The night before we got to Yokohama was the biggest swells we have had, and the ship was rocking super hard. No one slept because the rocking was throwing stuff around in our room and the drawers on everything were opening and slamming shut.
Day 1:
After a rough nights sleep, no sleep rather, we were up at 6am to watch the sunrise and watch the ship come into port in Yokohama. We got into the actual port around 9 am I think, but we didn't get off the ship until noon'ish. After the tsunami in Japan, cruise liners stopped coming to Japan for a time and Semester at Sea was the first "cruise liner" to come back after the tsunami so we are honored every time we return and a band was at the Yokohama port to welcome us in along with many spectators. I was with my friend Laura from Germany, and her Sister-in-law's sister (Fattiah) lives in Tokyo and let us stay with her so we took a train right away from Yokohama to Tokyo (about 30 min). When we got into Tokyo we were supposed to find a pay phone and call Fattiah so we were searching around and we asked a couple on the sidewalk where to find a public phone, and the guy looked at the number and just let us use his! That would probably never happen in the US, at least in a big city...
So Fattiah was on her way to get us and Laura and I were waiting at a corner in Ebicu, and a group of men walked by eye balling us (pretty much everybody in Japan stared at us because we are blonde and Laura is 6ft) and one of them said "Hi" and we said "hi" ensuing a lot of laughter from the group, then the guy turned back to us and asked "I take your picture?" So we agreed but made him get in the picture (I have a picture will post). This happened 3 times on the course of the trip! While we were coming into port we had been joking about doing peace signs in the pictures as the Japanese are notorious for the peace sign pictures, and sure enough the guy did the peace sign in our picture!
Fattiah came to get us and we went back to her apartment and then went out to "Harajuku" which is a part of town that is a shopping central and on Sunday's is known for the teenage girls getting dressed up in CRAZY outfits. Lucky for us it was Sunday, so we got to see some crazy outfits and LOTS of people.
That night we went to dinner at a restaurant Quentin Tarantino modeled a scene after in Kill Bill and we ate some fantastic Japanese food!
Day 2:
The second day was a little more hectic because we were trying to meet up with my roommate Christine at the train station and she was held up and didn't show up at the agreed time. Keep in mind no one has a phone, there is no texting, no calling, and in general it is hard and next to impossible to find free wifi in Japan so when you miss the meeting time it's really hard to re-connect.
We waited for an hour at the train station (she got there about 20 min after we left) and we went to find wifi (unsuccessfully) but we did go to the worlds highest grossing Starbucks at the Shibuya crossing (famous for the free-for-all crossing of people when the lights change). We eventually had to go back to Fattiah's apt to use the internet. Luckily Fattiah has a guest phone she let us use that Christine was eventually able to call us and meet up with us about 7 hours later than planned.
But during the in between time, Laura and I wandered around Tokyo, attempted to eat at a Sushi place. I say attempted because no one spoke English and we had no idea how to order, but we pointed to pictures, ate something.... and left ha! When we finally met up with Christine we went out for dinner in the night life district Roppungi, which Fattiah lived close to, and we were going to sing Karaoke or go to a bar but it was Monday and was a little slow.
To be continued....
No comments:
Post a Comment