Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Today began with me actually getting my laptop to work in my room, but I had to call for help from the front desk. They sent up a young man who got it working in less than five minutes. It figures! Anyway, once it was up and running, I was able to update the blog site and post some pictures.

After that, I headed down to make a phone call and to eat breakfast. Not too bad for someone who's not a morning person. I ate breakfast at a buffet in the hotel. Happily, they had some American choices, so I had a croissant and some corn flakes. I'm not quite ready for the traditional Japanese breakfast: fish and rice.

We had several presentations today. The first one was about the Japanese educational system. It was pretty interesting and I learned some things I didn't know about education in Japan. After that, we had lunch. I actually ate some fishy types of dishes. I'm not exactly sure what all I ate, but I liked it. The only thing that I wasn't wild about was the pumpkin soup. That really didn't appeal to me. After lunch, we had some presentations about traditional Japanese theatre. These were interesting because they included performances. In the second one, we got to see what it took to get into full make up and costume for a traditional Kabuki dance. It took awhile to get everything on the performer. Check out the photoblog for a picture of this.

I still have some jet lag. I was feeling pretty good until about halfway through the afternoon. Then I started to get sleepy. Sitting for most of the day didn't help matters. So, after our sessions I walked around the gardens outside the hotel. They're beautiful and very old. They are over 400 years old and were designed by a samurai. I took some pictures, but it was already starting to get dark, so I didn't get too many. At 5:45 p.m. it was already totally dark. There are also two typhoons lurking off the coast of Japan, so we'll see what happens with that. It's supposed to rain tomorrow anyway.

For dinner, we had a banquet. This was a welcome banquet with many former participants of the Fulbright program in attendance. Our guide from last night was there again, so I got to chat with her once more.

Interesting Moments from Today:
1. I was in the women's restroom, and I was the only non-Japanese woman in there. The women were all talking to each other (in Japanese, of course), and I felt really awkward for several reasons. One, I was the tallest person in there. Two, I was the only person with light colored hair. Three, I kept wondering if they were talking about me.
2. I was on the elevator and a very short Japanese man got on. He was so short that the top of his head didn't even come up to my shoulder! .