After taking off from Budapest, Hungary, we headed to Amsterdam, where we waited for like, 7 hours. At that point, I was so unbelievably bored, that I wanted to chew my own head off. Sadly I couldn't (and still can't) do that, so we just passed the time with staring at the Departures board, watching the Tokyo label crawl upwards very very slowly....

Eventually, we boarded a plane (to Japan!!!) and had a flight for another.... 11 hours or so. The first 5 hours were torture, literally torture. I couldn't sleep, couldn't move, It was uncomfortable, Japanese kids were staring at me... but after those horrible five hours, I just, I don't know, accepted my fate? Basically I remember nothing of that time, I was simply staring out of my head without any dedication to stop my legs from getting numb or my neck too feel like I fell from a skyscraper. 

Finally, we landed, and our first move was to go to a bathroom and brush our teeth. After that, we put on our fabulous red AFS Hungary T-shirts (no sarcasm intended, I really do like it :D), and headed to the escape from hell the arrivals gate. There we were greeted by lovely AFS Japan volunteers, and also we realized that two other exchange students came on our plane, too, whom I actually pointed out in Amsterdam, but we dismissed the idea of them belonging to AFS because one of them had Japanese passport. It turned out she was half Japanese, that's why... ^^"

So there we were, at the Narita airport in Tokyo, around 8:30 AM, all ready, let's go to where we would stay, right? Wrong. We had to wait for all the exchange students (at least from the first half, but that's still like, 30 people), and guess what, we were the very first ones to arrive. So, I think you already know what we did, and we did it for another 8 hours!! I was so moody and hadn't had normal sleep for like 40 hours, it was miserable. But then again, as other exchange students arrived, we started to talk, had some fun, so it stuck in me as a happy memory after all. :)

Soon (not so soon) we got out of the airport, (where we got hit in the face by the humidity and a freakin' bamboo forest at the other side of the road) and on the bus (where we saw the Tokyo tower to, but I couldn't take a normal picture of it), and headed to a place called Narita Youth Center, NYC in short. That's where I had a looong long sleep. Well at least 7 hours, but it was enough to get my soul back. :D

The orientation all in all, was great, it lasted from the 18th to the 20th of August, but both the first and last days were spent with traveling, so the real deal was on the 19th only. All the students were separated into 7 smaller groups, each group had around 11 members. They were led by university student volunteers, so we had a youthful atmosphere all the time. Actually, even the few older organizers of AFS were very nice and easygoing. We had several presentations about life in Japan, good manners, hygiene, what and who we as exchange students represent and about being a part of AFS Japan and AFS in general. The food was great, the place was cool, I had my fair share of the Japanese "shower toilets" too, as they are apparently called.

Also, we had a great closing ceremony, where everyone sang, and we really just had a good time. What I'm quite sad about is that we had no time to talk to each other really, only with our roommates (for me, one of them being the Hungarian girl, and two Spanish girls, one who hadn't had a word with me, and another one I became quite good friends with, at least I would like to think so :D).

On the 20th of August, we all went to our host families, each of us in a different way, but I will write about that later. As much as I love to be here, I really don't have much time to myself, and even less time for this blog, so it might take me another few days (or late night vigilance) to post.

Until then, please be patient, and as always, thank you for reading! <3