Get ready for a long one...

September 16, 2006
Japan!!! I just came back on board after 5 AMAZING days in Japan. We got so much done and saw so many things I’m hoping I can still remember and write them all down. Our first day in Japan I woke up around 8am and looked out my porthole and saw a freeway directly outside which was quite a shock after seeing only ocean for the past week. Everyone was up early and running around, excited to see land and waiting for the ship to be “cleared” by customs so that we could get off. Stephanie and I went to breakfast and talked to a bunch of our friends about their plans so that we could all meet up again in Tokyo. After breakfast there was a “Diplomatic Briefing” which included a cultural show and speeches from Japanese officials. The presentation was awesome. There were about 30 Japanese people in different traditional costumes. Two men performed a type of dance with swords to music and it was unlike anything I have ever seen. A few women also danced to very traditional Japanese music in kimonos that had huge beautifully tied bows on the back of them. The entire ship (all the students, faculty, and other passengers) was packed into the Union and the satellite classrooms that broadcast from the Union. An official from the Kobe Port gave a speech in very good English, but with a strong Japanese accent. He thanked us for coming and told us all about Kobe and the tourist type things we could do there. He also mentioned 9/11 (which was the day before). There was a terrorist attack in Kobe about 11 years ago involving nerve gas in the subway, and he spoke about this and mentioned how sorry he was for our loses in 9/11. It was really touching to hear him speak about this and interesting because none of us knew about the terrorism in Kobe, yet the Japanese knew about 9/11 and seemed extremely compassionate. After that speech an American from the embassy spoke about customs and things to watch out for that are culturally normal in America, but may be offensive in Japan. Although I have traveled a bit, this was really my first trip into a country with entirely different language and culture and I was so excited to start exploring. Some of the officials on the ship exchanged gifts with the Japanese representatives and we all went to our rooms to get ready to leave.
Steph and I decided to go into town with Dave and Mio (Dave lives next door to us and he and Mio are from Northern Cal and both go to UCSC). We just wanted to walk around in Kobe for a bit, find a bank and some food and get back by four to get ready for the baseball game. We stood in line in our hallway waiting to go down to the 2nd deck and swipe our cards through to get off the ship. They have us swipe our cards so that they know who is on or off, and we also go through the metal detector and have our things checked before we get back on. Dave, Mio, Steph and I started walking into Kobe and a few other people joined us as well. We were all a little lost at first, trying to find maps and guessing which way the downtown was. It is really hard to travel like that with more than about 4 people and we kept trying to split off from the bigger group but they didn’t know where they were going so they followed us into town. We walked about a mile or two into the downtown area. Kobe was absolutely beautiful. It looked really industrial around the port area but once we walked into the city there were trees and a beautiful park and all the buildings and streets looked really clean. We walked along a park that had fountains and streams on the sidewalk and apparently was part of the earthquake memorial. There was a huge earthquake in Kobe in 1995, which basically flattened the city, and since then they have rebuilt almost everything. We made it to a CitiBank and everyone went in to take out Yen from the ATM. Japan is definitely the easiest country to find ATMs and use credit cards in of all the places we’ll visit so we took out Yen for our time there as well as more to exchange for the currency in other countries. Once we all had cash we decided to wander and find a place to eat. Most of the sings are in Japanese but there was a fair amount of English and a lot of the restaurants also have pictures of the food. Most places actually have plastic imitations of each dish in the windows which was nice for anytime we couldn’t communicate, and instead we just pointed out what we wanted. My friend Mio was actually born in Japan, lived there until she was three, and is fluent in Japanese. She helped us figure out our way around town and we decided to go into a huge mall to find lunch. The mall entrance was huge and