My first 5 days in Japan have been more amazing than I could ever have imagined. We got out of the Olympic Village and to our host families.

We did have one major scare, however. If anyone has been keeping up with world news, you may have heard about the disaster at Akihabara in Tokyo. If you haven`t, you may want to look it up. Well, my group was in Akihabara at the time of the attack, not 3 blocks away. If we hadn`t stopped at the restaurant we did, things may have been even scarier.

Here`s hoping the rest of the trip goes on without such unpleasantries.