Today was spent finishing up packing and attending the mandatory JET pre-departure orientation. Got back my passport and visa. Also got my plane ticket and special baggage tags. The orientation was pretty standard and finished about 1 hour early at 4:00. Normally not a problem, but there was supposed to be a reception at 6:00 so I ended up with an extra 2 hours time to kill. Luckily I wasn't alone so I headed out we some fellow JETs to hit up the 16th Street Mall. Stopped by a souvenir place so someone could pick up more omiyage (I ended up getting some small Colorado mint tins and some specialty trail mix from the Mountain Man Fruit and Nut Company). We then decided to grab some Starbucks and ran accross another wandering group of JETs.

This is where it gets fun. While were chatting in Starbucks, it starts to rain. In Colorado, this normally isn't too big a deal, as it normally clears up after a few minutes. However, it kept getting worse and worse. Here we all are in our business suits about to go to a formal reception and it's pouring down cats and dogs. Luckily, someone thought to ask the Starbucks employees for some garbage bags and they gave all of us these massive industrial type ones. Good thing too.....or we all would have been horribly drenched. Even with the 'garbage poncho' on, we still got fairly wet. Felt sorry for all the stores we passed on our way to the reception who were trying to sweep the water out of their stores into drains that were overflowing. One of the drains was even spraying out water like a fountain.

All in all, an exciting day. Now I'm just bumming around, trying to stay up till my flight (stupid time change). Will probably grab 2 hours or so of sleep before heading to the airport, but while it's almost midnight here, it's only like 3 in the afternoon there. Got to stay up now, sleep on the first part of the flight, stay awake on the second part, and hopefully arrive in Tokyo fairly fresh and alert. We'll see what happens.

I can't believe my next post will be from Japan!