there must have been hundreds of stores and restaurants, there were also two levels that went underground. The stores were American looking (there was even a totally American Gap), but they had clothes and things that were more Japanese style. The girls there are extremely trendy and a lot of the outfits were short skirts or shorts with really high boots and eccentric accessories. We walked into the mall pretty much overwhelmed and then went down a floor to find food. There were around 30 restaurants and we walked through looking at all of the plastic food in the windows to decide what we wanted to eat. It was nice having Mio with us because she could tell us what the meals consisted of. We finally split into smaller groups and decided on a little place that had noodle bowls and tempura. I was really excited to have authentic Japanese food and interested to see how different it was from what we have at home. The waitress spoke no English so Mio ordered for us. I had vegetable tempura with miso soup and it came in an obento box (we learned that basically means “lunch box” in Japanese). The food was delicious, there were a few little things that I didn’t recognize but I tried anyway and some were great but a few were really hard to swallow. After our meal, which we paid for in Yen (the conversion is pretty easy, about 116 yen to one dollar, so 1000 Yen is a little under 10 dollars), Steph and I split off to shop around and head back to the ship. We walked into a few stores but decided that things were somewhat expensive and we should save some money for cheaper countries later on. We bought some Japanese candy and snacks to try and headed out to find a cab. We ran into so many SAS kids, who are easy to pick out because there were not many white people in Kobe. We walked up to a cab and he opened the back left door (they do this from inside with a lever, so the passenger doesn’t open or close the door), and we asked him to take us to the Port of Kobe. He was confused and we had our “green sheet” with us (they give us this from the ship for each country, it has common phrases, currency conversions, emergency #s and other info) and it had how to ask to go to the Port in Japanese so we showed him and he nodded his head. We got in the taxi and it took about ten minutes to get to the port building. We headed back onto the ship to shower and get ready to go to the baseball game in Osaka.
The baseball game was an SAS organized trip that Steph and I had both signed up for so we boarded the buses and left around 4pm. We got to Osaka at about 5:30 and walked up to the stadium. It was a dome shaped indoor stadium and none of us really knew what to expect. There were vendors selling hats, jerseys, and toys for each team. It was the Osaka Buffalos (who were ranked 5 out of 6 teams) and the number 2 ranked team, The Hawks. We were rooting for the underdog, especially since it was a home game. And a lot of us bought hats and shirts to wear in the game. We stood in line and went through the gates with our tickets, very much like we do at baseball games at home. They had warned us not to bring anything to drink because we wouldn’t be able to bring it in, but at the door they had people poor any drinks into cups before entering. Once we got inside we were in a hallway area that went all the way around the stadium in levels and had tons of places to buy food. There was even a KFC! And all of the places you could buy food you could also buy beer. We all got beers (large Asahi for 700 Yen) and had KFC chicken nuggets for dinner. The atmosphere and look of the stadium was very similar to home. But the food was very different, obviously (some people ordered fried balls of what they thought was a vegetable and it was squid). When we walked to our seats we were absolutely amazed at the inside of the stadium. It was a huge dome with level after level of seats and it was really clean, which I was noticing about all of Japan. There were a lot of Japanese people already in there and it was open seating so we all scrambled around to find seats together. We had been told that in Japan people do not stare or make eye contact and it was interesting because we were the only white people (there were about 200 or more of us there) there, being loud and very American compared to the quiet and more solemn looking Japanese, but we never felt like we were being stared at. A lot of SAS kids were really excited to be off the ship and able to drink as much as they wanted so there were a few kids who were a little embarrassing. We sat and watched the game begin, they had a dance team of about 12 fifteen or sixteen-year-old girls