Last full day in Tokyo…

The day started off the same as the day before.  Went down early for breakfast and found that it was pretty much the same food.  The potatoes were done in little hashbrown/tatertot like shapes instead of fries and I think instead of sausages they had ham.  The day started a little earlier as the first workshop started at 9am.  Lunch was vegetarian again but at least this time they disguised the tofu as beef.  Some of the vegetarians thought that it may have been beef.  But being the meat lover I am, I confidently said, “this is not meat.” 

In the afternoon, they offered some cultural workshops such as “The Asian JET” and “The Rural JET”, both of which I attended.  Most of them took place on the 42nd and 43rd floors and I took a few pictures of… the buildings! 

Also while on the upper floors, someone pointed out there was a pool.  We figured out that we couldn’t access the pool from the elevator we were frequenting.  I thought that floors 6 and 7 were gone because they were bad luck or something.  Guess not. 

At around 6:30pm, most of the embassies (all except the Americans, haha) had welcome events for their JETs.  On the way to the Canadian embassy, I noticed something very familiar about the train station and underground area.  I proclaimed, “I’ve been here before!”  I remembered the Subway and the little café where I had this ham and cheese sandwich with this awesome sauce from way back in 2000 when we were in Tokyo for the Shotocup. 

They fed us finger foods at the embassy but I was still hungry and others wanted to go out and do more exploring.  Our group was kind of huge and no one could decide what to do so I broke off with the others who were hungry and we went to a more traditional Japanese restaurant.  On the way to the restaurant we saw a few of the ramen stands where you just grab a stool and they cook your food.  At the restaurant, I had the soba noodles (buckwheat noodles.)  They are served cold and you dip them in a hot soup (mine had duck) and you slurp it up.  Japanese people make lots of noise when they eat.  I’m not sure if it’s intentional. 

After that, I was off to bed.  We would be off to our separate prefectures in the morning and that would be the end of Tokyo orientation.