Orientation Time again this week, in Oita City for Prefectural Orientation. Well, Tokyo Orientation wasn't so hot, but the Oita one turned out to be halfway decent, but not the greatest either. Onto the breakdown. I drove to Mie Town and met Alastair and Ryan, two other JETs, then rode the train into the city. A very different experience from Tokyo trains- 2 cars, trains only every half hour, only single track part of the way. After that, it was about a 15 min. walk to the prefectural office.
Once there, we saw demonstartions of traditional Japanese dancing, and Iaido, traditional sword play. There were also some of your standard orientation speeches, icebreakers, etc. as could be expected. Later that day we went to a beer garden and had all you can eat/drink from 6-9, which was definitely fun. Met a lot of fellow JETs, which was nice, then stayed at someone's house in Beppu, which wasn't as bad as it could have been. Overall, Oita City seems like an alright place to go for a weekend, kind of your standard midsized Japanese city with plenty of entertainment options.
Now onto the negatives. Man, it was so humid, it was disgusting. I'm sweating just thinking about it. I'm gonna have to take a towel with me at all times from now on. The next morning, we had to do some little scanvenger hunt thing, which could have been fun, but I was sweaty, hung over, tired, and in an all around bad mood. Some people got their re-entry visas taken care of, so that was probably a 30-45 wait of nothing. Then it starts pouring of course. Finally, I grabbed some Yoshinoya, which apparently everyone else thinks they are too good for (seriously,wtf people). Then we couldn't find our classrooms in the prefectural office (probably the worst designed building ever), but once we got there we actually had some useful orientation sessions, and a little Japanese class. Finally, it was over, and I just headed home and took a long shower. The End.