JAPAN

We arrived in Yokohama, Japan early on the morning of February 9. The tug boats hooked up around 6am and we reached port around 9am. After 11 long days at sea, seeing land and finally setting foot on solid ground was so exciting. In our pre-port meeting the night before arrival we were told that all of us would have to go through a thermal scan during immigration proceedings before entry was allowed. Everyone’s temperature was taken the night before and mine was slightly high. I spent the next 12 hours worried to death that I was going to fail the thermal scan and I wasn’t going to be allowed into Japan. I drank so much water and took Tylenol just in case. But I ended up being terribly worried for nothing; they scanned our finger, taking our fingerprint and temperature at the same time. I successfully passed through customs and entered Yokohama around noon. After clearing the ship terminal, we walked through downtown Yokohama in search of an ATM and some lunch. We first came to a tiny Post Office, where pretty much every SAS kid was trying to take out Yen from the ATM. The Post Office employees were so overwhelmed. A nice older lady tried to explain to us where we could find a bigger Post Office, and after staring at her blankly for several seconds she just waved her arms, motioning us to follow her. She took us several blocks until we reached the bigger Post Office. It was the first of many nice things the Japanese people did for us over the duration of our stay. I was absolutely amazed at how helpful and kind the people were. I was definitely not expecting such kindness; it was such a pleasant surprise. Wandering around in search for lunch, we happened on a tiny hole in the wall family restaurant. Outside, there was a large display window with everything they served and we had to go outside and point to what we wanted. The employees spoke absolutely no English, and it was my first experience with a complete language barrier. Luckily, we did have a basic Japanese language guide – but it was very basic. I got really good at saying the word “Arigato”, which means thank you. Other than that, it was basically restricted to hand gestures. Our lunch was great, definitely not like American Japanese food. It was a simple lunch of sticky white rice and tempura fish. We also had some sort of soup with real clam shells in the bottom. The cooks and waiters in the restaurant were so amazed with their American customers; it would be our first time of many when people looked at us like aliens. After lunch we found the train station and headed for Tokyo. The train station was incredibly difficult to understand – luckily one of guys in our group took the lead and basically handled the trains the entire trip. We had to take the Yokohama metro to the Yokohama train station, where we then had to purchase a rail ticket to the Tokyo Station. All of this was made more complicated by the fact nothing was in English, we had no idea how to pay for it, or when to get on and off the train. But somehow we managed to successfully arrive in Tokyo. Tokyo Station was my first taste of metropolitan Japan. The place was packed, everyone moving quickly and decisively, and dressed very fashionably – definitely upset by these Americans who didn’t know what they were doing. My favorite part was the small school children, dressed in their school uniforms easily maneuvering through the crowds and waiting patiently in front of their train stop. We took the Tokyo metro to the district near our hotel, in the northern part of Tokyo. Tokyo has districts, similar to the New York boroughs. Our hotel was in Asakusa, definitely a quieter part, away from the bustling section of downtown. We thought that our hotel would be near the train station, as it had indicated on our only English map. Unfortunately this was not the case and we spent the better part of the next two hours searching for our hotel. It did give us an opportunity to explore Tokyo a little, but we were all pretty tired of carrying our heavy backpacks by that point. Finally we stumbled upon our hotel. We picked this hotel because it was one of the only coed Capsule hotels in the city. Capsule hotels are very common for Japanese businessmen who travel and don’t wish to pay for an entire hotel room. A capsule is a tiny box like sleeping area, surrounded by other capsules just like it. Originally, I thought it was going to be coffin-like, and we would be pushed into the wall. It reminded me of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer hosted the Asian businessmen and he had them sleep in a huge dresser. But it turned out to just be a little square – really just big enough to lie down. But it was cheap and we all got to sleep in the same room. When entering any type of building in Japan, you are required to take off your shoes and store them away – and put on slippers. This was such a foreign phenomenon to me and it took some time to remember to do this everywhere we went. There were also separate slippers for the bathroom. The Japanese also have a very different idea on bathing. All hotels, Ryokans and some communities have what is called a “public