I'm gonna blame guys.

For alot of things wrong with this world. But the issue that's affecting me most recently is that of packing and baggage. So tomorrow we all leave for our respective prefectures (sorta like states but smaller and without like power) right? And all the JETS going to the particular prefecture travel together, and we are lead by our PAs, Prefecture Advisors. Who are, incidently, all guys, for my prefecture (Nagasaki Prefecture) anyway. Now we have to fly down from Tokyo to Nagasaki, seeing as how Nagasaki is at the most southern tip of the last big Japan island. We take a bus to the airport in Tokyo, fly to Nagasaki airport, are met by our Supervisors, and taken to our resepctive towns. So our PAs, with all the good intentions in the world, decided that it would be best if tonight (tuesday evening) we gave them the bag we will check onto the plane. That way all the bags will be together to be loaded onto the bus. The following morning (Wednesday) we ride the bus to the airport, where we are given back our bags so that we can check them on the plane.

In theory, this seems like it may save time and hassel, because our bags will already be packed and ready to go!

In practice, not so much.

The PAs figured all we'd need to keep out would be our clothes for tomorrow, and then our carry on bag. In reality we'll have tolietrees, shoes, and the clothes we wore on Tuesday, plus our carry on. The carry on is already packed to the brim, whereas the checked bag is not, because we have to put all that stuff (tolietrees etc) back into the checked bag. So now I have to carry my backpack, my tolietree bag, and a laundry bag onto the bus, ride to the airport, get my checked bag, repack it, and then check my bag onto the plane.

Not to mention I spent all afternoon rearraging stuff to pack, because of all the new workshop books they gave us. Many of which don't seem at all pertinent but I'm afriad to chuck because of "what ifs". (For example, a book on American Geography >.>;) And since we're meeting our supervisors tomorrow, we have to dress nicely. So I had to pack my sneakers into the checked bag and keep out my heels, thus forcing me to have to walk around in said heels, destroy my feet so that I wouldn't have to spend so much time rearranging things in the airport.

I feel like a woman would have taken this sort of thing into account, and realized that it would be MUCH EASIER to just let us keep our luggage, and then, Wednesday morning, bring it to the bus to load. Instead of having to do all this rearranging, and having to carry all this extra stuff around.

So I blame guys. Specifically I'm going to blame my brother, because he's not here so thus is easy to blame. ^_~b

Other than that though the day went well! Last night Karaoke was a lot of fun, I drank waaay to much melon soda (sooo good!) and everyone sang very cheesy songs very loudly and very badly, which is very amusing and always the best. All the JETs in my prefecture group here seem really cool in a variety of ways, such as being friendly and energetic. The workshops for today were so so, repeated information or common sense stuff , but the people are all very nice and try their best with what they have, which really isn't very much since every JET's experience is so differnet (depending on the prefecture, town, schools, and people they work in and with).

We leave early tomorrow morning, and I'm very tired and sleepy so I'm going to go to bed. I realize now that this post is probably quite incomprehensible, as the baggage thing is kinda ramble-y, and I'm not sure if my point got across. But really the point is that guys are to blame , and I think we can all agree on that. ^_~

Fingers crossed that it won't be too long until I get Internet in my apartment and a cell phone! Until then!