More Japan Pictures

Elder man that showed us the places above, and our cook with the bandanna that gave us free chop sticks

Pictures!

Tokyo

Friends in Tokyo

How we ordered our food 

coolest sushi place ever!

food slides right to you

more friends we made

place where no one spoke english

Arriving at Mt. Fjui

Hotel room at Fuji

Hiking 

Floor tables

Night bus

ark where we stayed to catch our bus

School kids in Nara

Buddha 

Candle for Ryan

Friendly deer in Nara

Japan days 3,4,and 5

For breakfast we found food on the street to eat because breakfast didn’t really exist in the area we were, so I ate spring rolls to start my day and off to Mt. Fuji we went. The place we stayed at was called Fujikawaguchiko, and there was snow everywhere! During the day we hiked up a small mountain and soaked in the view of the small town with Mt. Fuji in the background. I decided to jump in the snow at the top and ended up falling because it was much deeper than expected. I ended up falling in the snow up to my shins.  That night was extremely cold and it was hard to find a place to eat. The place we chose was wonderful though. There was a little platform with a small table and we sat on pillows. The table was just tall enough for us to fit our legs under. That night we slept in a hostel type place and it looked very traditional. The floors were bamboo strips and there was another tiny table in the center with pillows and free tea for us to drink. We had to set up are own beds which consisted of a thin padding, a feathered blanket, and a blanket to sleep under, and the pillows seemed to be made out of rice. Even though it was not the most comfortable nights sleep the view from the room was stunning. The window looked directly at Mt. Fuji. That night I tried my first bathhouse! This is a communal bathtub, separate rooms for each gender. I was odd to try out but definitely a fun experience. 

            Next stop… Mishima, another very small town that we stopped in to wait for our night bus. The town was filled with little parks and there were stream running thought the streets. We saw a lot of school kids in their uniforms and they loved to stare at us. That night we caught our sleeper bus to Osaka. The seats were actually very larger and reclined back farther than expected. Each seat came with a blanket and attached to the headrest was a cover type thing. You pull it down over your head and it looks like an astronaut helmet.  The bus arrived to Osaka at 6AM and we took a connecting train to Nara. There we went to Todai-ji temple, the largest wooden structure in the world housing the largest Buddha in Japan. It was absolutely amazing and took my breath away. Not to mention that the park was filled with deer that loved people. We were able to pet them and hug them and they would love it. Everywhere you looked there were deer, hundreds of them.  In the temple I lit a candle for my brother Ryan and his well being, I told Buddha I missed him and to keep him safe. When we left the temple we walked up a massive hill and into another temple to see the view of the city and it was beautiful. We had a clear day and it wasn’t unbearably cold. While up there we met an older man named Yoshi. He loved talking to us because he wanted to practice his English. He ended up taking us around, and showing us places that other wise we never would have seen.  He then took the three of us to lunch and paid for our meal! He also helped us find our train to Kobe and sent us off in the right direction. 

            Leaving Japan was very sad; their culture was so amazing. As the ship was pulling away they had a band playing and huge posters of hands waving us goodbye, although leaving was sad they made it fun. Although there were cars every where not a single one honked their horn, and even though there were hundreds of people in the trains and the stations, it was quite. Japanese tend to keep to themselves and I loved that. Not to mention that every single person was extremely friendly even if they couldn’t speak English. Instead of pointing to where a place was they would actually walk you there even if it was out of the way. 

Japan days 1 and 2

I traveled with two of my close friends around Japan with no plan. We hopped off the ship, grabbed a train and off to Tokyo we went. We ended up in Shibuya, it was absolutely incredible.  The streets were like nothing I have ever seen before. It was like Time Square on drugs.  The signs were flashier and brighter. It was night time, but looked like daytime with all the flashing lights. There was also music playing blasting out of almost every store.  Instead of the streets being filled with cars, they were filled with thousands of Japanese kids our age. It looked like a massive party out on the streets. After walking around for a while we stopped in to a restaurant. When you walked in there was a vending machine looking thing in the corner and what we had to do was insert money and chose our dinner.  It was harder than it sounds because everything was written in Japanese. So the three of us chose meals and out came a ticket that we then had to hand to the chef behind the counter. When we got our meals we actually had a slurping contest with a local sitting next to us (he didn't know it was a contest). It is good adequate to slurp your food, symbolizing that it tastes very good. Later we decide to do what the locals do and we went to karaoke. It is huge in japan! It was definitely not what I was expecting. They give your group your own small room, when a song starts the lights turn off and the walls become a crazy mural under the black light . Since we were Americans they were excited to give us a massive book filled with American songs. We spent an hour there and it was a blast! After singing our hearts out, we ran into a guy named Ray and his girlfriend chi. He was born in California but has been living in Japan for three years now. He showed us places that the locals loved and bought us dessert, which was super friendly. As the three of us were walking back to our hotel it started to snow! It was the perfect ending to our night.

            The hotels in Japan are also very different. Each person gets their own bed and slippers for your room. Not to mention that the beds came up to about your shins, very low to the ground. The day was amazing but then disaster struck. I got food poisoning. I was up from 5 to 8 losing my weight out of my mouth. It was awful but I did not let it slow me down. We went to the store in the morning got some crackers and were on our way. We ended up seeing Ray again and he was nice enough to walk us to the train station. On our way we actually ran into one of his friends. They decided to take us to lunch and it was amazing! The place was super high tech. It was a sushi place that when you sat down each person had an electronic menu and when you ordered, the sushi came out from the sliding wall in front of you and stopped at your seat. You then had to press an angry looking face and that sent the tray back to the kitchen. Even though I was sick there was no way I was going to miss out so I ordered some Sushi and loved every bite.  During that meal I would eat, throw it up, then order a little more. It was just too cool and too good not to keep trying the different kind of sushi they had. After lunch we got on another train, said goodbye to our new friends and was off to our next destination, Itabashi, the suburbs of Tokyo. No one spoke English there and almost everyone was on bikes. Attempting to talk with locals was a riot.  It is like a massive Pictionary game trying to guess what their hand movements meant.

            Japan is incredible and at this point I can not get enough.