First of all, I apologize for my update tardiness. Very soon after I arrived in Japan my schedule was packed full of study material, training activities, general unsolicited exploration, and fun with new friends. Also, access to an internet connection (much less a substantial amount of time to make use of it) has been few and far between for much of my time here.

Well!

My plane landed in Japan at about 2:30pm local time. After a simple immigration procedure I collected my bags and was quickly met by a trainer who was there to collect new arrivals. Flights for different employees came in at different hours, so we didn’t leave the place until about 7:00pm. Fresh from 16 hours in a crowded fuselage, waiting in a wide open place was paradise. Ultimately, 7 brave souls left the airport by train. The ride from Narita into Shinjuku took about an hour, and then the train from Shinjuku to Omiya was roughly fourty minutes long.

The training center wasn’t quite how I had imagined it to be. It was as though someone started to construct an office, then changed their mind halfway through and decided that a residence was the better choice. It definitely just looks like any other home around it (if only a bit larger) in the densely packed residential neighborhood in Omiya where it stood. There was a large conference room with a kitchen in a small room in the back, and next to that was a supply closet that (conveniently?) played host to a shower. There was a room by the lobby that was used as a secondary teaching area / library, and an office space where the trainers worked their secondary duties at intermediaries for current teachers and the head branch offices. Upstairs where all the rooms where we slept. I stayed in the same room as the only other two male trainees. One was Australian, which is awesome, because I loved listening to him talk and use ridiculous words like ‘squiz’.

Anyway, the first day we all just crashed because we were exhausted from our respective ridiculous flight times. The next day we had off, but the jet lag was horrendous so apart from some minor Omiya-related exploration, a great deal of unpacking and food hunting/gathering was afoot. On Sunday the training began in earnest. Training days are long, indeed. This intensive indoctrination period lasted six days. When we finished we were given solid pats on the back, a nametag, and a shiny pin upon which is embroidered the sterling silver and blue AEON insignia.

That weekend I went with one of the trainees and his girlfriend into Tokyo where we ventured to the top of Tokyo Tower, explored some sort of hallowed Buddhist temple, admired a street performer and his Macaque spreading a wonderful brand of mirth that filled the cockles of my heart in exchange for nothing more than spare change (he must have raked in at least 150 dollars after he finished his 15 minute routine), and passed through the Thunder Gate to visit Sensō-ji Temple. There they had omikuji, or fortune slips that you can draw after donating a dollar to the temple. I drew a “Very Bad Luck” fortune and spent the next half hour contemplating the ramifications of tearing a fortune card into tiny pieces out of spite, and the validity such an act would impart on my own wavering sense of the line between superstition and the suspension of disbelief.

It was while I was in this reverie that my companions decided that they had had enough of Senso-ji, and so (after discarding what was left of my massacred fortune card) we headed back to the Subway. I was, however, given a good luck charm that my friend bought from an old, wizened Japanese man with a twinkle in his eye that could only mean one thing: adventure was afoot. I knew my fortune was going to turn around! Sure enough, as soon as we crossed the street I espied an abandoned money pouch on the sidewalk. And what was inside but two credit cards and over 90,000 in yen? That’s roughly $875 to you folks back in the real world.

Needless to say, we had a hell of a time at the clubs that night. Nah, I’m only joshin’, we took it to the kouban, or police box, across the street. After being asked to fill out an incomprehensible form by several incredibly friendly (jolly, even) policemen, we continued on our way. We were at the subway station when the policeman somehow found us, brought with him the woman whose purse we had found, and allowed her the opportunity to thank me profusely. She was in tears at this point, of course, as would most anyone be after the emotional force of being both overwhelmingly panicked and relieved within the span of an hour. It’s good to do good deeds, indeed!

With that we began the hour and a half long journey back to the training house to prepare for shipping out to our new schools the next day. I’ll post more when I stop being such an incredibly lazy bastard.