"Making the Everyday Better"

After landing in Nagoya, I took a train to the training facility. I was accompanied by two fellow trainees who arrived around the same time. We all agreed that since tomorrow (Sunday) was a day off, that we’d go explore Nagoya together. The facility itself is from the future and my dorm room borderlines something from the Jetsons. My toilet is automatic and I think part robot, the switches on the wall glow green when off (confusing), and the entirety of the dorm’s power involves me putting the key to the room into a wall socket. The three of us took our first trip to local 7/11 (which are everywhere and the grocery stores here) for some questionable sustenance. One of my food choices said in English, “Making the Everyday Better.” Well said burrito(?).

The follow morning I met up with my two fellow trainees with the addition of two others. Without a real plan or destination, the five of us set off to:

1) Get something to eat
2) Explore (get lost)

I’d say we nailed both of these two things fairly well. After searching for some not expensive lunch cuisine, we ended up getting okonomiyaki. I consider this my first real Japanese food since moving here. It’s basically a pancake with all sorts of foods mixed within it. The one I got had egg, pork, and squid. I know what you’re thinking, I ate squid? Yea I did. If I’m living in Japan I'm going to have to get use to some seafood at least, this was a solid introduction. It was pretty good and filling. I wanted some water to go with is but I ended up buying soda water. I swear I’ll get use to this.

My suggestion was to go to the Nagoya Castle because, well, it’s a giant awesome looking Japanese castle. Another suggestion was a park. Luckily, Nagoya Castle is in the center of a huge park. The group was delightfully diverse and we all got along pretty well. There is nothing like walking to a castle with a group of people you’ve never met before to build bonds (social links). This group consisted of three Americans, one Canadian, and one Australian - all of them awesome people.

We walked around using this thing called a “map” that was like a large piece of paper with the image of the city on it. None of us had our phones set up in Japan yet thus we lacked GPS machines. The combination of different people’s direction sense, intuition, and fluency in Japanese got us there surprisingly easily.

The castle lived up to the hype. The thing was both massive and beautiful. The inside has been turned into a museum so we got some knowledge bombs mixed in with massive allure of this goliath. This elderly Japanese man with solid English ended up befriending us and becoming a sort of non-official tour guide. He stayed with us far longer than I thought he would and had an answer to about every single question we could fire off at him. He did say that I "looked American" which I don't think is a good thing but I also don't think he meant any harm by it.

The jet lag ended up conquering the majority of us and after we headed back to the dorm. On our way out we came across the Nagoya Omotenashi Busho-tai (Nagoya Samurai Greeters) performing so we had to watch that for a bit. It was some sort of mix of armes play mixed with dance? The crowd was into it and it was definitely entertaining. Check out the link for the end of the performance.

The rest of the day involved studying, reading, ironing, and a late night 7/11 run for dinner and breakfast. I start my first day of training today and am exciting to see what it’s like. I’m a mixture of nerves and excitement.