I've arrived

So here I am in Japan! We arrived here on Tuesday night (we crossed the international date line on the flight, so somehow it magically became Tuesday instead of Monday. Those of you who have travelled with me know how mystifying I find time zones and time changes!)
We arrived at Osaka airport at about 4 pm and were met by Mr. Honda, our supervisor. He had a mini bus ready to take us to our new home in Himeji. It was about a 2 hour ride and we passed through Osaka and Kobe - both big port cities, and at least the parts we passed through, were very industrial.
Our new apartment building is called Shirasagi Residence and all the residents are other foreign English teachers. Most are from Phoenix, some from Adelaide, Australia (another of Himeji's sister cities), and a couple of people with the JET Program (one from Nashville, the other from South Africa), and a Chinese exchange student. My apartment is on the second floor and is sort of off to the side of the rest of the apartments (hard to explain, but it means I don't share a wall with anyone so it's particularly quiet). Living at Shirasagi Residence seems a lot like dorm life - right down to the little white boards everyone has on their doors!
We've been kept pretty busy so far - applying for alien registration, setting up a bank account, visiting the Japanese equivalent of the dollar store for basic household items. Today we have an orientation meeting where we will find out which school we will be teaching at and will meet some of the teachers at the school.
So far, except for the jetlag (which means I have woken up at 3:50 am for the last two days wide awake), it's been pretty easy to adapt here. A minor crisis when blogger decided to post my blog in Japanese, but through some trial and error ("I wonder where this link goes"), it's back to English.