Pt. 2: orientation

We (all 1000 or so of us) stayed at the Keio Plaza hotel in Shinjuku. I'd wandered past it on my last visit from Tokyo, but I'd never imagined I'd ever actually stay there. It's not quite a luxurious place, but it's really grand. There's red carpets and crystal and candelabra that hail of better days and in one case there even was a dude who operated the elevator for you. The rooms were nice enough. Fortunately there was free shampoo and soap, as I'd sent mine right on to Hokkaido.
I shared my room with a CIR from Finland, who turned out o have been on the same plane as me and the Germans. Apparently they put all of Europe on the same plane from Frankfurt.

The first evening we had off, so I went for some food with the German CIRs and then on a hike of Shinjuku. I didn't take many pictures as I'd already been there before, but here's a few fun things I thought were worth photographing:

The next day we had a couple of introductory workshops. Usually we were put into groups that were kind of related to what we or our jobs had in common (CIRs/ALTs, people going to the same prefecture, German-speaking, etc) so I found it easy to meet some people and develop connections. The CIR workshops were all in Japanese, so I found them a little bit hard to follow. Pretty much as expected, I was one of (if not) the weakest of the bunch language-wise, but I think in terms of other skills I'll be alright. I don't mind public speaking, being friendly and handling texts. I just hope I'll manage to catch up on the Japanese language part soon :(
An added bonus of the CIR workshops was this view, as they took place on the 43rd floor of the building:

As you can see, Tokyo was a bit cloudy, but at least that made the heat more bearable. I wouldn't know if it was hot during the day or not though, as I spent all of them inside the hotel with the air con on. It was a bit depressing; I got cabin fever (never mind the cabin was rather large).

Also, I experienced my first earthquake. I'd just come back from drinks with the German-speaking CIRs when I noticed I was swaying just a little bit. First I thought it was just me being drunk, but then I noticed the walls and ceiling were also creaking like mad, so I thought "eeek, earthquake! I wonder if I should climb under the table or something....?" but before I could decide the quake was over. For Japan it was a pretty weak quake (4), but we hardly ever get earthquakes of this magnitude in Austria. Perhaps the experience was strengthened by the fact that I was on the 14th floor.