dancing on the field. Their dancing was similar to American dance teams except that their outfits were loose shirts and long shorts, a lot less sexual than dance outfits in the US. After the first few plays I went to find Conor (a friend of mine on the trip who went to Sacred Heart) and we had planned on meeting Megan (another friend from SHP who was in Japan at the time) outside the stadium. We went outside to wait for her and found out later that she had strep throat and had to go home early but couldn’t get a hold of us. After waiting for a while we went back into the game. Conor and I had to ask some people which entrance was the main one and we found out how hard it was to communicate. But we learned how to say “Do you speak English?” in Japanese which is (or sounds like, I’m sure I’m not spelling this right) “iego oh hana shumasi ka?” A lot of the people we asked knew a small amount of English and we were able to get some information from them. We got into the habit of saying “Arigato” after everything, and our tour guide on the way to the stadium told us that Thank You in the dialect of the Osaka area was “Oh-kee-nee”. Steph and I said “oh-kee-nee” to the people who we bought food from and they were surprised we knew it and usually laughed and smiled. Conor and I went back into the stadium and watched the rest of the game with our friends. The place was packed by that time and everyone was cheering, but the cheering was much more organized than it is in the US. Steph and two of our other friends decided to try and start the wave in the crowd. They walked down to the front of the sections and imitated the wave then one guy ran from Steph down past the other sections as people did the wave behind him. It was hilarious to watch the Japanese people getting excited and doing the wave with all of us. But they seemed to really like it and started talking to us and asking us about where we were from. The Buffalos lost the game but we all bought hats and shirts to bring home with us. There were more American players on the teams than I expected and the whole game experience wasn’t too entirely different from going to a Giant’s game. One thing that was very different were the toilets. I took pictures but it’s hard to upload since the internet is so slow here. Basically the bathrooms look the same when you walk in, but in the stalls there are these rectangular porcelain basins that are built into the floor. They look like toilets in the middle but you have to squat down over them to go to the bathroom. We thought it was pretty gross and realized how spoiled we are to have “western” style toilets. They also try to conserve paper so there are no paper towels to wipe your hands with after you wash them (luckily there was toilet paper!). Being able to compare such an American experience as a baseball game with the same thing in a foreign country was really worthwhile for me. I loved seeing how similar and different things were and I had such a fun night with my friends. We all got back on the buses and talked about the game on the ride back. We boarded the ship again and went to bed to get ready for all the trips we had planned for the next day.
Everyone woke up pretty early again, there were a lot of trips leaving by 8:30 and breakfast started at 7:30. I had breakfast (which is usually eggs, some kind of ham, yogurt, grits or oatmeal, cereal, and potatoes) and packed a bag for my overnight trip that was going to Nara and Kyoto. I said goodbye to my friends who were going other places and went to the Union to meet the group of people signed up for the trip. There were about 40 students going on the overnight and I knew a few girls but I met a lot of people I didn’t know. We had a group leader check us all in and then we got on a bus and headed for Nara. I didn’t have a map the entire time so I never really knew where we were going or how long it was going to take (if you have a nap of Japan check out where I went! I think we covered a lot of ground in only five days). Our tour guide was named Hirumi and she was a very soft-spoken sweet Japanese woman who gave us information about Kobe and the places we were going. The bus ride to the first stop: Horyu-ji (the oldest temple in Japan). It was raining a bit and we stopped at a little store to buy umbrellas for walking around. We entered the temple grounds and stopped to wash our hands around a big basin of water that had giant ladles for each person to use. You are supposed to use the ladle to scoop out some water and wash your hands and then hold it upright so that some water runs down the handle and is cleansed for the next person to use it.
