Today was my first day in Tsukuba (Scuba). At 9:00am I met with an official of the Ninomiya House to go over some paper work and procedures of the house. It was pretty short and basic. Then Seth and I went with Chihiro to AIST, our new place of work, to meet some people that we will be working with. Everyone that we met was great and extremely friendly. Segawa-san, one of our direct supervisors, seems very nice and it should be great working with him. AIST is a very large campus and has about 10,000 employees. We had lunch in the cafeteria with Chihiro, and two people from the international affairs department. As you walk into the cafeteria they display the different plates that are available and which line to go to. I decided that I wanted noodles and they were in the line B so went to line B. When I got there there were no noodles so I had to choose something else. Nothing really looked that good so I went with the “American” dish. It was a hamburger steak/patty with brown gravy (pretty much salisbury steak), a small palm size of cold spaghetti, one piece of broccoli (cold), and three french fries. I also got a bowl of miso soup and rice. It was all pretty good and it was nice to taste some gravy.

After lunch we spent some more time at AIST then we went and got our bikes. AIST bought brand new bikes for us and our wives. They are basic cruisers and easy to ride. It has an integrated bike lock, a front basket, and a small headlight. I’ll try and post a pick soon. We then rode our new company bikes to our house which is only a 10 minute ride. Here is a short video of part of the ride with Seth and Chihiro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR6DKXe2qY8



Then Seth and I went out for dinner for our first time by ourselves. Two blocks down from the house we found a restaurant, but about half way through dinner we figured out that it was actually a Chinese restaurant ( o well). We had one dish that was like Mongolian beef with green peppers and it was really good. The other dish that we order wasn’t as good. It was breaded fried beef cubes with a sticky, kind of maple tasting sauce. Once we finished we were not sure if we needed to tip or not so we went ahead and left a few coins on the table. As we walked to the counter to pay for our meal the waitress comes running up to us to hand our coins back to us like we forgot them. So we learned from this that they do not tip in Japan.

After dinner we went to the market to buy some food for the house. For the first 30 minutes Seth and I just kind of wandered around in the market like a couple of lost children. There are just so many new and strange foods to see. Finally we pulled ourselves back together and actually started shopping. It is a really good thing that there were pictures on the packages so we could figure out what the items were. We bought a few basic items to make some meals at the house and then we went to the drug store. At the drug store I bought some shampoo, lotion, and some other things for the place. When I got home I went to put some lotion on my hands but it turned out that it was actually body wash, so I still need some lotion. After the two stores we headed home then to bed. It was a great first day.