Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto

Japan Day 1
Yokohama

We ported at Yokohama today at 1:30 pm, and everyone was pretty frustrated about how long it took to clear customs and get off the boat. I left the boat with Malia, Emily, Lauren, Karen, Holly, Beth, and another girl, I don’t remember her name but she was from New York. We had plans to have lunch and just explore Yokohama and then some of us had plans to go out to the bars later that night. We got off the boat and found China Town in Yokohama (we all thought it was hilarious that we spent our first day in Japan in China Town). We had a petty good meal but we did have a little bit of trouble communicating our orders to the waitress. I had noodles, and tried dim sum for the first time, it was really good but defiantly not weight watcher friendly. We walked around for a while and shopped in China Town, we found an adorable pastry shop where me and Karen split a tiny pastry. Then we found a hotel and me Malia, Lauren, Emily and Beth got ready to out. Our Hotel was really cool, right in China Town and because all 5 of us squeezed into one room it was only 1600 yen each (16 USD), the best thing about it was that it had free internet access. So we went out at about 8, went to about three bars. It wasn’t a totally crazy night, because it was wedensday night and not a lot of people were out but it was fun to drink legally! We met a lot of people from all around, some semester at sea people and also random travelers, one of our bartenders was from Nigeria. Anwyays we were all pretty tired and Malia and Lauren had a trip that they had to get up at 6 the next morning for, so we went back to the hotel at about 12 or 1.



The view from my room when we were porting in Yokohama



Lauren, Malia, and I in the terminal

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/Pimp-erata/p1010025.jpg

Lauren and Malia stepping off the ship



China Town!









Me, Emily, Malia, Karen, and Holly at lunch



Malia and Lauren at lunch



Me, Emily, Lauren and Malia at lunch



Lauren, Emily, Malia and Me



Pig Pastries!



At the hotel before we went out (Emily, Me, and Beth)



Me and Beth at the first bar



Malia and Emily



Lauren and Malia



Me and Malia



Me, Beth and the two SAS people we met along the way



Emily and Beth



Me Malia and Emily



Shots of Saki with the bar tender from Nigeria



Yokohama at night



Japan Day 2
Yokohama and Tokyo

Today we got off to a late start. We walked back to the ship form the hotel at about 6 am, then Emily wanted to go find an internet café with her laptop to do some banking (she didn’t trust putting her bank numbers on a public computer), we walked around FOREVER and didn’t find anything close so we went back to the ship. Also, this was my 5th day of having a horrible migraine, I tried everything and this headache would not go away, but when we got back to the ship it was really intense and I had to lay down. After much contemplation about what I should do -because when we are in port the clinic is only open from 7:30-8:00 am but you have the option of calling the Dr. on her call phone if you have an emergency, but they gave us a huge lecture at our pre port meeting about how you shouldn’t call the Dr. unless it is an absolute emergency because they are off trying to have fun in the port too. So I didn’t want to bother the Dr, but at the same time, I knew that the ship was leaving (we decided to meet the ship in Kobe a few days later) and this would be my last time to seek medical help in the next few days. So I finally went to the desk to ask if I could get a old of the doctors number and she literally walked right by me, it was a miracle! Anyways, she gave me some medicine, and I just hoped it would take effect on the way to Tokyo and it did. So me and Emily took a Cab to the Yokohama Rail Station to take a train to Tokyo, Let me tell you, the Japanese Rail System is ridiculously hard to understand!!! There are SO many people, and no English, and 1000 different trains…its insane! Anyway, we finally figured it out and got on the train. When we got off we walked around for a while trying to find the hotel Ibis where we were going to meet her friend Bitsy (yes that is her real name) and her friends. We got there and met her friends- my honest first impression of them was not good. They seemed like just a bunch of dumb blonde sorority girls who just wanted to party. What have I gotten myself into? But I stuck a smile on my face and said to myself YOU ARE IN TOKYO! Enjoy it! SO we got some dinner at this amazing place across the street from the hotel Ibis (we ended up eating there twice when we were in Tokyo- it was THAT good). Then we went out, I really didn’t feel like going out, and I didn’t even bring any clothes to go out in, but I had a lot of fun anyway. The bars we went to were pretty fun and I met a lot of nice people. The only club I remember that name of is one called Gas Panic hah. The six of us Me, Emily (East Coast), Berkley and Chelsea (San Diego), Kristen (Cal Poly), and Bitsy (East Coast) shared a hotel for the night and we only paid 20 bucks each- we broke the maximum of people, but it made it way cheap and I paid more to get a spot on a bed. We all decided to travel together the next morning to Kyoto to see some traditional tea gardens the next day.