The temple was beautiful, it wasn’t huge but it is the oldest temple in Japan. We were only allowed to enter two of the five buildings and we couldn’t take pictures inside but the artifacts and statues that we saw were really interesting. This temple was built in 607 by Prince Shotoku, and I was amazed to see a structure that was almost 1,500 years old. We were all still pretty tired and quiet because it was early. I went to a small store outside of the temple with my friend Sam (she’s from Spokane and goes to Seattle Pacific). We looked around and tried to find some Japanese snacks but we had to guess what things were since there was no English anywhere. We found a box of things called “Pretz” that looked like cracker sticks. And we found a vending machine with ice cream so we bought a package of what looked like bon-bons. They tasted just like bon-bons and we were so happy to have found somewhat familiar food. There are vending machines all over the place in Japan and they sell a ton of different stuff. They even have beer out of the vending machines! You can get an Asahi beer or other drinks straight from a vending machine and walk around the street drinking it. Everyone was really excited about that. We saw one machine that had beer in a liter can, it was huge! We ate our snacks on the bus on our way to lunch. Lunch was at a hotel in Nara and it was an obento box with a really interesting mix of things. There was salad, soup, pieces of turkey, a small sausage looking thing, a piece of fish, and cold vegetables that had been molded into shapes. We tried everything and it was pretty good but a little different. After lunch we walked up and down a little street in Nara looking at Japanese shops. This part of town was very small and quaint looking, much different from Kobe. The streets were literally 10 feet wide and the cars are all really small. Then we got back on the bus to leave for the next temple. We visited the largest temple in Japan, which is also the largest wooden structure in the world. It was really an amazing sight. The details carved into the wood were unbelievable and we lit incense and placed it into a pot filled with sand as we entered. There was a HUGE Buddha statue in the middle, it was so big that the size of the Buddha’s nostril was literally big enough to for a person to fit through. There was a huge pillar in the back of the temple that had a hole through it that was made to be the size of the Buddha’s nostril. People are supposed to crawl through it and then have eternal happiness. The hole was square-ish and about 4 feet long. I made it through! It looked impossible and I think it was only about two inches wider than my shoulders but I crawled in and pushed myself through and the pictures are great! A few of the guys in our group tried but couldn’t make it, and it was funny to see people get stuck especially because all of the tiny Japanese were laughing at them. After that we checked out souvenirs (small charms, post cards, little buddhas, etc), and then left for the next temple. This next stop was my favorite thing that we have done so far.
Hirumi told us that we were going to “Deer Park” and then to a temple that was past it. She said there were deer wandering everywhere and not to be distracted by them because we needed to go into the temple. We never thought that deer would actually come so close to people. When we walked in about 15 deer came right up to us, sniffing around for food. They were not afraid at all, but we were a little afraid of them. We took a ton of pictures with them and one girl bought crackers to feed them but they started biting her and she had to run away from them. It was really entertaining and a lot of the Japanese school children on fieldtrips were running form the deer and screaming. But when they bit it didn’t really hurt. The Japanese school children were adorable. There were huge groups of them in uniforms and they would walk by us and giggle and some tried to speak a bit of English. They would say “Hello there!” but they can’t really make the “L” sound so it was “Herro dare!” and we would say hi and wave and they got embarrassed and laughed. Sam and I are both pretty tall and she is really blonde so we stuck out like sore thumbs around all of the shorter dark haired Japanese. We walked through the temple after playing with the deer but it was raining and gross outside so we hurried back to the bus. There was one more short stop of the day at a temple that was more outdoor than the others. There were pathways through the woods lined with these concrete statues (hundreds of them) that had Japanese symbols imprinted on them. We wandered through the pathways taking pictures and then got on the bus for the hour and a half ride to Kyoto.
