nihon

Hi all! I'm back from my wonderful 5 days in Japan and we're already going to be in China tomorrow! I wish I had another day or two to recuperate from Japan before getting thrown into another foreign culture, but I've been having an amazing time. To update you on my life aboard the MV Explorer: I'm the executive producer of the student-run TV channel ("SeaTV") which is a lot of fun and keeps me blissfully busy, and I recently sang with my friend Jason in the talent show...it was nerve-racking but felt great. As far as Japan...well, it's probably best to start from the beginning here...

We docked into Japan around 8 am on Wednesday the 12th, but because Japan had such hard port regulations, I didn't get off the ship and into Yokohama until about 2:30. I traveled with a girl named Hannah from Hawaii, and a guy named Chris from Seattle. As soon as we were off the boat, we walked to the train station to exchange our Japan rail passes. Unfortunately, we went to the wrong train station and had to take a cab to the one that would exchange our passes. Yokohama looked like a really interesting city but we didn't get to see much of it.

The line in the Japan Rail office was really long with all the Semester at Sea students in there exchanging their tickets for passes, so we put in our information and went down to the basement of the train station to find some food. Japanese train stations are so gigantic, clean, and confusing. There's an American mentality that Japanese people all speak English; this is definitely false. However, there was a tourist information office that DID speak English, and they directed us to food. We walked into a Japanese restaurant and pointed at things on the menu, telling the waitress that Hannah and I were vegetarian with the help of Chris' Japanese phrasebook.

Once we finished eating, we went and got our rail passes and attempted to find a train that would take us to Tokyo. By this point, it was around 5 pm. Seems I have to pause for backstory now: I have a really good friend from Tokyo named Yumi Kawai, who I met at Woodlands. Yumi was in France while we were in Japan, but she hooked me up with her parents and two of her friends. We planned on being shown around by her friends all day Wednesday and Thursday and staying at her parent's house Thursday night. Her two friends names are Yukako and Tomoko, and I had originally told them that we would be in to Tokyo by noon. When I realized I wouldn't be getting off the boat in time, I called Yukako on a Japanese student's phone and told her I wouldn't be into Shibuya (the neighborhood we were supposed to meet her at) until 2:30. Once I got off the ship, I tried to call her several different times from different locations, but wasn't able to get ahold of her!

Anyway, we tried to find a train to Shibuya, which was difficult because we couldn't really read the train maps and we were having trouble finding an English speaker. We even boarded the wrong train at one point, realizing a moment before the doors closed that we needed to get off of it. Ultimately, we found the train we needed to be on with the help of a person who worked at the train station and we headed to Shibuya.

The train station at Shibuya is of note because there is a gigantic statue of a dog outside of it. The story of the statue is that there was a dog that used to follow his owner to work every day and wait for him until he came back. One day, the owner died, but the dog kept coming to the train every day to wait for him. The Japanese found the dog's loyalty so admirable that they erected a statue for him near the station. The Shibuya district is of note now because it's a really hot shopping district for young people.

It was pretty daunting getting off the train because there were people EVERYWHERE. We tried to find someone to direct us toward the public phones but, again, we couldn't find anyone who spoke English. We finally located the phones and I called Yukako, who sounded relieved to hear from me; it was 6 pm at that point and about 4 hours later than I told her we'd be meeting her. Yukako and Tomoko met us at the statue of the dog and showed us around Shibuya a bit. It was very colorful, very loud, and very full of people.

After about half an hour, Yumi's parents, Megumi and Takeshi, showed up, and the seven of us went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant. The Kawais are so nice and so kind; there wasn't an awkward moment the entire time we were with them and we had a great time together. The restaurant was the type where you take your shoes off and sit on the floor. Takeshi ordered us all a round of beers and sake and Megumi ordered all the food. Instead of an appetizer like bread, they served fried spaghetti, which was so good; I'd prefer it to popcorn in a movie theater if I had the choice. We had sushi, fried tofu, shrimp, tomato salad, and so much more for dinner. Then they ordered us some traditional Japanese desserts, which were yogurts and ice creams with fruit; delicious! All in all, it was such a fun and satisfying dinner.

