png) is the JR map, with lines that are generally above ground. Then there's the underground, which consists of both the subway and the metro (they're different because they're overseen by different companies), a map of which can be found here: http://www.bento.com/pix/subway/subway5.gif. Then there are also private lines, other lines for special destinations, etc. Such confusing stuff!

Anyways, we dwelled at CIEE Japan HQ for a while, signing up for cell phones, getting a small orientation, etc. We also had a little free time as we waited for lunch to approach.

This is the BEST salmon that I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. Yum!

Lunch was a wonderful affair. CIEE took us to a high end Japanese restaurant, where people wore kimonos and stuff. All of us ate the fish special—even Julien, who doesn't like fish, and he ended up liking it as well. It was the most divine tasting fish I have ever eaten, and it'll be a tough one to beat (though I have faith in Japan to be able to do just that).  There were also pickled vegetables, miso soup, rice, a raspberry cheesecake-like dish (which had the consistency of flan, but tasted like cheesecake), and a savory something that is in that little red bowl. I don't know what its name is, or what it is, but it tasted very odd (not in a bad way). Just curious.

Japanese gate to the guest house for important people who visit Tokyo.

Main entrance for the Tokyo guest house.

We then started our walking tour of the important places around the Yotsuba area of Tokyo. It was particularly cool in that the imperial palace has two moats, the outer one of which has been partially dried and made into the Yotsuba train station. So we were wandering back and forth around the outer moat, and this is the first major icon we saw: the Tokyo guest house. Apparently Princess Diana stayed there, along with several important diplomats and other high ranking people. It was rare to have the Japanese style gate open, so we were lucky that day!

You can't tell, but these fish were really big.
Surprisingly big for Koi

 

This is all part of the hotel decor. This is one of the three
grand hotels in Tokyo.

We then wandered around this Japanese garden that was part of a hotel's decor. It was beautiful! I never knew that the stones in the gardens were supposed to represent mountains, and the sand was supposed to represent the sea (that's why there are ripples). The Japanese have this wonderful way of making everything so neat, beautiful, and breathtaking. I don't know how they do it, but they've narrowed everything down to an art. It's wonderful to see, and even better to experience. 

The fish were very bright and multi-colored, and most of all, very big. They were the biggest koi I have ever seen. I swear the largest one is at least half a meter long (I'm getting into metric now)! Speaking of metric, it's been weird for me to understand Celsius. I get conversions fine, but when I first look at 30 degrees, I still think it's below freezing.

Do you see this? It's an umbrella locker. Do umbrellas
get stolen that often?

This building is a disused hotel, but it has
such cool architecture!

There's a boat in the moat! And apparently people
actually ride them. I don't know why'd you'd want to, though.

A miniature of their parliament building (which they
call the Diet Building, like old European).

We're in front of the actual parliament house now!

Notice how the Edo era wood drawing is depicting the
same curves! It really hasn't changed all that much.

We went to the parliament museum (somewhat to escape the rain). It was a cool place, with lots of miniatures and plenty of information about the Japanese government system. After that, our tour guide took us past the actual parliament building, and then we made our way to the imperial palace! On the way, I got bitten by about five mosquitoes, who seem to have been completely attracted to me and me only, because no one else even noticed them. Hmph!

We arrived at the Sakuradamon gate to the imperial grounds, which is where the Sakuradamon Incident occurred way back in 1860. Back then, there was a really powerful Chief Minister called Ii Naosuke, who was assassinated by a samurai right in front of this gate while he was sitting in his carriage thing. I still don't understand how someone so important can get assassinated with that many guards around to protect him (at the imperial palace gate, no less). But hey, it's history.

Within this gate is a small square courtyard area meant to trap enemies that come in. There is a second gate that doesn't open until all is safe and the first gate is closed. The second gate has a second floor as well, for archers to pick off enemies that might find their way into the courtyard.

Alas, we couldn't go into the imperial palace, though that would have been amazing. Nevertheless, just standing there, seeing the vast plot of land with all of the space was breathtaking enough already. No doubt the large space of land in front of the palace was meant for grand ceremonies and performances.

They seem pretty happy about trying out "real" ramen.

A very nice (and all Japanese) menu.

We decided that we had to get ramen for dinner. Who could wait when it was such a classic? Our CIEE overseer, Shannon, doesn't like ramen, so we had to strike out on our own and see if we, such humble and poor Japanese speakers, could try to fend for ourselves in the big city. I ended up ordering and doing all the talking though, since apparently my Japanese is the best out of the group (which I find hard to believe, because if that were the case, god help us). I was glad that we did end up getting what I had intended to order, and had hoped to have ordered.

After dinner, we went to get ice cream at the nearby convenience store. I've never seen ice cream in a bag before, but there's a first for everything! Needless to say, I had to try it. There was also pumpkin and green tea Haagen-Dazs, which you can see above. I've never seen those flavors before. Apparently they also have taro and others; I just haven't encountered them yet.

The bag of ice cream took a lot of effort to get ice cream out, but hopefully it burned a tiny percent of the fat that I'd gain from eating that thing. Tiffany will be pleased to know that I at least didn't finish it (it tasted like regular banira aisu kurimu, and I didn't feel like having that at the moment). Hopefully there will be other flavors to try in the future!

I'm worn out from all that effort for ice cream though. Going to bed now!

Mata ashita!
Maggie