We arrived at our Ryokan (traditional Japanese Inn) and were assigned to rooms by fours. When we came up to the door we had to take off our shoes and were given indoor “slippers” that were like plastic padded slip on shoes. They held our shoes for us and whenever we left we had to give them a ticket and they would give us our shoes to walk out in. The women who worked at the hotel were dressed in kimonos with big bows tied on the backs of them. They led us to our rooms and let us get settled before dinner. The rooms were fairly small and had a little bathroom attached. Everything was very clean and there was a small table in the center with four chairs (padded pillows with backs) around it. We put our stuff down and then a woman came in to serve us tea. The tea was bitter but there were four small Buddha shaped white candy looking things on a tray. We thought that they might be sugar to sweeten the tea so we put them in but it didn’t taste much different. It was funny that there are so many things that needed to be explained to us since the culture is so entirely different. After the tea the women came in to help us put on our kimonos. In these kind of Inns you wear your kimono everywhere, and it’s considered like a lounging robe. The woman who came in to help us came over as we were sitting at the table and said “Big?” and looked at all of us (we figured out that she was trying to find sizes for us). She looked at me and I stood up and she laughed and said “Oh big, big!” (the woman was maybe 5 feet tall so I looked like Andre the Giant). We all laughed and she handed me a kimono that was longer than the other ones. We took off our wet jeans and clothes and put on the kimonos. The women tied big red pieces of fabric around us and into perfect bows around our waists. Hirumi told us that the kimonos must be worn with the left side over the right in front because the only time a person wears it with right over left is when they are dead. We took pictures in our kimonos and headed downstairs for dinner. We had some free time so we got beers from the vending machines and sat around talking with everyone. They called us for dinner and we went up to a room that was set up with tables on the floor. They had seats on the ground, which were really not easy to sit in. We all sat down and were served an amazing dinner of vegetables and Kobe beef. The beef was served in think pieces all laid out on a platter and there was a plate full of onions, noodles and some other vegetables. They started the cooking in a kind of heated pot that they put a mixture of sake, soy sauce, and something that looked like lard. They put in pieces of beef and vegetables and we waited for it to cook. We also had some soup and bowls of white rice. But there was no soy sauce on the tables and it’s actually considered rude to pour soy sauce on your white rice in Japan so we had to eat without it. We waited for the beef to cook and served ourselves with chopsticks. The Kobe beef was delicious but really rich and we ate so much we almost felt sick. Everyone ordered hot but I didn’t really like it. Sake is considered to be sacred so not finishing it is impolite. We finished our drinks after dinner and decided to go out to a club that someone knew about in Kyoto. Sam and I changed into jeans and got ready to go. The area we were staying in seemed like a neighborhood and I didn’t think there were clubs around but some of our friends had heard of one nearby so we went in a cab with two other girls and two guys to a club called “Fantasy”. The cab was about 800 Yen and he let us out in front of a small grocery store. The club was next door so we walked down the stairs where it seemed like it would be a dead end and found a guy at a table in front of the door. He told us that the cover was 2000 Yen (about $20 US dollars). We thought it was too expensive and we tried bargaining with him but he didn’t speak much English and he didn’t really understand. We finally got him to take about 10 dollars off the price for the 6 of us. He opened the door and the club was blasting techno house music that was pretty much all English. The whole club was probably 25 by 50 feet and there were about 12 Japanese people inside. One Japanese guy came up to Sam and I and tried to buy us drinks but we didn’t think it was the best idea. We stayed with the two SAS guys we were with and we all danced to the music and took pictures. Some German tourists came in and they spoke English really well so we talked to them about where they were traveling and where we were from. We got tired pretty fast after the long day of traveling so we decided to head back to the hotel.
When we came back to our rooms the table had been removed and our beds were made on the floor. The beds were thick pads covered in white sheets with down comforters on top of them. They were surprisingly comfortable and it was hard to get up at 7:30am for breakfast. Breakfast was two hard boiled eggs, pieces of ham, and sweet rolls with butter and jam. I tried to use a pay phone outside the hotel but I couldn’t figure out how to use it. I hadn’t talked to my parents since Hawaii and it was hard to make phone calls so that was frustrating. The pay phone was really dirty, but we carry Purell with us everywhere. We boarded the bus again to see the sights in Kyoto. We first went to the Golden Palace which is a beautiful pagoda surrounded by a small lake. It is entirely made of 24 carat gold. The gardens around this are were really beautiful and there were shops to get souvenirs as well. After this stop we went to the Shogun’s