In Japan

After breakfast, which was over at about 7:40, we just needed to kill some time before our orientation meeting at 9:00. A few of us decided to go for a walk, and went to a park, that was nice, it was the first time for us to go out walking in Japan.
At the orientation meeting, we got lots of interesting and helpful info. Most important for me, they gave us maps, so hopefully I won't get lost! Also, we found out that we meet our host families tomorrow, and go to live with them.
After the meeting, we set out walking to our school (not a short walk, just btdubs), and we stopped in at some stores on the way. We also stopped at a ramen shop for lunch. Fukutomi Sensei (our resident director) helped me to order something vegetarian, and I was supposed to help some of the people at my table order, but they made fun of me for not being able to ask for something without the meat or egg... Our school is very pretty, I didn't take any pics today, but I will at some point, and put them up on my facebook. At the school, we were given instructions for a scavenger hunt. They wanted to put at least one person with 3 years or more Japanese experience on each team, I was the only one on my team, so I had to do all of the talking :/ Originally the scavenger hunt was supposed to take place sort of throughout the city, but due to the heat, it was changed to take place around the station. I was the only one on my team that really wanted to complete the list... it was really annoying. Also, the most embarrassing thing happened to me during this hunt. We were supposed to ask someone for a restaurant recommendation, so I asked a guy working in a store what the best restaurant in ichinomiya was, and he told me that he wasn't from ichinomiya, so he couldn't tell me, so he got another guy, who then got a lady, who then got like 5 more ladies, and they started calling someone, I was pretty confused as to what was going on, but I did get that there was somewhere to eat on the 7th floor of the station. I felt so bad, and just wanted to go hide in a closet after this happened, especially since the guy I was with (Brendan) kept telling everyone about what had happened, and everyone thought that I said/did something wrong. I'm not saying that I definitely didn't, I'm just saying that they shouldn't criticize me for it, since they made me do it because they said they didn't know enough Japanese.
We actually did end up eating dinner on the seventh floor of the station, which made me feel the slightest bit better about that whole ordeal. We split up into groups to eat, and I went to a tofu shop, because I was told it would be easy to get vegetarian food there :) Only four other people went to eat there, 2 were teachers, 1 a teacher assistant, and only 1 of them was another student. The teachers were speaking to each other and us in Japanese the whole time, and my confidence was boosted a little because I understood most all of what they were saying. One of the teachers, (she teaches Japanese) who is apparently my host mom's sister (?) maybe just friend... anyway, she asked me what music I like, I told her AKB48 and Arashi, this started a whole conversation about both groups, that was very entertaining, and I can't help but feel that the other guy with me felt very lost. At one point, one of the teachers said that this was the "Arashi Jidai" which I thought was really funny!
After dinner we took a bus back to our hotel, and we're all sitting in the lobby on our computers now, waiting for the public bath to be less full.
I'll try to add some pics to facebook now :)