The Land of The Rising Sun

Konnichiwa Everyone!!!
I’m in JAPAN!!!! I’m having the most wonderful, fabulous, amazing time!!! I don’t even quite know where to start. But here goes:

We got into Yokohama, Japan on the 12th, and after spending an incredibly long time waiting for the ship to get cleared (all of our passports and paperwork needed to be checked out by official Japanese administrative people) My group of girlfriends and I headed to the Yokohama train station to catch a train to Tokyo (about 45 minutes away). We got to the station and after realizing that none of us speak Japanese nor are good at understanding maps, we met the most amazing man in the world! After he tried to point out the points on the map to me with his umbrella, and he realized I had no idea what he was talking about, he actually just offered to show us how to get there himself. He was on his was home (to Tokyo) so he was willing to take us under his wing and point us to the right transfer. It was so nice of him!! We spent the train ride telling him about our program and he told us about his own world travels as a free-lance journalist.

We got off the train in Asakura, a marketplace-type district of Tokyo where we saw a Shinto shrine and shopped and ate a crazy meal of Chinese food in Japan. We ordered food by pointing at pictures of it on the menu and we had to push a button to call the waitress. A lot of the food was very strange but after lots of crappy meals on the ship it tasted delicious (it was possibly delicious anyways). It was a really awesome day. The next day I went on an official SAS trip to Kamakura and Hakone. It was one of those everybody-get-on-a-tour-bus-and-follow-the-tour-guide-with-the-flag-trips, but it was surprisingly fun, the tour guide was really good and the sights were awesome. We saw another Shinto Shrine and a 46 ft high statue of Buddha. I ate sweet potato ice cream!!! We took a boat ride across a lake to see Mt. Fuji and then took a cable car up the second highest mountain in the area and we felt like we were on top of the world (this is again where I really ought to throw some pictures in but our sea-internet is too slow to upload pictures and I haven’t had time to find an internet café yet). I spent the evening back in Yokohama, wandering around with two friends. We went out to dinner at a Korean barbeque where there weren’t even pictures on the menu to point to and somehow managed to eat another delicious meal (we got to cook the meat ourselves!)

The next day I was back on the ship to sail from Yokohama to Kobe. I spent the day laying out by the teeny-tiny pool working on my tan – I mean journal/sketchbook. The crew served the small amount of people that chose to get back on the ship a fancy five course meal for dinner (it still tasted like ship food, it just took us longer to eat it) and it gave us an excuse to get dressed up and take pictures.

Today I went on another SAS tour, this time it was to Kyoto. Kyoto was the most incredible city, and if anyone out there is planning on going to Japan, you would have to make sure you see Kyoto. We went to a couple different temples, saw the golden palace, the old shogun’s palace, ate lunch in a beautiful park, and took part it lots of little superstitious rituals. It was so much fun. The last temple we saw was definitely one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, it was all traditional Japanese architecture surrounded by a rugged landscape of rocks and trees. The most amazing thing about the Japan is that the view actually does look like an old Hokusai print. There ARE mountains and fog and strange twisty trees and picturesque little houses. There’s also a lot of big grey industrial looking stuff, so its an interesting mixture.

I spent this past evening wandering around Kobe, and I’m planning on staying here tomorrow to sight-see and try to not pay for very much. Then its back on the ship and two days of classes and then we’re in China! Wow!


Other notes on Japan:

Its very quiet here
It is very clean here
Everybody drives on the wrong side of the road
There are a lot of crazy bright lights
There are a lot of ferris wheels
The food is good
The food is weird and gooey
Red bean sortof tastes like chocolate