We had plans to stay in a capsule hotel that night, and the Kawais were insistent that we give them our backpacks and anything we didn't need so we wouldn't have to carry them around the whole next day. We ended up giving them two of our backpacks, which was so nice of them. Then they hailed a cab for us and directed us toward the Roppongi district, which is one of the nightlife areas, and we parted ways for the night.

When we got to Roppongi, Chris, Hannah, and I went to a "manga cafe" (a super nice internet cafe that has isolated rooms you go into for privacy) to check our emails. Then we went down a floor to a capsule hotel that we had decided to stay at. Capsule hotels consist of little pods that you sleep in; it was way more comfortable than it sounds! Chris went across the street to a club called Gas Panic, where a bunch of Semester at Sea students were meeting. Hannah and I didn't really feel like going out to clubs, so we wandered around Roppongi just taking everything in. We went back to the capsule hotel around 1 am and enjoyed the public bath/spa in the women's area...it really helped my sore legs feel better. Thus ended our first night in Japan.

The next morning, I got up around 9 and showered and started getting ready. Then I woke Hannah up, and we packed up our stuff and met Chris out in the lobby of the capsule hotel. We grabbed a small breakfast from a coffee shop and navigated the frightening trains again to meet Megumi, Yukako, and Tomoko in front of the sumo-wrestling stadium. After getting lost around the station, we finally found Megumi, and we all decided that the sumo tournament was too expensive for something we didn't really care about seeing. Takeshi's office was across the street from where we were, so he met up with us and we all went to lunch at a soba noodle restaurant. Soba noodles are SO GOOD and really healthy! You dip them in soy sauce, and you have to slurp them in order to be like a Japanese person. We saw them making the noodles and it was really interesting.

After lunch, Takeshi took our one last big backpack to his office with him so we could walk around without it, and we parted ways with him for the afternoon. We all headed to the Edo Museum, which is a big museum dedicated to the history of Japan's Edo period. It was cool to see because we don't get much Japanese history in American museums! When we finished with that, we got into two cabs and went over to the Asukasa neighborhood to have tea and see a temple.

We had Japanese desserts/snacks in the tea restaurant and I honestly can't explain them. They were all dumpling things and beans and weird tasting...but good. The menu had a lot of English misspelling on it, which made Chris, Hannah, and I almost cry from laughing. (Such as: "Sweet syrup is sprinkled on the one that the block ice was plane" and "We will not eat two or more people in one dish. Hoochs such as beer and wine are not served.") When we finished tea, we went to a Buddhist temple, which was beautiful. I'll try and post pictures of it later, when I'm on a faster internet connection.

After the temple, the six of us took the train to Shinjuku to meet Takeshi for dinner. The Shinjuku station was connected to a department store and we went inside it to see what it was like. We entered the basement floor, which is apparently the food level of any Japanese department store. I have never in my life seen anything like that food level. Chris, Hannah, and I started calling it "Prada food" because the food (mostly delicacies and sweets) were laid out in glass display cases and sold in the same way that American department stores sell fine jewelry and expensive sunglasses. It was beyond cool and extremely mouth-watering. I ended up buying these cookies that Yumi always brings to me and sends me, which are a butter cookie shaped like a cigar. (They're absolutely delicious and I'm already almost through my box...although I have been sharing quite a bit.)

When we left the "Prada food", went outside and met Takeshi at a tempura restaurant, that the Kawais told us was very famous ("because it's so good!"). Yukako left us here because she had to go meet her boyfriend, which was a sad goodbye; she had been so helpful and kind the past two days! We exchanged emails, addresses, and phone numbers, and I encouraged her to come visit Chicago someday; we'll see if she takes me up on the offer. Tomoko was still with us, which was good because we needed people to do karaoke with!

