So bright and early the next morning after Karaoke, the new recruits from my branch are hopping off on a shuttle to head to Morioka.  Morioka is the main city of Iwate, and also where our branch is based out of.  Luckily, Interac has shipped our luggage ahead to our houses, whether we know where our houses are or not.  I personally had been informed only 2 days prior.  When I looked it up, it looked pretty far from everything, and I was pretty sure it was on top of a phone store (it is). 

Anyways, got on a shuttle to Tokyo Station, then hopped on a Shinkansen.  It was my first time ever riding one, and it’s honestly one of those times where I realize how much technology can be taken for granted.  Here I am hurtling along at a potential 170mph, and I’m just really tired and trying to sleep. However, I did appreciate how fast the scenery was changing.  Just the rate at which everything was changing was a good reminder of how fast the bullet train is.  Meaning, we were getting very far from Tokyo, very quickly.  It was over 3 hours I believe, to get to Morioka.  After which point, we were whisked off to the branch office to pay the hefty 3 months of rent, and go over some more paperwork/orientation.  I forgot to mention, the guy leading us is our Managing Consultant, Shane Menza.  He’s an awesome guy with an awesome background story, but most importantly, he’s also a Shane and he’s also from Hawaii.

So, 3/22 – 3/23 are pretty painful corporate such and such.  But Shane is determined to make this fun for us.  On the Thursday night, 3/22, he takes us all to a Wanko Soba shop.  It’s this cool little concept where they continuously feed you bite size portions of soba.  You’re supposed to eat it in one bite, and essentially see how many bowls you can eat.  It’s honestly a bit stressful as there’s a lady just standing over us just continuously dropping soba in and continuously shouting encouragement.  I got managed 60 bowls before I thought I’d burst.  Shane was the champion of the group with 132.  I asked our server what the highest number she’d seen was, and it was over 250, and it was a girl!  Whether I believe it or not is one thing, but I sure want to.

3/23, we are officially done with this orientation.  Shane shows us this Indian joint with bottomless naan bread.  We then head over to this bar which Shane and some other veteran ALT’s who have tagged along dub, the Foreign Embassy in Morioka, as all the Gaijin congregate there.  They honestly had a wide selection there, and I definitely wouldn’t mind going back.  Moving forward, he takes whoever is willing to karaoke.  $40 or so for all you can drink all you can sing till the sun comes up.  I tapped out around 3-4ish though, apparently some stayed till the end and went out to breakfast after, not many though.

The next day, Saturday, I definitely just lay in bed all day.  I missed the free breakfast at the RnB hotel we were staying at, so I only left my room to go get food.  We were right by the station which had a bunch of restaurants inside, but as we’re not receiving our first paycheck till May 20, and I had just paid nearly $3,000 for my initial rent and deposit, I held back my spending to eat more…soba!  Otherwise, I survived off the nearby conbini that day.

I went out Sunday with some of the people to go see some Castle Ruins and just walk around the city.  It was nice to see, but everyone was now just waiting to be dispersed to their various locations.  We all had various departure dates, and were all probably feeling the financial pinch.  Also, we’d all been stuck with new faces for over a week and I think everyone was ready to just go to their house and have some peace and quiet.