The First Day in Oarai

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 Our flight left Manila at around 12:30 in the early morning and we were provided with one hot meal prior to our arrival to Japan. We arrived at Narita airport at around 5 in the morning. We then waited for our van to pick us up and we proceeded with our 2-hour drive to the town of Oarai in Ibaraki-ken.






The first day was a flurry of events that I may have forgotten a lot of already. But let me try to reconstruct as much of what I can remember.

We arrived in Oarai at roughly around 10 in the morning. The first stop was at the school's office to pick up some provisions that we will be given. We were provided with futons, dishes, basic household items, etc. After which we were shown to our respective apartments. We were dropped off and told to be ready in an hour, we will be picked up at around 1 pm. So we hurriedly unloaded our stuff and picked rooms.

At around 1 indeed our teacher picked us up from the apartment for lunch.

This was the first encounter I had with a Japanese supermarket. Now what I love about Japanese supermarkets are the bento boxes you can buy. I'll have a separate post on supermarket food. But for that day I settled with yakisoba and sparkling water. (The sparkling water was a mistake. I thought it was plain water.) We then proceeded with a hurried tour of our new home town.




We were taken to our school and then to a household store that sells anything you might need for your homes like tools, soaps, heaters, and the occasional water and noodles. It's basically a hardware store with some items from the grocery and the pharmacy.
Our school provided us with bicycles (jitensha) for us to use to get to school and to get to various places here. Oarai is such a small town that you can use your bike to get to anywhere around town.

Our bicycles.


Here's a funny anecdote of what happened next. After the purchase of our bikes, we were told to bike our way back to the apartment. This is just for us to get used to the route going to and from home. So as we proceeded to plow our way back, we got lost that our teacher had to look for us. We agreed to meet back at 711 just in case we got lost (which we did). And this 711 in Isohamacho, became our sort of go-to place since we all didn't have internet and we were all anxious to inform our families back in the Philippines that we are okay.


And from that point forward, we became the 711 crew.
In my next post, I'll be writing about the 711 crew and its colorful cast.


Location: Oarai, Higashiibaraki District, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan

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