Grab a cup of coffee, readers, this is going to be a doozy! :)
First, let me start by saying that Japan was amazing. It was so incredibly great and I loved everything about it. EVERYTHING! It was clean and wonderful and the people had such great hospitality that it rivaled some of the friendliest people in the south! It was great. Now, I’ll tell you what I did for the last week or so.
You all know that we survived the storm and I spent the first day in Yokohama on duty… It was really nice to have a day to recharge (being on the ship is even challenging for super extroverts like me), and to get my brain to stop rattling around in my head from the rocky trip the night before. What I may have neglected to tell you was that Japan threw us quite the welcome party, marching band included. Rumor on the ship is that the MV Explorer was the first international ship to return to Japan after the devastating earthquake, and now, each time we port, we get (literally) fanfare. It was awesome. So I recharged on the first day and then on day two in Yokohama, I was recharged, ready to be on land, and super pumped for all the plans we had!
Mount Fugi in the distance
Pulling into port – note the marching band, flag twirlers, and fanfare!
(Sorry it’s blurry – I took it quick before I ran down to work!)
On Monday, I met some of the RDs for breakfast. We headed out to explore Yokohama in the morning, and had plans to meet up with the rest of the group in Tokyo at 2:00pm. We decided, at the suggestion of my very wise and awesome bff Megan, to go to the cup ‘o noodles museum. As Megan put in the journal she made me, Yokohama is the birthplace of cup o’ noodles. This dude (who’s name I can’t remember) saw that people were hungry and needed nutritious and cheap food, and invented them (the US, a few years later gave him the idea to put it in a cup). He cooked noodles, freeze dried them, freeze dried ingredients and then watched them recook into a delicious meal when he added boiling water. Yum. That man got me through a number of all-nighters in college! So the museum was great. Rachel, Jason, Kelly, and I saw all the different packaging and watched a movie about the invention in Japanese (it was funny to try to figure out what they were saying), and explored all over this museum. It was pretty cool. The coolest part was that we made our very own personalized cup o’ noodles (see photos below). I decorated mine with a tribute to my bff (and our college days), and then we got to put the noodles in, add our own ingredient combo, watch as they sealed and shrink wrapped in, and then put it in a bubble purse so it was protected. We have a month to eat it. We’re going to have a noodle party one night on the ship! Mine sounded great at the time (the amount of choices were kind of overwhelming) – I got shrimp, crab, green beans, and corn with the traditional cup of noodle flavoring. LOL I was going to make one and mail it to Megan, but I likely won’t mail another package home until Singapore and was scared it wouldn’t make it to her in time to enjoy it… So I’ll buy her one at Walmart when I get home and fill it with hot water and love. :)
After the museum, we headed to Tokyo! The rail system in Japan is incredibly easy to navigate. Everything is so clean here! We got to Tokyo and I couldn’t believe how clean it was. It was truly impressive that in a city with that many people there is almost no trash on the streets, everything is sparkly, and it’s just impressive! We met the rest of the group at Shibuya crossing. This is like the Tokyo version of Times Square. They say 100,000 people go through this intersection EVERY HOUR. It was insane and as soon as I got there, I panicked that we wouldn’t find the rest of the group.. but (as luck would have it) Americans are VERY easy to spot in Japan and we quickly found our friends, and a handful of students. We shopped a little in Shibuya, and then went to Shinagwa to check into our hostel, and meet back up with the group (we separated again after we realized how hard it was to please 11 people who are attempting to travel together) :)
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After check in, we headed in for dinner and to search for karaoke. (In case I forgot to tell you, when the ship is sailing between two cities in the same country, you are allowed to choose to sail or travel overland and meet the ship. We were travelling by land). I had an absolutely delicious dinner of noodles with garlic pork. It seriously was swoon-worthy. SO GOOD. After dinner, we tried to find a karaoke bar that Time magazine recommended… STRIKE OUT! It was super expensive, EMPTY, and didn’t look like much fun – so we waited for the SASers that were meeting us there and headed back to Shanagwa to Craig and Kevin’s hotel which had a karaoke bar in it. In this bar (and many in Tokyo), you rented a room with your friends and sang your heart out. I couldn’t be convinced to sing (even though they had an Eminem medley that surely would’ve impressed my new coworkers had I attempted) but everyone had a blast. It was like a personal concert. I promised I wouldn’t post the video I took, but it’s HILARIOUS and will haunt someone for years to come! HAHA!
Our hostel was very cute and cozy. We slept on mats on the floor (comfier than it sounds) and in a very traditional way, needed to take our shoes off at the door and change to house slippers to walk through the house. In the bathroom they had rubber bath slippers (so we wouldn’t slip in our comfy house slippers). The woman working was very sweet. When I got back from karaoke, my roomies who had gotten home before me, set up my very comfy bed. We had a mattress that looked like a “flip-and-sleep” ;), then a thick pillow top, then a sheet, another sheet, a comforter, and a blanket. Let me tell you something, if the ship was disembarking in the US AND/OR it wasn’t so heavy, I would’ve bought a comforter set in Japan! So warm, so thick, so comfy! It was great. I loved it. Sweet little hostel.
On Tuesday we explored more of Tokyo. We went to the Imperial Palace and walked around the grounds.
Photos from the palace.
Then we went to Sunshine City to try to find an ice cream place that has awesome flavors like beef tongue, etc.. but it was closed for winter (we were very devastated). Sunshine city was nice. There was a huge mall, and outside there were stores along a pedestrian mall… The high-rises literally have stores/food on the first 6 floors. It was cool to see the advertising but a lot of places when we were looking for food and stuff we forgot to look up! A nice shopkeeper led us to a restaurant where we had a delicious sushi lunch. I learned that when food is in front of me on a conveyor belt, and I just grab what I want, that it is VERY easy to overeat. The sushi was delicious. I had twice as many plates as the others but it was GREAT.
Sidebar: At our preport lecture we learned some Japanese phrases from a student who is fluent in both. She also taught us some customs and manners. O-haiyo (pronounced Ohio) means good morning, arigatoo means thank you, Kon nichi wa means good day. She said that it is considered very polite to say “Go-chisoo sama deshita“ after you have eaten, especially in someone’s home. It means “Thank you for feeding me” – My FAVORITE thing about traveling with Kevin was that he would say this to every waiter or waitress we had and it ALWAYS made them so incredibly happy. As the rest of us were saying “arigato”, he took it to the next level of niceness. I want to be like Kevin when I grow up.
Okay back to Sunshine City – shopping there was everywhere but they also had really interesting arcades. There were (what looked like) hundreds of crane games with the most interesting prizes… tissue box covers, fake fish, ritz crackers. And the place was packed with… ADULTS! There were kids too of course but mostly adults (with no children). I tried to win a fake fish but those things are rigged. The technology of the games were cool. They do a lot with konnect or kinnex or whatever that software is that shows video games your body movement. In the photos you can see where they covered my and Craig’s faces with a cartoon face. Hilarious.
I forgot about karaoke! I also did that in Japan (after a sushi dinner!)
ReplyDeleteI loved the lack of trash in Japan. I wish people would do that here.