The tempura restaurant was really amazing; we sat on the floor again with our shoes off, and they showed us the eel, squid, and fish we were going to eat before they cooked it. Hannah and I didn't really eat any of the fish, although I had some sushi and some shrimp. The Japanese seem to eat for hours, it's a miracle that they're all so thin. When we finally finished dinner, we did something that Chris, Hannah, and I had been craving...KARAOKE!

Tomoko was an amazing singer and it was such a treat to hear her sing. She's studying voice at a university in Japan, and her mother is an opera singer (her father is the head of a record label). She has such a clear and lovely voice; the Kawais pressured her into singing Amazing Grace at karaoke and it was beautiful. She and I sang the Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey duet "There Can Be Miracles" (from "The Prince of Egypt") and it made Takeshi tear up! The Kawais sang some Japanese songs for us, which was so cool to hear. It was so much fun.

When our hour+ of karaoke was finished, we said our goodbyes to Tomoko and got on the train with the Kawais. We only traveled about one stop on the train because their home is also in the Shinjuku district. They have a lovely apartment, and we stayed in an external room that I think people from the apartment building can rent when they have guests. They showed us pictures of Kyoto and told us good places to see, and then we exchanged gifts. We went to bed thoroughly satisfied with the time we had spent in Tokyo.

On Friday, we woke up early and went upstairs to have breakfast at 9. Megumi had prepared a gigantic traditional Japanese breakfast for us, complete with miso soup, vegetable rolls, salad, Japanese grapes and pears, and soymilk. It was probably the best breakfast I've ever had. (No offense Dad—your pancakes still own my heart!) After breakfast, Megumi drove us to the Shinjuku train station, parked her car, and got on a train with us to take us to Tokyo station. (She said we wouldn't have been able to navigate it by ourselves, and she was definitely right; it was the largest station I've ever been in and everything was in Japanese.) She helped us find a train to Kyoto and took us to the platform, waiting until our train pulled away. The Kawais were so great and beyond hospitable our entire stay and I feel so blessed that we were able to experience Tokyo with such great guides.

We got into Kyoto around 1 pm and spent about an hour and a half in the tourism office booking a hotel for the night. We had planned on renting bikes and seeing some temples that day, but it started raining, so we walked around the mall in the train station for a while and grabbed some lunch. Then we took a cab to our hotel, which was a traditional Japanese-style ryokan. It wasn't a very nice one, though, because we didn't want to spend much on a hotel we weren't going to be in for very long. However, it was good enough for us.

We started wandering around Kyoto, and it was around 6 pm by that point, so there wasn't too much to do. We popped into some vintage stores and did a little shopping, and I bought a crazy hat at a hat shop. Then we spent a really long time trying to find an international ATM. American ATM cards don't work in Japanese ATMs, and international ATMs are pretty much only in post offices and in Citibank. We couldn't find a Citibank and we couldn't find the international ATM that my Japan guidebook told us about, so we eventually gave up and decided we could only go to places that took credit cards.

Wandering around the neighborhood we were staying in, we found a hidden little bar that Hannah was dead-set on going into. The decor was really interesting and the halls were lit with neon lights, and we had to walk down a set of stairs to get to the bar. It was a really small bar with just a single bar and barstools, and it looked really nice, so we decided to have a drink there. We were the only people in there at first. The bartender had been bartending for 18 years and he was very proud of his profession, and spoke pretty decent English. There were a few drinks on the menu that he had created, and I tried one that was made with machi, the Japanese ceremonial green tea, which he said tasted like Kyoto to him. It was very delicious. After having a drink, we left the nice bar and kept looking for food.

We found a restaurant that looked good enough, so we went in and sat down. There were two other tables of people in there; a large table filled with about 20 Japanese businessmen and a table with about 10 friends who appeared to be in their early 30s. We ordered some food and some drinks and sat around having good political conversation for an hour or so. The businessmen cleared out and I'm not sure if it was because they finally were drunk enough or they had built up enough courage, but the table of friends next to us came over and started talking. They didn't really speak any English, but we were able to make conversation with my point-and-speak Japanese book and Chris' Japan phrasebook. They started buying us drinks; apparently the Japanese love treating foreigners. We had a really fun time with them and made some great new friends.

