the Name of this Blog:
I am entitling this adventure as "awkward Gaijin in Japan" because that is exactly what I am.
for the non-Japanese speakers among us, Gaijin literally means "outside person", and awkward means, well embodies really, my natural state.  Now I have been unleashed on an equally awkward and strange country, and as such our interactions should be interesting.

exhibit A: KFC colonial in Akihabara  

Arriving in Japan and Survival Japanese 101 in Tokyo


the flight from LAX was probably the best I have ever had. for anyone traveling to Asia in the near future, Singapore airlines is the way to go. fan-freakin-tastic and our program took up a huge portion of the airplane.
On our arrival into Tokyo, we were greeted by two english teachers from Tokyo university who helped us pack up and ship our big luggage to Kyoto, pack us up onto a bus and take us to the Olympic youth center where we stayed for four nights. The center had wonderful architecture, but the rooms were very small and we had to move dorms every night. All I could think of every time I took a shower in the tiny closet like bathrooms was "what happened when the first American basket ball player, or weightlifter checked into his room, got to the door and couldn't get inside the doorway". Michele Phelps would have had a hard time sleeping in those beds is all I'm saying.

Carls in Tokyo on our first adventure into the city

The entire purpose of us staying in Tokyo for the first week-ish was to get a crash course on surviving in Japan as awkward Gaijin. The Carls on this program are divided into three categories:
1)No Japanese at all
2) some survival Japanese
3) can speak and stutter out our general desires and maybe by the fourth time they actually know what the hell you are asking for. (This is me btw)

there are 5 of us at the highest level, but unfortunately only one other guy is better than me at both speaking and listening. This is a problem because, if any of you have ever heard me speak, I am actually not very good and usually butcher the actual purpose of each sentence into incoherent mubo-jumbo.

hence our program gets even more awkward than just 18 gaijin walking around and sticking out like sore thumbs in that now we can't even properly communicate why we are here or what we want. Our interaction with native speakers is basically a series of halting charades that the other person did not agree to play.

the entire point of the Tokyo orientation was to overcome this barrier. Not to fix it, because lets face it they aren't micicl workers, but to force us out into Tokyo, rather unprepared and unaccompanied in order to prefect our charades system.
It was like pushing a baby bird off a cliff and to prove that even if it can't fly, it can survive the fall.

And fall we did. and fall we continue to do. But we learn more this way from our mistakes, and become more brave each passing day. I can already feel myself improving dramatically from where I was when I first got here, and I see more students willing to go out and adventure on their own.

so in this orientation, we learned how to ask for direction, order in a cafe,  say things like "I am deathly allergic to peanuts" ext. Then we broke into groups and ran around Tokyo like baby chickens on scavenger hunts and various other missions.

The following posts break them down by day/adventure. But in general, it was an amazing way to welcome us into a new very different country in the most embarrassing way possible.  We all loved it :)

in the Tokyo equivalent of times square. Also now called the "Sexy Zone" by Deborah and I.