The empirial palace at Tokyo





Tokyo police look like darth vador!



Pet Shop in Tokyo



Gambling Craze






Me, Emily and Chelsea


Bitsy, Berkley, and I



The best meal ever!

Japan Day 3
Kyoto

Today was an insane day! We all got up really early and went to the Tokyo Rail Station and after much confusion got on a train to Kyoto. It was about an hour and a half from Tokyo so we all relaxed or slept or listened to our I-pods. When we got off the train we were in the middle of a huge city. So we decide that it would be a good idea to pull out Emily’s Lonely Planet Japan guide to see where some god temples were. It was so hot and we were all sweaty and frustrated because although the guide listed lots of temples, it didn’t say how to get to them. Finally we realize that we need to go to the out skirts of North-west Kyoto to get out of the city and see some temples and tea gardens. The problem was the phrase “North-west outskirts” isn’t exactly great directions- what train do we take and where do we get off is more what we needed to know. So we asked about ten different people and they all told us different things. At this point the six of us are hot and sweaty so we decide to get on a train and get off on the sixth stop where a few people told us to go. But while we were on the train someone came up with the brilliant idea that we should find a hostel or hotel first so we could put our bags down….so they all thought we should get off on this random stop and just get a hotel. I thought that was kind of dumb and my back was doing fine I had no problem carrying my backpack around, but I am a team player so I went with it. So we get off, and Emily’s book said that there was a hostel near by, it looks like I pretty small town, and Emily seemed sure of where she was going. So we walk and walk and walk and walk. I would say we walked about two miles down this road until we realize that we are literally in the middle of know where. I mean no Americans, no English, no cars, we are literally in a tint village. Walking down the one way street we kept looking for a taxi but there were no cars for miles. It was kind of cool because it was a part of Japan we had never seen before and it was very REAL and cultural for sure. On the other hand it was extremely frustrating because we were supposed to be seeing temples and we ended up hot and sweaty and our feet throbbing. But it wait- it gets worse. So we are asking every person that we see if they know where any hotels are, and if they know the way back to the city. Finally a business man stopped on his motorcycle to help us, he said that he remembered that there was a hostel down the road and he pointed, but that was all that he knew. So we walked down that road, probably for about another mile. Then it started raining, and I don’t mean just a few drops, I mean a terrental downpour. That’s when I found out how wrong I was about the girls that I was with. They were all freaking troopers. We were lost, soaking wet, and aching but none of us were complaining, we were just enjoying seeing a really small village in Japan and trying to find this hostel. Finally we saw a sign that said “Youth Hostel” and we got really excited and started screaming and giving high fives, and we started hiking up the hill that the sign pointed to. On the way up we saw a young foreign couple and asked them if they were coming from the youth hostel and in very broken English they told us that the youth hostel had closed years ago.
At this point the group moral was very low. We don’t know what to do. We find a small “café”-pretty much someone’s house made into a café -because at this point we were starving. They don’t have a menu or any pictures to point at so we just pointed to the man eating next to us and “I eat what he eat” and after a while the lady understood and brought us all some ramen and rice. Outside of the resteraunt we asked another person where the nearest hotel was, this person actually spoke a tiny but of Englsih and told us that there were no hotels any where near the village and that we needed to go to Kyoto station. So long story short we end up getting to a more populated place and three of us (Chelsea, Kristen and I) get into a cab and tell it to go to Kyoto station, the other girls got another cab and we said to meet at Kyoto station.
Long Story short we ended up going to two different “Kyoto stations” and they sat waiting at one and we sat waiting at the other, after waiting at our Kyoto station for a while we decided that the three of us had to move on without the others and find a hotel. Then this man came up to us and asked us if we were American and we said that we were, he told us that he had traveled all around the United States and that any time Ameicans come to his town he tries to talk to them and pracitice his English- his English was actually really good. This guy turned out to be an ANGEL. We asked him if he knew where a hotel was, and he said that he knew of one that was about 15 minutes away walking. This 75 year old guy actually walked us about 5 blocks to the hotel, translated for us at the front desk and told us where the temples were. The girls I was with decided that the hotel was too expensive for them after we said goodbye to the really nice man, and that they wanted to just go back to the big city and get something cheaper, I really wanted to stay at the hotel that we were at, but if they couldn’t afford it then I wasn’t going to argue about it.
We ended up finding a great Rykon on Kyoto and having a great night, we went out to dinner and shopped around and I really ended up liking Chelsea and Kristen, the girls that I didn’t think I would like in the beginning. It was actually really great because we all got separated from the one person we knew really well in the group, I got separated from Emily, Chelsea got separated from Berkley (they came together), and Bitsy and Kirsten (roommates) got separated. So we all got a chance to become better friends- in my case with people that I would have never gotten to know if it wanst for this insane situation.



