Japan

Konichiwa!

Say it out loud—it’s a fun word! Now you know how to say hello in Japanese. So at this point in my travel log, we are finally in Japan! (In real life, I’m in Pennsylvania with my family—So hopefully I’ll see some of you Pennsylvanians in the next few days). We arrived in Kobe, Japan early on November 22, and were met with a very strict customs clearance process that took several hours for everyone to get through. Ana, Kimmi, Issy, and I, once cleared, headed out with no real plans for the day which is one of the best ways to experience a new country. That first day we ended up at a food court for a Japanese lunch of noodle soup and shrimp tempura, the mall, Starbucks, and a traditional Japanese bath house. That was quite the experience—two levels of showers, hot tubs, cold baths, warm pools, saunas, and steam rooms. Feeling refreshed, we continued our exploration of Kobe, found a nice restaurant for dinner, and did a little bit of shopping. It didn’t take us a full day to realize that this country was going to have the biggest language barrier. However, when we did find people who spoke some English, they proved to be extremely helpful and accommodating. If they didn’t know the answer to our question, they would go find someone else who could help us. One young man walked with us for about ten minutes to a certain restaurant because we asked him where we could find chicken teriyaki and he wanted to make sure that we found it.

We crashed early that night and were up the next morning to take a bus to Kyoto with a SAS group. It was a trip I had to do for my World Religions class and it took us to four different temples and gardens. At the first temple, Sanjusangen-do, we removed our shoes upon entrance, and followed the carpeted path through the doorway and into a long temple that was home to 1001 gold statues of the Buddhist deity—1000 smaller figures and 1 large Buddha in the center. The lights were dim and the smell of incense filled the air as we slowly made our way through the temple past some people praying, bowing, and lighting candles for a fee to honor Buddha. Next we went to the Ryoanji Temple and found ourselves surrounded by the beauty of fall. We followed a path along a pond under a canopy of red, orange, and yellow. I sat silently next to Zen rock garden, letting my mind wander and reflect in the peaceful setting. We wandered through yet another garden and ended at the Zen Buddhist Temple of the Golden Pavilion, which was absolutely stunning as it reflected the sunlight. From there, our goal was to find the train station and make our way to Tokyo that night, as all the hotels were booked in Kyoto due to the Full Moon Festival.

Upon finding the train tickets to be fairly expensive, we considered our next option—the overnight bus that left at 10:30pm. So, we walked around and grabbed some dinner before boarding. I managed to sleep for about 3-4 hours of the 8-hour trip and then got off at the Tokyo stop. Exhausted, we were happy to get cab, despite the outrageous price, to our hotel by 7am only to find that they wouldn’t allow early check-in. Great. By this point, we had been fully introduced to the weakness of the dollar against the yen so after our expensive dinners and cab rides, we decided to walk everywhere and eat McDonalds. I had a delicious egg sandwich and hash browns. We also had the pleasure of meeting the sweetest Japanese woman named June who ended up meeting us for karaoke that evening with her five year old granddaughter, Haruka! We had a wonderful time getting to know her and we were even able to go to her house the next day where we played with Haruka, while June made some mystery food, talked about her life and family, and showed us her bridal kimonos. It was quite a treat to be shown such hospitality by someone we had just met. That afternoon we walked around, shopped in the Harajuku district, and ate crepes. Stores and sidewalks are just crowded with people and it was quite overwhelming at times. But I guess this is to be expected in a city with a population of 13 million. We headed back to the Shibuya district where our hotel was located, took a lot of pictures walking and jumping in the world’s busiest pedestrian crosswalk, and skipped McDonald’s for dinner and had Japanese food instead. Later that evening we met up with some more SAS kids. On our last day there, we just wandered around in the morning, went to the Starbucks that overlooks the world’s busiest crosswalk and took more pictures. We somehow managed to then figure out the metro system to get back to the ship in Yokohama (the ship had sailed from Kobe to Yokohama while we traveled independently). I’m sure it’s very efficient once you figure it out, but boy, were we confused (partially due to our utter exhaustion as well). A couple times we scared ourselves into thinking we were on the wrong line, but we found some people who knew enough English to assure us that we were still headed to Yokohama. While savoring our last few hours on international ground, we made it to the port and waited in line to board the ship. This was goodbye foreign travel and hello USA!

Not ready for this to be over,

Heather