Palace where there were tons of school children on field trips. We had to take off our shoes before entering the palace and we walked through with an English description of what we were looking at. The heavy wooden floors that we walked on throughout the palace squeaked the entire way (it sounded like little rats squeaking and running because there were so many people). We found out that the Shogun had the floors made this way specifically because he was paranoid about being assassinated and he wanted to be able to hear where anyone was walking. After the tour we found some more Japanese snacks and a pay phone and I got to call home! I talked to James and my parents for about two minutes but it was good to check in and hear their voices, and surprisingly the connection was really clear. There were two more stops on the tour and we were going to return to the ship at 6pm but Sam and I wanted to go to Tokyo that night and the last train was leaving at 8pm. At the next stop we looked at the temple and then shopped around the small crowded streets of Kyoto. We bought some souvenirs and found a cab to take us to the train station. We got to the nearest train station and found a place to buy a ticket to Sannomia Station (the station in Kobe that was near the ship). We were really proud of ourselves for figuring out the trains because the system can seem really complicated. Luckily there are English versions on the ticket machines and the system is extremely organized. The train back to Sannomia was pretty short and cheap and we walked out of the station hoping to find an internet café nearby. Once we got across the street (this area is really busy and looks somewhat like a version of New York City), we saw some Japanese teenagers and Sam had a Japanese phrase book with the way to ask for internet café. We asked the boys if they knew where one was by pointing to the phrase in the book (written in Japanese) and they waved us to follow them. Japanese people look somewhat unfriendly but once you talk to them they are extremely friendly and helpful, and a lot of them spoke at least a little bit of English. The boys had us follow them about two blocks down the street and pointed to a sign that said “Comic Café”. We were confused at first but they said to go to the third floor so we went into the building and took the elevator upstairs. We would have never guessed that this place had internet access, because it looked almost like a library and there were computers in the back that you could pay 380 Yen to use for one hour. Sam and I sat down and emailed our friends and family and checked to see if any SAS kids had emailed us about where they were going to be in Tokyo. After that we took the subway from Sannomia to the Port (200 Yen and a really short ride). It felt so good to get back to the ship (which feels like home after only 3 weeks) and take a hot shower after the days of traveling. Steph came back around 7 and we all packed to go to Tokyo for two days. When we got to the train station we found out we had just missed the last train of the night. We weren’t too upset because we didn’t actually have a hotel or any plans once we got there. We decided to find some dinner and go out in Kobe instead. We wandered across the street from the train station and found a cute little restaurant (they were all pretty tiny). We went up to the door but the man who came out spoke absolutely no English and they didn’t have pictures on the menu so we weren’t sure about eating there. As we were deciding to leave a woman walked by in an apron and the man said something to her, then she looked at us and started to speak a little bit of English. We figured out that she worked at another restaurant and we asked if they had chicken teriyaki. She shook her head and smiled so we followed her down the street. She lead us around a corner and down some stairs that we would have never found on our own. The restaurant was perfect; it was quiet and small with only Japanese people inside sitting at a few tables and a bar. We all sat down and ordered chicken teriyaki, edemame, and some sushi. We asked her for a cocktail which she seemed to understand and she brought us something we think was called an “orange shochu” which is a fruity cocktail made with a stronger fruity kind of sake. The drinks were really good and the chicken was even better. It was whole pieces of chicken basically coated in teriyaki sauce with tinfoil wrapped around the ends to hold while we ate it. The salad, soup, and edemame were delicious as well. I think that was one of the best meals I’ve ever had (or it could have been all the traveling that made the meal so amazing). We were so happy that we found the woman walking on the street and got to wander into such a great restaurant. There were three Japanese women sitting across from us at another table and we started talking with them a little bit. They asked us where we had been and we told them about Nara and the deer park. Steph, Sam and I had all bought fuzzy antler headbands there as souvenirs and when we put them on the women started hysterically laughing. They took pictures of us and then we took pictures of them wearing them. They were really nice and so friendly and they were all from Kobe but they had actually been to Yosemite on vacation before. I felt just like my mom but I gave them my email and told them if they ever came back to California to send me an email. Steph, Sam and I headed back to the ship and decided we were way too tired to go out so we got to bed early ready for our trip to Tokyo in the morning.