The Village where we got lost



Temple in the village



The infamous “one way street”



Asking for directions (Chelsea, Emily)



In the resteraunt after being soaked (me and Berkley)



Squat toilet in the resteraunt



The Angel!



Our Rykon







The tea set that came with our Rykon



Me!



Namaste



Japan Day 4
Kyoto and Hiroshima

Today was a really good day, after yesterday we all really wanted to not spend a lot of time traveling and getting lost and see a lot. Me, Chelsea and Kristen woke up at 5:30 am, showered, got breakfast and checked out by6:30. While we were still in the city of Kyoto we went to Amida Hall, this amazing Buhdist temple built in 517. While we were there we got to sit in on a real “service” with monks in robes chanting and praying, we wanted to be respectful and didn’t take any pictures of the monks. But it was VERY cool. After that we went to a STARBUCKS- they didn’t have the frap lights, but I got an Iced Latte and they even understood when I said “non fat milk” it was great. After getting caffeinated, we went to Kyoto Station (the real one in the city) and who do we find? None other than Berkley, Bitsy, and Emily! We all started screaming and hugging when we saw each other- it was a compelte miracle that we were there at the same time in the same place and that we found each other through the huge crowds.
So then we got on the train and went to the temples that we originally wanted to go to, and they were so worth getting lost for an entire day for. They were in the middle of these bright green rolling mountains with this beautiful river flowing though them, we walked through a remote village to get to this path that went right by the water, it was defiantly not the tourist trap that I thought they would be- I think we picked the right temples, these were defiantly all I wanted them to be and more. This was my favorite place in Japan- I wanted to stay the night there but know one else did, it was just so beautiful and peaceful, and they offered rides down the river in these little canoes and there was a little zoo where you could pay to see monkeys- we didn’t get to do either of these things, but I will come back! And I will stay in those mountains for weeks. Seriously. SO COOL. Anyway we got to see some awesome temples and hike around quite a bit, I was a little bummed that no one else wanted to stay there, but I know I will go back again. Oh and the village name so that I don’t forget was “Saga Arishiyama”. Before we left we got lunch, I got brave, I think I was inspired by the authentic-ness of the village and got Sashimi and some rice with mushrooms in it and miso soup….it was all so good….who knew that I liked raw fish? It was so tender mmmm.
Then it was off to Hiroshima. It took two hours on the train to get there, but it was worth it. We saw the Peace Memorial Museum which was really well done, really graphic and disturbing to a point that made me very uncomfortable. I did not take a lot of pictures in the museum or in Hiroshima in general because it wasn’t the type of thing that you want pictures of. The whole museum made me very sad and angry. Then we went to see the statues in the peace park, the peace arches, and the Childrens Peace Memorial. We also saw the dome, one of only three buildings that were standing after the bomb. It pisses me off that the United States still has nukes (and so does Russia and a bunch of other places too)- after Hiroshima why do we even have those? Havent we learned our lesson? Ugh. It was really hard to see some of the things in the museum but I think it was really well done, and they did a good job keeping it in the positive and dedicating it to peace and hope for the future. After Hiroshima we got back on the train for an hour and a half to get to Kobe, where we got back on the ship, a lot of the people went out last night but I needed a night to just chill and hang out and by the time we got back in was already 11ish.



Emily and I in the tea gardens



Shrine in a temple



tea gardens






Me and Berkley













My favorite place





Me Chelsea and Kristen




Berkley, Chelsea, and Kristen



Hiroshima





before



after



where the worlds nukes are, note the USA



Peace Park



Peace arches (the spell out peace in every language)