Japan Day 4

            The next day I had an FDP, so I needed to get back to the ship early.  We headed to the docks where the ship and were there by about 7:30am.

            My FDP to the Kabuki Theater left around 10am, so I didn’t have time to do anything else that day.  We took public transportation (meaning the subway) all the way back to Tokyo where the theater had a Kabuki performance scheduled for that day.  I bought a boxed lunch outside the theater and headed into the theater.  It was very long.  During the first intermission I ate my lunch in the lobby.  But I just sat and waited during the second two intermissions.  The play was very interesting and was about feudal Japan, but it was also very difficult to stay awake during a four hour long play with 3 intermissions.

            After it was finished, Rosemary and I headed to Shibuya.  There is a famous crossing there that is extremely crowded and she wanted to get a picture of it at night.  It wasn’t quite dark yet when we got there, so we walked around for a little while.  We stopped in a music store so I could get a Japanese CD and at the Disney store. 

Afterwards we headed to dinner.  I think the food was called ‘okayama,’ but Google is not working on my computer right now, so I can’t be sure.  They brought us out bowls of uncooked food and then the waitress cooked it on the table in front of us.  It was really good, and the sauce they used was amazing!

Once we were finished eating, it had gotten dark enough that we could get a picture of the crossing in the dark.  We found a place where she could take a picture from up above before heading back to the station.  There was a station that was about a five minute walk from the dock, which I had not found the first time I went to the ship.  This time we found the right railway and station after looking around for a little while. 

It was raining in Yokohama when we arrived, so we had to walk through the rain for a little while before reaching the ship.  Once we arrived I called Matt and Liz to see what they had done that day.  We ended up watching an episode of Sherlock and planning the next day before heading to bed.

Japan Day 3

            The night bus dropped us off at Shinagawa station in Tokyo.  We immediately found the subway and took it to Harajuku.  We hadn’t known where we wanted to go first, and though a nice woman tried to help us, we didn’t know enough of each other’s language to communicate well enough and eventually went somewhere that sounded familiar from one of the preport meetings.  As we were told in preport, this is where all of the “hip youngsters” hung out.  I didn’t see many, though there was one guy who had green hair.  He looked pretty hip.  We walked around for a bit before finally stopping in a coffee shop for something to eat.

            We checked out the map outside the coffee shop and noticed that we had walked in the complete wrong direction and weren’t anywhere near Harajuku, so we started back.  Then we went the wrong direction again.  I don’t know why, but I don’t seem to be able to read maps in Japan at all.  I promise I am not usually this directionally challenged.  Eventually we got back to Harajuku.  It was a shopping street that was full of people, even though the shops weren’t all open yet.  We walked around looking in the windows of the shops before we found a giant shrine called Meiji Jingo. It was a very big shrine with large paths through the woods.  Inside we found a museum about the Red Cross and the Empress.  Since we couldn’t read much at the museum, we didn’t stay long before heading back to the subway and went to another stop.

            For lunch we stopped at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, also known as Kaiten sushi or a sushi-go-round.  This was definitely my favorite type of restaurant that I had been to in Japan.  They had a conveyor belt with sushi on it that circled the room.  Different types of sushi were placed on colored plates and the price was classified by the color of the plates.

            We had a few hours before we needed to get to the baseball stadium, so we headed to Edo Castle.  The gates were blocked, so we couldn’t get close enough to really see the castle, but there were some cherry blossom trees and a river that we could take some pictures of.  We walked around for a little while before taking the subway to the Tokyo Dome to buy tickets for the baseball game.

            Josh needed to get a phone card for an interview the next morning so we needed to find a phone store.  We asked a crossing guard where we could find a store and she said she would take us to one, which was about a 20 minute walk away.  Instead, a college student named Yuki introduced himself and said he would take us there so the crossing guard didn’t have to.  Yuki was planning to move to the US to study abroad in Engineering in the next couple of years.  He took us to the store and spoke to the people at the store for us.  It turned out we wouldn’t be able to get Josh’s phone to work, so he would have to just wait until we got back to the ship.

            Yuki said goodbye and we headed back to the Tokyo Dome.  The game was going to start soon.  Before the game started, we took turns getting something to eat from the stands.  I went to one place and ordered by pointing to a picture of something that looked good.  It turned out to be kimchi, which I think is actually Korean.  Joe said he hated it and it smelled terrible, but I didn’t think it was that bad.  The only thing that worried me was that I wasn’t sure what kind of meat came with the kimchi.  Whatever it was tasted pretty good.

            The game was between the home team, the Giants, and the visitors, the Dragons.  Baseball is huge in Japan.  The crowd makes up special cheers for their teams and everyone gets really excited about the game.  The home team won!

            After the game we headed back to the subway.  Our hostel was somewhere in Yokohama and it was about an hour and a half long subway ride to get there.  Then we got off at the wrong station and had to get back on.  Then we walked in the wrong direction for a while and then had to walk about.  Eventually we found it.

            It was probably around 11pm when we found Hostel A Silk Tree.  It was a pretty cool hostel.  I got my own room.  It was smaller than my ship cabin and basically just had a bed roll to sleep on.  The hostel had a rooftop garden that I really wanted to see, but it wasn’t open during the times I was there.  I went to bed pretty quickly since we had to be up early the next morning.