We got to sleep in until about 9am and then got everyone ready to catch our 10:25 train to Tokyo. My friend Conor (another SAS student who I know from Sacred Heart) came with us also. We got to the station and figured out our tickets. One way it was about 14000 Yen or a bit less than 140 dollars. The train took about 3 and a half hours and we all sat together and played cards and slept. Their train system is incredible in Japan. Everything is always on time and very organized, and the trains themselves were very nice. There were three girls we knew from SAS in the front of our train car and they had a reservation at a hostel so we decided to follow them there and see if we could find a room. We hopped on the subway after getting off the train and got off at a station close to the hostel. Then we walked about a mile trying to find the place and asking people directions along the way. We were surprised at how many people didn’t speak any English in Tokyo compared to the luck we’d had in Nara, Kyoto, and Kobe. We got to the hostel which was called The Sakura Hotel. And found out there was an empty room and we could stay for 35 dollars a person. Steph stayed with the other girls and Sam, Conor and I got the other room. The rooms were two sets of big bunk beds with bars on them so nobody fell out (we thought that was funny) and not much space for anything else. We were happy for a place to stay especially because it was so cheap. Conor, Sam and I decided to go out and get some food so we wandered down the street for a while and saw a place that looked like it had a sign in English. When we got there we found out it didn’t but we went inside anyway and were so happy when the waiter handed us a menu all in English. It turned out to be a noodle bar with different kinds of noodle soups, wontons and dumplings. We decided what we wanted and put our money into a vending machine, then pressed the button for what we wanted to eat and it gave us a ticket that we gave to the chef. This food was unbelievably good. I had a giant bowl of noodles with pork wontons that tastes so good especially since we had missed breakfast. We finished eating and wanted to find some shopping so we walked around and eventually asked some teenagers where to go. One guy said to go to Hiroshuku (no idea how to spell that) so we hopped in a cab and told the driver to take us there. We had no idea that Tokyo is such a huge city and it was about a 35 dollar cab ride away. We got out in Hiroshuku and started walking around and realized it was a really nice area. We saw Gucci, Prada, and tons of designer stores as well as some other recognizable and more affordable stuff. Sam and I shopped while Conor went into a restaurant and waited for us. We headed back to our hotel after making a few purchases and when we got back there were a ton of other SAS kids staying there as well. Everyone showered and got ready to go out to a club that we had heard about in Ropongi (a few stops away on the subway). Conor, Sam and I went to get dinner and I saw an Italian flag down and across the street so we wandered into a Japanese-Italian restaurant. We ordered pizza because we were too lazy to try and figure out the menu. Conor and Sam had red wine and were a little surprised because it was served ice cold. The pizza was pretty good considering we were in Japan. After dinner we came back to the hostel to hang out and take pictures and then a huge group of us left for the subway to go to Ropongi. Two people had birthday that night (one 21st and one 22nd) so we were going out to celebrate. We went to a club called “Vanilla” with about 30 people and when we got there they almost didn’t let us in because some people were wearing sandals and there was a dress code. We managed to negotiate with the bouncers and they let us in because it was so much business. The club was awesome. We had to put our stuff into lockers and we couldn’t take pictures inside, which was weird. We all went upstairs to dance and get drinks and started meeting a lot of foreigners from different places who spoke English. The Japanese people in the club were staring at a lot of us (especially at Sam because she’s so blonde, and me because I had huge heels on so I was probably about 6’2’’). We hung out and danced with all of the semester at sea kids and there were a bunch of stages all around the club with Japanese girls dancing on them. At one point the girls pulled Sam, Corrine, Steph and I up on stage to dance with them. It was really crowded in the club so it was fun to be up on the stage and to be able to see everything and get out of the crowd. When Sam and I went to the bathroom the Japanese girls who had been dancing on stage came up to us and were saying “Brit-a-ney!” to her (meaning she looks like Britney Spears because she’s blonde and American haha). Then the girls literally grabbed our boobs and said “Real? Real?”, we had no idea what to do so we just started laughing. I guess we seemed a lot bigger than all of them. We decided to leave the club around 2:30am (which was early since it didn’t close until 5am). Conor, Sam and I got a cab and showed the driver our hotel keys which had the name and directions written on it. Unfortunately the cab drivers in Tokyo don’t really know the entire city and the language barrier didn’t help. He took us to the “Sakura Hostel” instead of the “Sakura Hotel” and that was a $50 cab ride in the wrong direction. We got out and realized where he had taken us and we were really mad but basically we couldn’t do anything about it. We had to pay him and get another cab with a driver knew where we wanted to go. We finally got back pretty late and had some pizza in the café that was in the bottom of our hotel. Everyone went to bed and Sam and I woke up early to get some shopping in before catching our 10:50 train.
