Day One

So I arrived in Tokyo, went through a whirlwind training session for three days, 9 hours straight everyday, and pretty much never saw Tokyo. We did go to one of the karaoke bars though one of the nights, then tried to get a taxi to take us to a club. There were about 8 of us foreigners and an entire army line of about 30 taxis, so no problem right?? WRONG! No taxis wanted to take us. I could not believe it, no one wanted anything to do with us. There were about 15 taxis in front of the hotel and another 15 parked across the block from us. After trying about 5 on our side of the block, we went to the other side and tried to talk to some of the taxis. One of the foreigners had been in Japan for a year and spoke decent Japanese so there were no communication problems, but it just so happens that there is some level of discrimination of foreigners that:s allowed.
Japanese people were getting in and out of taxis all night long while we tried several tactics to try to get into a taxi. We went around the block split into different groups then tried to see if that would work. We split guys and girls. We tried changing locations. Some taxi driver:s wouldn’t even roll down their windows to talk to us. The taxis line up together and follow each other like ducks. So if you don:t catch the right taxi at the front of the line, you have to walk to the front of the line and ask that taxi driver to take you somewhere: otherwise it:s not fair to the other taxi drivers if you don’t get the taxi at the front of the line. In Japan,, its all about fairness and equality.
We were SO frustrated and confused. After about an hour of trying, we ended up where we began, at the hotel with the other foreigners that had tried and lost. We all ended up talking , drinking and hanging out in the front of the hotel, about 30 foreigners. We gained comfort and strength in number and decided to start a revolution. Then we went to sleep.

Tokyo, Japan July 26th or 27th or somewhere in between

I can't believe I'm in Tokyo. I feel really dizzy so I turned the AC on and it's in celsius. hmmm 22 degrees sounds good to me. Good number and below the current 32 degrees. I am SO HOT! What am I doing here?

My 1st BLOG! Sorry it's been almost a month!!

HELLO ALL!!!
I am stealing my building mate's internet as I type right now because guess what, that's right I STILL don't have the internet!! Not having the internet is like not having air. It's worse than not having a cell phone. I feel like I can't breathe. I don't know how people ever survived without the internet. It just doesn't seem possible.
So much has happened since I left Denver that last Friday night almost exactly one month ago. I arrived in Tokyo and have been "blogging" manually in a diary (thanks Josh!). TODAY August 24 is when I actually typed up and posted what I have been writing over the past month. I currently work at a government office (yakuba) with about 8 other people on the Board of Education. I have a buildingmate from Canada named Kate, who is really cool since she's letting me use her internet right now to blog. So much has happened in the past month, and I am sad I couldn't share it earlier. But here is some of what I've experienced. My disclaimer is that I've only been here for a month and I could be misinterpreting experiences sometimes, for all you real Japanese experts out there reading my blog. Please overlook the grammar since I am typing as fast as I can. SORRY!
Miss you all,
Ka-so-n-do-ra
This is how you spell my name in a romanized way in katakana (one form of Japanese writing).