Day 1: First Big Day in Japan

May 27, Hotel New Otani Makuhari - First day in Japan. Yey! We all woke up early and have our breakfast to get ready for our first big day in Japan. After we had our breakfast, we all went directly to the Tokyo gymnasium where we had to practice our presentation for the JAO festival. After the tiring practice, we were gathered in Tower Hall Funbori together with the other delegates who have just arrived that day. We have our lunch there, and for our lunch we got a bento, Japanese style lunch boxes. After our lunch, we prepared for our orientation meeting.

After the opening speech of the representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, JENESYS 2.0 is now officially opened. The host then give us some few briefings and reminders about the programme, and what to expect on the next three days. We then all went down to another function hall and grouped ourselves by prefecture. At this point, we have our team building session. First part is getting to know each other. It is a game where we need to memorize each other's name. We need to introduce ourselves and also introduce the person beside you, and the person beside the person beside you and so on. The game goes like this "Hi! My name is D from D, and he is C from C, he is B from B ..." It was a challenge for me since I usually forgot names after five minutes I have met a person. Luckily, it went smoothly for me. After the first game, we have to choose a leader, and  then to give a name for our group. We named our group ChiBi since we are group Chiba B. Go ChiBi!

One strong characteristic of Japanese culture is the practice of giving out name cards. Japanese have their own unique way of giving and receiving name cards, so for our last activity we practiced giving out "imaginary" name cards to each others as this will be our custom for the next days whenever we gonna meet people for the first time in Japan. はじめまして 私 の名前は Von です。  どうぞよろしく。

After our first tiring day, we then have our dinner at a take all you can yakiniku near Shibuya. I was  at first too overwhelmed with the food and drinks in the place, so I have taken each one of the food served in the restaurant. Since, I am too lazy to cook my own yakiniku, I mostly have ice cream and cheesecakes for dinner. Green tea ice cream and green tea cheesecake will always and forever be my favorite. Matcha green tea overload on my first day.