Japan

Japan was such an adventure filled with beautiful scenery, amazing Japanese architecture (old and new) and such wonderful people.

After a long customs process to get our temperature checked, meet individually with a customs officer and receive our passport, I was finally off the ship in Kobe, Japan. Ryan and I set out to just explore most of Kobe the first day. We pretty much just walked and explored the big metropolitan city. I was on the search for an international atm which I never found. It was actually really really frustrating. After not finding an atm we went out to find some Kobe steak. It was so good especially since we got to watch the Japanese chef’s cook it over coals right in front of us. That night I headed to bed early because I had to get up at 5am the next morning.

The second day I woke up early early to catch a semester at sea trip to Hiroshima. It was such a long long bus ride but more than worth it once we got there. Our first stop was the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park where the explosion of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 occurred. We walked over the “T” shaped bridge that the B29 bomber’s target was. The bridge was subjected to an estimated blast pressure of seven tons per square meter-15 times greater than normal. Due to the pressure, the bridge snapped back and forth with the slab floor being up in the air. We saw ground zero of the explosion and the a-dome, which is the one building preserved from the explosion for the memorial today. When the building was hit, everyone in the building died instantly. However, some of the walls were still left standing because the blast came from almost directly above. We then went to the Hiroshima museum where I saw melted roof tiles, black rain dried to a wall, charred children’s clothing, a replica of the bomb itself and more. The a-bomb replica was surprisingly small…much smaller than I had anticipated. It’s just crazy to think that a bomb could do that much damage to an entire city in a matter of seconds. The museum was extremely intense but a good thing to see, and the peace memorial was a beautiful memorial to the 200,000 people killed during the explosion.

After the emotional memorial, we went to a historic Japanese garden known as Shukkei-En Garden. It was just a beautiful Japanese garden filled with Cherry Blossom trees, small wooden bridges, stepping stones across the still water and much more. Then we were off back to Kobe on another 5 hour bus ride, stopping for dinner on the way.

The third day I woke up really early again to head to the bullet train station bound for Tokyo. But first, I had to find an atm. Ryan and I wandered all over the downtown of Kobe at 5:30 in the morning trying to find a 24 hour atm. The whole downtown was deserted, but we eventually found one that accepted my card. After being so delighted and thanking God for that, we hopped on the 7:00am bullet train to Tokyo. It took us about 3 hours to get there. Once we got to Tokyo it was raining and pretty cold but that didn’t stop us from sightseeing. The first thing we did was go to the Tsukiji fish market. It was a Sunday so there weren’t too many fish marketers out, but we did get some great sushi there! After eating an assortment of yummy sushi we then went to the sony building. We just walked through it, and saw all the techy new gadgets, and the new high definition tv’s. I took this picture of this flat screened TV dad that I think you should get…but it was pretty pricey…haha. After the sony building we headed to Harajuku & Aoyama street which is the “trendy” street filled with bleach headed, crazy dressed teens roaming the streets. It’s too bad it was rainy though because we didn’t see too much of that. After grabbing a starbucks and meeting a fellow white guy living in Tokyo to research cave paintings…yea a little weird…we then went to the Imperial Palace, which is where the Tokugawa Shogunate ruled Japan. The palace is closed all but two days of the year so we weren’t there when it was open, but we walked around and took a few pictures. After the palace we headed to the National Tokyo Museum where we saw old historical Japanese art, kimonos, pottery and the best of all which was the Samurai armor, swords and military equipment. That stuff was pretty cool. The rest of the day, whatever was left of it, we explored some more of Tokyo, stopping at an ice restaurant/ bar in Roppongi where Samantha Brown on the travel channel has been! It was crazy…everything was made out of ice, including the glasses! It was so awesome. Before you went in they gave you these massive jackets because when you entered it was minus 5 degrees celsius. The walls, the tables, the seats….everything was ice. We only stayed there for about an hour because it was so so cold. After that we then took a night train to Kyoto.

The next morning we were in Kyoto, which is known as the historical Japan. After grabbing some breakfast from Mc-dees we went to the Kiyomizu-Dera Temple. It was built in 798 and is one of the most famous landmarks in Kyoto today. It isn’t just one temple but a multiple of large shrines all perched on the lush green hillside. It was so incredibly gorgeous! As we were exploring, prayer cards were hanging from the trees, men were ringing the bell, and the Japanese were drinking the holy water coming from the waterfall. After exploring the Temple, we went around the Gion Area. As we were walking down to the Gion Area we saw a few geisha’s on our way and took a couple pics. I think Ryan was a little scared of them. The Gion Area is lined with Japanese restaurants, and teahouses from the 17th century, many of which are exclusively for geisha entertainment. It was a beautiful, old street and a nice change from the high rises in Hiroshima, Kobe and Tokyo. I just liked it because it looked much like old Japan. We grabbed some lunch, which was a little different, then headed back on the train to Kobe. Once we got back to Kobe we got some sushi and headed back to the ship, but had a little trouble getting there. Everything is in Japanese and we asked a few people to help us out but we ended up getting on the wrong monorail train and kept going for about 30 min in the wrong direction. We were freaking out as we only had about 40 minutes to get back to the ship. This really nice Japanese business man went out of his way to help us out. He got on the right train with us, hopped in the taxi with us, paid for the taxi, and ran with us to the ship. We finally got back…on time. We were so happy and I will never forget that man. I still can’t believe that he went out of his way to help us out because he could see how worried we were by our faces. He was probably heading home from a long days’ work but decided to help a couple of lost American college students.

Japan was such a fun, exciting, exhausting country. I loved every minute of it, and now I am so sad that this is our last big port. We only have two ports left, and we are only in Hawaii for a few hours. We have 8 days on the ship until Hawaii and already the waters are a little rough. We also have two days of April 15^th. It’s really strange and I still don’t know why but today is April 15^th and tomorrow is the 15^th. Kinda Crazy. Anyways, I love you all so much, and I’ll be posting again…Love you!