Arrival

After a disorienting, seventeen-hour, sleeping-pill muddled flight consistently bleached by blinding sunlight, I, along with my fellow Northeastern students, arrived at Tokyo-Narita International Airport. As we stepped off the plane and walked through the jetway, we were greeted by a gigantic, illuminated advertisement for DoCoMo NTT, a Japanese cell phone company. Depicting a smiling Japanese woman enthusiastically carrying on a conversation on her handset, the ad was blazoned by a simple, single line of copy:

“DoCoMo NTT: Smiling life happy”.

This, apparently, is to set the tone for the next few months of my life.

After arriving in the airport and having our already discombobulated brains kicked while they were down by the aforementioned ad, we were met at the gate by some extremely nice representatives of Obirin, both Japanese and American. We were quickly ushered off to a bus which brought us to a hotel for the night; here the rest of the students, including people from Egypt, Luxembourg, Mongolia, Australia, Hong Kong, and Germany all convened. We were treated to a not-so-traditional Americo-Japanese buffet, which was much appreciated, and then we began dropping like flies. The general level of fatigue and confusion in the room was almost tangible, and it was clear that sleep was coming whether we embraced it or not. And so it was, that at approximately 6 PM, I found myself in a strange bed, in a strange hotel, in a strange land, falling into an almost comatose sleep.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been more eager to get out of bed than on the following day. My feelings of potential, of wonder, and of excitement were reaching critical mass. I simply could not wait to do anything, even the inevitable orientation sessions that now have proved to be unbearably boring and repetitive seemed laden with the possibility of fun.

I still wake up excited. I have an immense feeling of accomplishment in having come here. I’ve been hoping, planning, and waiting for this time a significant percentage of my life. And now that I’m here, I couldn’t be happier.