We left the hotel at 8am and caught the subway to Shibuya which was a cheaper shopping are of Tokyo (we watched Lost in Translation when we got back on the ship and saw a lot of places that we actually went, including Shibuya). Sam and I walked around and tried to find places to shop but they didn’t really open until 11 so we decided to get some hamburgers for lunch. Japanese versions of hamburgers were really interesting. The burgers tasted okay, but the fries were great. We wandered into a Japanese music store and started listening to a few CDs. We found some music that we liked and bought CDs to bring home. A lot of the music has English lyrics incorporated into it and is really funny. We were thinking of getting a CD in every country to remember the trip by. We hopped on the subway to get to the train station but ended up barely missing our bullet train so we got on the next one an hour later. Once we got back to Shin-Kobe station we went to the tourism desk and found out how to get to the aquarium, which was in Suma (about 5 stops south on the train). It took us about 20 minutes to get to Suma and we got off the train and realized we were at the beach! It was really weird to see a beach since we had been in the city and the harbor the entire time. Sam and I ran down to the water and put our feet in and took some pictures. We walked down the beach for a while until we found the aquarium entrance and when we walked up the gates were closed. We were so upset but then someone told us to go to the side entrance and a woman let us buy tickets even though they were only open for another half hour. We walked through the aquarium and saw a huge tank with giant tuna, sharks, sea turtles, and other big fish in it. Then we went to see the dolphins, sea otters, and penguins. We couldn’t spend a ton of time there because we had to get back to Kobe but we had a lot of fun checking out the animals. We caught the train back to Sannomia station and decided to shop around in Kobe for an hour or so before going back for on-ship time. We went into a huge department store that had really cute clothes but the sizes were so tiny it was hard to find anything that would fit us. Sam got some boots that came in small, medium, and large. She barely fit into the large size (she’s a size 9) so obviously the store wasn’t made for American sizes. After shopping we grabbed McDonald’s cheeseburgers (which were better than in the US) and got on the portliner to get back to the ship.
Coming “home” to the ship was a great feeling after so much traveling. It was so much fun to see people and find out what they did on their own in Japan. We finally felt comfortable with the railway and subway system and then of course, we had to leave. But I couldn’t have asked for 5 better days in port. I experienced so many things and got to visit more places than I imagined. To really be immersed in Japanese culture was an extremely valuable experience for me. The people were unbelievably kind and helpful and their love for Americans was amazing. I’m so glad I got to see the mix of very traditional (Nara and Kyoto) versus very modern (Tokyo and Kobe) parts of the country. I would love to go back some day to spend more time exploring and getting to know the fantastic cities, shopping, food, and the people. I loved Japan! And I can’t wait for our next port. We have been diverted straight to Hong Kong because of a typhoon that we would have hit going to Qindao, China. But we will be able to fly to mainland China (my trip is to Bejing) and see all of the sights there. Hong Kong is supposed to be unreal, and we are docking in the best possible place. I’ll post pictures as soon as I can and get ready to hear all about China! Sorry this is sooo long but it’s serving as part of my journal as well so I wanted to get all the details down. I hope you enjoy it….I love your comments too! Hope all is well at home, I’ll fill you all in again in a few days!