Day 1: Orientation

What a first day and we aren't even out of the country yet.

My day began with a typical trip to Sydney; early morning wake up and a shortish drive to Wahroonga Station (where we just missed the first train Dad didn't even know about) with a quick train trip into down to arrive at the hotel before a 10:30am start. Along the way I managed to somehow get charged for a return ticket from Wahroonga to Central (despite specifically requesting a one way) and have my Uni student card go missing.

When I arrived, I met Clare, one of my travelling companions in the lobby, booked my bags in and said goodbye to my father. After grabbing a hot chocolate from the Lindt Cafe (yes!) we settled down with Courtney and Emily before being joined by Stacey and Josh. And that was when the fun really began.

We were discussing packing when I commented that as long as you have your passport, everything else can be bought when Josh went really super quiet. After asking him what was wrong, he admitted that he had forgotten his passport. And he is from Brisbane. With no one at home.

So Josh quickly disappeared to discover that Courier Services cost $500 to transport one passport from Brisbane to Sydney in the same day. Cheaper for a mate (who is owed a lot of beer now I think) to fly it down, stay over night and fly back. Which I personally think is better service.

So Josh's passport is now a running gag.

At 10:30am, we gathered in the lobby and walked across town to the Mitsui Office. And what a view:

View from Mitsui's Office

So there we are standing on the 41st floor, overlooking Sydney Harbour (with Josh wetting himself with Opera House fanboy joy), feeling completely overawed and a little out of our league, when we get led into a meeting room and sat down in front of a giant stack of business cards each with our names on it:

In the words of Iggy Azalea: I'm so Fancy

We had a number of briefings about Mitsui, watched a few videos and got to know each other. There's a great spread of degrees, majors, interests, but we are all big personalities and got along really well. We were also fortunate enough to meet with Ms Wendy Holdenson, Director &Executive Vice President of Mitsui (Australia) and Mr Mark O'Tolle, who was part of the 2012 group. Both provided some great advice on what to see and do in Japan, without giving too much away about what it was like. You could feel the nervous excitement building in the room though, particularly when we had lunch with some of the Mitsui staff, when we discovered that there had been 384 applicants to this program, which makes this program more widely applied for, and harder to be selected, than the New Columbo Plan Scholarships (of which they selected 10 from 52 applicants).

After a long day of talks about what we were about to undertake, it was hardly surprising that most of us took our afternoon off to relax and take a little nap. I gave Mum a quick update and during the course of the conversation mentioned that I had lost my student ID card. She is so good at finding things that the moment I mentioned it, I pulled it out of my wallet. That is some talent right there!

At 5:30pm, the gang met in the lobby before walking all the way back to the Mitsui Office where we met a number of Mitsui Educational Foundation Trustees, such as Mr. Ian Williams and Mr. Hugh Morgan AO. Dinner was held at Yuki's at the Overseas Passenger terminal. And when you thought the view from the Office was good, check this out:

It's so pretty!

Dinner was interesting to say the least. A supposedly three course, it was actually a four course meal (and Steve had about eight courses, eating double of everyone else because a spare plate was always served.) First difficulty was using chopsticks as no Western Cutlery was allowed. I'm sure I will manage this skill by the end of my trip as I didn't do too badly at my first time.

Course one was Sashimi, raw fish. I couldn't eat much Sashimi, the intense fishy flavours were a bit much for me, although I did quite enjoy the tuna. I get the feeling I will be eating a lot of fish on this trip and may very well never want seafood ever again. We shall see.

Course two was a combination of foods. One was cooked fish, which again was very intense in flavour and I did not eat much. But the fried shredded potato was amazing and my favourite part was the asparagus wrapped in beef. All delicious.

Course three was mains, which I selected Chicken Teriyaki. Definitely my favourite course, loved it to bits. And by then my hand had cramped using the chopsticks. So that added a pain to the experience.

Final course, dessert, left me with fruit and mango sorbet. Not strictly a Japanese dessert (Japanese typically finish their meals with a selection of fruit), it was still delicious and fortunately, we didn't have to use chopsticks. 

Conversation over dinner was light, revolving around getting to know each other a little more, with the MEF trustees asking about our careers, why we applied and how we found out about the program. They were very intelligent and exciting people, with a lot of knowledge and passionate about Japanese relations and the importance of engaging young people. 

One of the big things with Japanese culture is the exchange of business cards (thus why we were given a big stack at the start). Today's count was a total of six:

Got to collect 'em all!

But tomorrow is the big day. Josh's passport arrived at 8:30pm, so assuming we have no more hiccups we will be on our flight at 9:15am tomorrow morning. So on that note, I shall go to bed, need to be up bright and early to make sure we are on our flight (and don't worry, I have checked and I definitely have MY passport.)