Well, we've been in Japan for almost 30 hours and so far it's been a fantastic blur. Actually a little less blurry than I expected, with the jet lag at pretty manageable levels. Last night we crashed in a "business hotel" in Tokyo and today we made it down to the southwest of Tokyo to Numazu for some quiet adjustment time in a relatively posh hotel. We booked the place in part because we wanted to go to Shizuoka to see the tea fields. Unfortunately, Numazu is simply in Shizuoka prefecture and not near the tea area. But we are on a fantastic looking bay, so we'll just trade in our tea cred for ferry tour cred.
I'll let you all fill in the details of the culture shock I've got going with the TV, trains, etc. I do actually feel relatively at home being in a heavily populated part of the world though.
The main culture-shock-y thing that has been happening today for me has been the interactions with store clerks and restaurant wait staff. I don't really understand anything that's being said outside of the greetings and the thank yous. But I've been getting by with nodding, handing them the correct money and saying thank you. I can only hope that it's a pleasant change of pace from most tourists: the type one sees who can't stop asking everyone if they speak English, who look at numbers and assume that math works differently in a new country, who need ketchup for everything, etc.
There will be more pictures to come featuring expert poses with large beers, a tea service in our hotel room, and other various and sundry items of interest to mildly jetlagged grad students. For now, however, it's back to the epic #winning that is Japanese TV.
Japanese tourists also ask everywhere if people speak Japanese and assume that math works differently in foreign countries. LOL... Culture shock rulz!!
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