I’m not sure what I want this blog to be, exactly, but I do know I want to write about my first few days here. So, even though I’d really rather share lots of impressions from my first days of work, for now I’m going to leave you with a little about my arrival and weekend activities…

First, Friday.

After waking up at 5:30 from the jet lag, I got dressed and met the other two interns staying the hotel for breakfast around 8:15. It was pretty much the same exact breakfast I’ve had at every Japanese hotel I’ve ever stayed in, so that was nice.

Erika, the woman who organized the program from the Japanese side (and who picked us up at the airport) met us in the hotel, and it was a very short car ride to the Saitama prefectural government offices. Erika works in the Industry and Labor Policy Division, and I don’t really know anything about what she does. Something to do with policymaking, but that’s all I could get.

The first thing we did was introduce ourselves to the entire division, probably 40-50 people who stood and clapped after each of us spoke. Very intimidating. Then, we got to meet and drink tea with the director of the division (Erika’s boss’ boss). Fun! (Actually, it was pretty fun.)

I spent most of the rest of the day sitting in a conference room talking to various government employees and learning about Saitama. It was interesting to hear the kinds of things the government is proud of, but I can’t help but wonder about the things they didn’t tell us. The time was surprisingly unstructured (the orientation is usually only half the day, and it was changed only because of some scheduling problems), which was just as well because I was exhausted.

I didn’t learn a whole lot more about the internship itself, except that my final host family is going to be the home of my company’s president (!!!), I get to meet the governor of Saitama (!) and the program is going to take us on an overnight trip to the western (pretty, mountainous) part of the prefecture, and we’re probably going to spend the night in a temple.

We had a pretty tasty sushi lunch, and were shown a Saitama tourism video in English. We ran some errands, and mostly to kill time were taken on a little walking tour of the city, including a kind of sad-looking shrine.

Dinner was, by far, the most interesting part of the day. It was the welcome party for the interns. In addition to the interns and government representatives, there were people from each of the companies and many of the host families came, too. I learned a lot more about Bushu Gas from the man coordinating my internship. Among other things, they ordered an English newspaper for me to read and printed me some business cards. He seemed really excited, and asked lots of questions. It was totally fascinating watching all the businessmen exchange meishi (business cards), because it’s something I’ve been reading about forever but never actually seen.

Dinner itself was also crazy,  because it was my first time at an Italian restaurant in Japan. Really, it was more of an Italian-style (if by “Italian” I mean “American Italian”) restaurant, with lots of crazy Japanese twists involving fish and seaweed. Definitely some flavor combinations I never would try myself, but actually quite good. Also, the name of the restaurant was Pasta!Pasta!Pasta!

After dinner, I was driven to my first host family’s house, a couple about my parents’ age. They live in a really fancy new house in Kawagoe, about an hour from Saitama City. They seemed friendly, I was sleepy.

The weekend.

The Yoshida family wakes up early, and since I’m here, so do I. Breakfast was a lazy 7:30, both days. Saturday, I played a kanji game on the DS Lite with Yoshida-san, and we had fun fooling around with the English game, too. He had to go to a memorial service of some sort, so I stayed around the house and had lunch with Noriko and her niece who came over for the day. June is leaving in a week or so for California, where she’ll be for two years.

Saturday afternoon, I got my first taste of Bushu Gas. The company was sponsoring a concert (annual?) by Obara Takashi, a relatively well-known pianist and host of an NHK radio show. He played a lot of flourishy arrangements of Japanese songs, and some European classical tunes I knew. Having spent the last three years at Oberlin, this was definitely a change. He got up and talked for about 5 minutes between each piece, which was sort of weird. The focus was definitely on him, not just on the music. Also, he played a piece he called “jazz” and it was most definitely not. And I don’t even know anything about jazz. I kept both of these facts to myself. After the concert, a few of Noriko’s friends came over, and I had a good time joking around with them.

My favorite part of the day was dinner. I was a little skeptical, because Yoshida-san said he had made reservations at the Prince Hotel Japanese restaurant, and my experiences in hotels have been pretty hit or miss. But I think I can safely say that this was the best Japanese meal I’ve ever had. It was a three-course meal, with lots of little items as part of each course. I took pictures of everything, so once I upload them I’ll write a little about each dish maybe. Also, I had the best sake I’ve ever had. I haven’t had much sake before, but this was smooth and delicious, even served cold. I’m not sure I can say that about the other sake I’ve tried. It was served cold, and was extremely smooth. Yum.

There’s not a whole lot more to say about Saturday. June decided to spend the night here. The Yoshidas made fun of me for not shaving for a day. (This is the first time in my life that I’ll actually have to shave every day of the week. Boo.) June was talking about Google at dinner and we discovered that Noriko hadn’t heard of the company at all. Or YouTube. So I showed them Sushi: The Japanese Tradition, and they loved it. It’s been an inside joke since.

Sunday was relatively low key. The Yoshidas took me and June to a number of museums and historical sites – the Kawagoe History museum, the art museum, an Edo-era building, an old kurazukuri-style (fire resistant wooden-frame buildings made with bamboo and mud) shop/museum, and the Kawagoe festival museum. The festival museum was actually totally awesome; there’s a huge festival every October, and tons of people come. There are 29 huge wooden floats, pulled through the town by human power, and they had a couple displayed. We stopped in the middle to eat lunch at a soba-ya right next to the house. The noodles were great – they were a green kind I had never had before. I got a stack of five small bowls of cold noodles, with another stack of five different toppings to eat the noodles with. Cute and delicious!

It was raining hard (it is tsuyu, after all), so we went back to the house. It was a lazy afternoon, but actually had a great time just chatting with June and Noriko. We dropped June off at the train station, then went out to eat to an okonomiyaki restaurant. I would love to devote an entire blog post to this meal too. For now, let’s just say that it was great, and that I love okonomiyaki. In the evening, I finally gave the Yoshidas their omiyage, and I was so glad I did. It was almost as if they seemed relieved. And I think the things I picked out to give were good. After some chatting about the Japanese Oregon travel brochure I brought, I tried my first umeshu. I’m not one for sweet drinks, but it was actually really tasty.

My next post will be about my first day at work. It’ll definitely be a good one.