Japan Day 2

            Alexa, Liz, and I met for breakfast before heading out for the day.  We decided we wanted to visit Kyoto.  Liz and I wanted to see a place with lots of Cherry Blossoms and Alexa wanted to see a temple that had been used in the filming for Memoirs of a Geisha.  I haven’t seen that movie, so I can’t really say much else about that part…

            Anyway, we got on the train and headed towards Kyoto.  It was about an hour and a half long ride, but on the way we got to see a lot of Japan through the windows of the train!  When the train stopped and we got to Kyoto we went to the tourist station to get a map and then stepped out into the pouring rain.  I was the only one who had brought an umbrella and it was very small, so we went to look for umbrellas first.

            We spent most of the day walking around.  We stopped in several temples and shrines and at a vending machine that handed out hot drinks.  Mine was so hot I had to put it in my jacket pocket and not touch it for about five minutes until it cooled down.  At the preport meeting they had told us you can buy practically anything in a vending machine in Japan, even Smart Cars, but hot drinks was the most interesting thing that I was able to find.

            We stopped in a convenience store between shrines to buy some lunch.  Unfortunately, it’s rude in Japan to eat in public standing up and there were no benches around.  So we walked around with our boxed sushi lunches for a while.

            Liz and I were pretty much dying of hunger at this point and we still couldn’t find anywhere to eat…  So we walked into the woods and sat down by some trash cans to eat our lunch.  I am not sure if that was culturally insensitive or not, but I was really hungry.  Since it had taken us so long to find the temple that Alexa wanted to see, we didn’t have time to visit the Philosopher’s Path and instead we had to head back to the ship.

            I had to get back to the ship in time to pack my things and head our since I wasn’t planning to stay on the ship while it moved from Kobe to Yokohama.  The train ride was another hour and a half long.  When I got back to the ship I packed my things and headed out since I only had a few minutes before I was required to be off ship.

            I met Joe and Josh outside the ship.  We were planning to take an overnight bus to Tokyo and we would be there by morning, but first we stopped for dinner.  I had tempura this time!  I am not sure I ate anything in Japan I didn’t like.

            The overnight bus was fascinating.  It had foot rests, comfy chairs, blankets, and visors that went over your eyes to block out the light.  It was probably the most comfortable night’s sleep I will ever have on a bus ride…  Unless I go back some day and take another one.

Japan Day 1

            On the first day in Japan I woke up to watch us pull into port.  There was a boat sailing around that was spraying water at least 20 feet into the air.  I assumed it was welcoming us to port, but there is also the possibility that there was just a broken pipe that was going crazy.  Anyway, I met Alexa around 10:00 and got in line to get off the ship.  Neither of us had anything to do that day, so we decided just to walk around Kobe together.  The line for immigration was really long and we didn’t make it out until around 11:30 because they were taking down our fingerprints.  They had already taken our temperatures before we had gotten off of the ship, otherwise it probably would have taken a lot longer.

            We decided just to walk around.  We stopped for lunch before doing anything else.  We walked down some stairs to a restaurant.  At first we weren’t sure if it was open because the sliding door was closed, but the waiter noticed us and invited us in.  Later we found out we were supposed to ring the doorbell.  At the table they had a call button that we were supposed to press when we wanted our order taken.  It was very loud, so we were a little afraid to press it.  I ordered some kind of noodle dish, which I think may have been ramen, and we got some edamame.

            After lunch we walked around the city.  A one of the weirder things that I had heard we needed to do while in Japan was to go to a convenience store.  So we stopped in one and bought some candy.  They had an entire no smoking section of the city, which I thought was interesting.  We tried to find the Old Foreign Settlement, but we couldn’t find it and ended up walking in circles.  Every time we saw a sign pointing to where it should have been it said it was about 50m away, but then it wasn’t there.  Eventually we gave up and went to see a shrine instead.  Shrines were everywhere and I am not sure what the one we visited was called because it was written in Hiragana.  It was getting a little rainy and it wasn’t too crowded, so we were able to look around and take lots of pictures, which I will be able to post in a couple of weeks when I am home.

            It was Cherry Blossom season, so there were lots of blooming trees around, which were really beautiful.  I have always loved Cherry Blossoms!

            I had made a plan to meet Liz and Matt back at the ship and then head out for dinner.  Along the way we stopped at a waffle stand, where we met Liz.  The stand said Belgian Waffles, but there was a long line of people, so we figured they must like them there.  Turns out they were pretty good, though I am not sure what made them Belgian.

            We stopped by the ship to get Matt and then we all headed out to dinner.  After searching for an ATM for about an hour (turns out there were only a few ATMs that would work for US cards), we found a place to eat in an underground restaurant mall.  Liz and I were the only ones who knew we liked sushi, but we all decided to go to a sushi place anyway.

            After dinner we went to the sweet shop section of the restaurant mall.  I don’t think anyone bought anything, but we tried some free samples and walked around staring at all the amazing food.  If it had been allowed back on the ship, I definitely would have bought an entire chocolate cake to eat.

            Afterwards we got some boba tea and then went back to the ship before watching Top Gear and going to bed.