Day 1

Despite big hopes for a luxurious seat on the JAL flight (here's our plane...), it was pretty cramped quarters for 12 hours. But we arrived right on time, made it through immigration and customs pretty quickly, and met up with the students arriving the same afternoon.

The trip from Narita to Shinagawa (on the south side of Tokyo) took about 2 hours, but given the exhaustion, etc., I didn't take any pictures. We checked into our apartments around 7 pm, and here are some shots of the kitchen and, of course, the bathroom...


I'll post more so you can get a better sense of the lay-out. It's a tiny room, with the kitchen on the left side of the entry hallway. They provide basic dishes and materials. The appliance on the bottom left corner is a dishwasher, on the bottom right a mini-fridge, and there's a microwave on the upper-right. One task for today is to find the big grocery store near-by.



At breakfast this morning, everyone reported the same feeling of alarm upon first use of the toilet--the extremely warm (because heated) seat. Here's the control panel. I cannot figure out the difference between the spray and the bidet, though apparently my butt cheeks are to float gently on the spray, while my whole body can ride the bidet. The flushing sound default setting was extremely loud, essentially a bad recording of an endless flush, a modesty tool to cover up other sounds.



No, I have not yet used the "powerful deodorizer."

"Nozzle clean" refers to the little bidet and spray head, and seems automatic.

And below, the control panel on the toilet seat lid. Apparently small children are not supposed to play around the toilet with water, nor to march like little soldiers on the toilet seat.