Saturday morning, we had to be out of our hotel by 10 am, and we had decided by that point that we were going to spend a second night in Kyoto. Chris and I went to ask if we could stay another night at the ryokan, but they were all booked up for the night, so they helped us get a room at a guesthouse near by. We all walked over to the guesthouse; it was owned by a woman and her husband and had several rooms that they rented out. It was a beautiful home, which she told us was around 130 years old. We had two large rooms (a bedroom and a living room area) and slept on the futon mats again. We put our bags down and cleaned up a bit and then rented bikes from the guesthouse. Then we began our adventure in Kyoto.

Hannah was feeling pretty under-the-weather, so we only got to one temple, but it was gorgeous. The gate in front of the temple is one of the three biggest in Japan and the view from the top of it was outstanding. It also had lovely gardens. After walking around the temple grounds for a couple of hours, we went in search of a bike/walking path called the "Philosopher's Path". It took us a while to find it, but it was one of the loveliest bike rides of my life. The path only took about 15 minutes on bike, and it wound near a little river and next to the mountains. We passed young couples on dates, happy families, senior citizens out for a walk—it was so nice. We stopped at a little shrine and lit some incense for the Buddha, and at the end of the path, we got tea flavored soft-serve ice cream that was a million times better than any American soft-serve.

We found a little Italian restaurant and had dinner there, all of us thoroughly sick of Japanese food. (It's so good and healthy but you can only eat noodles, rice, and seaweed a certain amount of times a day!) Then we biked back to our guesthouse because it was getting dark out, and turned our bikes in. After that, we hailed a cab and went to the Gion district (a great nighlife area and the home of geishas!) in search of geishas. Unfortunately, we didn't see any.

Our guesthouse had a curfew of 11, so we got a cab back to the neighborhood it was in and stocked up on Japanese snacks before we got back to our room. The three of us sat around on our futon mats and I fell asleep a bit after midnight...I was so wiped out from such a tiring day! I fell in love with Kyoto, though. At first I wasn't so impressed with it, but once we started biking around and we got near the mountains, it was the most lovely city I've ever seen. I'd adore living there someday.

The next morning, we had planned on getting up at 6 am and taking a train out to Hiroshima for a couple of hours. Hiroshima was 2 hours away from Kyoto by train so we had to be up and on a train by 8 am or 9 am. Unfortunately, Chris either turned his alarm off in his sleep or didn't set it right, but we didn't wake up until 8:30. So we had to cancel our plans to go to Hiroshima and left for Kobe to meet up with the ship.

Maybe it's because it was pretty grey out or we just weren't in the right areas of Kobe, but I didn't like it very much. We wandered around a bit and found a mall that we walked through, and then we decided to go ride the big ferris wheel in Kobe. There was a great view from it, which made me like Kobe a bit more. There was some sort of festival going on in the area around the ferris wheel, and we were able to see various troupes performing traditional Japanese dances. It was pretty cool but it started to rain.

We got back on the ship around 5 pm, exhausted and ready to be back to something familiar. I thought Japan was so cool—very colorful, technology-minded, loud, but strangely traditional and historical at the same time. It was much more foreign than I had expected it to be; I somehow always pictured Japan to be like America but just a little different. That's not the case at all. I'd like to live there sometime, but I don't think I could do it for more than a year. It's just a bit too much.

Tomorrow we get to China! We dock in Qingdao, and I'm there for a day before I go on my university-hosted trip to Beijing. I think my friend Kate and I are going to rent bikes and see some of the German architecture, and maybe go on a tour of the Tsing Tao brewery. I'm really excited for Beijing and seeing the Great Wall, as well as getting to meet some Chinese students. (Also, I'm going to rent a bike in Beijing as well...I can't wait!) After 3 days in Beijing, we take a plane to Hong Kong where I'll be for two days; some friends and I already have plans to celebrate my birthday (early) in Hong Kong, although we're not sure where exactly. It should be a really interesting trip and I can't wait to share my adventures with all of you. :D

Much love from the Sea of Japan,
Eliza