bath.” You must wash yourself first out of a bucket, and then once you are clean enter a communal hot tub type thing. While I was a little freaked out by this, it was actually very relaxing. The next day we all woke up very early and explored a big market in Asakusa. There were street vendors selling small crafts and baked goods. There were beautiful kimonos for sale and every touristy keepsake imaginable. At the end of the market was a huge Shinto shrine, called the Sensoji Temple. It is one of the only temples in Tokyo to survive the constant bombings during World War II. Unfortunately, a lot of the culture and history of Tokyo was lost during the war. We then took the subway to downtown Tokyo, a district called Ginza. We got really confused in the train station about which stop to take and the nicest young girl came up to us, asking if we needed help. She explained everything in perfect English, and basically saved our morning. Once again, I was just blown away by how helpful the people were and wondered if I would have done the same in a similar situation in the US. Ginza is like Manhattan. Beautiful stores, huge billboards and anything you ever wanted in one location. Right outside of Ginza we walked to the Imperial Palace grounds, the Emperor’s home after the throne was moved from Kyoto. Unfortunately, the Palace was lost during WWII, but the grounds are still kept up today. It was really fun to walk around, and we could overlook of all Ginza, which was really beautiful. We ate an incredible lunch in the train station and then ventured to Uneo Park, a place we were told we had to visit. It reminded me sort of Central Park – there were school children everywhere. They would just stare at us, sometimes occasionally waving. One group of young kids waved at us, and when we waved back – they all started screaming. It was so funny because it just seemed so absurd. Later that evening we had dinner in Shibuya, the electronics district of Tokyo. I couldn’t take in all the lights, the fast paced lifestyle and the incredible energy the place seemed to exude. Shibuya is the home to the world’s biggest crosswalk – it went in five different directions. On Thursday, the 11th we woke up and had to be out of the capsules by 9am. We took the metro back to Tokyo Station where we bought bullet train tickets bound for Kyoto. The bullet train is one of the fastest trains in the world; we went the distance of a plane flight, in roughly 2.5 hours. We arrived in a really rainy Kyoto early in the afternoon and took a taxi to our hotel – a Ryokan. Ryokans are the traditional style Japanese sleeping quarters. We slept on the floor on straw mats, could only wear slippers and robes inside and we drank tea while kneeling once we arrived. It was an awesome cultural experience – and the floor beds were a lot more comfortable that the capsules. Kyoto had a completely different feel than Tokyo. It was more laid back, more family oriented and definitely more cultural. I kept thinking about “Kyoto at the Lake” in Galax, and it would make me laugh to myself. We walked through the rain to get lunch in the late afternoon, realizing afterwards that we weren’t going to be able to experience much sightseeing – we went back to the Ryokan and relaxed until dinner. Later, we had an incredible dinner at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It was definitely the best sushi I’ve ever had. The next day we enjoyed a great breakfast prepared by the family who owned the Ryokan and left for a day of sightseeing. Our first stop was the Nijo Castle, the home to a very important “Shogun” or feudal lord during the late seventeenth century. The Castle was perfectly intact and the walls were covered in beautiful murals which have been wonderfully preserved. We then walked through a fish market, where many Kyoto residents were buying their groceries for the day. We had more sushi and then attempted to visit the original Imperial Palace – the home to the Emperor before the throne was moved to Tokyo. Unfortunately, upon arriving to the Imperial Palace grounds, we learned that no visitors were allowed inside the gates unless we had permission. Discouraged, we decided to take taxis to our next location on the list. We then visited the Golden Pavilion. The Golden Pavilion, located right outside Kyoto sits on a lake and is completely constructed out of Gold leaf. It was the home to an important Shogun in the thirteenth century. It is a World Cultural Heritage site and besides Hiroshima, the highlight of my trip. Throughout the grounds, there were little statues that you could throw coins into for good luck – but the bowl for the coins was very small. I decided to give it a try with a 5 Yen piece, roughly the equivalence of three cents. I made it in the bowl on the first try! The Golden Pavilion is the epitome of Japanese architecture – it’s exactly what I had in my head when I thought of Japan. I absolutely loved witnessing something so magnificent. After our trip to the Golden pavilion, we took the bullet train back to meet the ship in Kobe, Japan. We had a wonderful dinner at a chic Kobe restaurant and had the best night’s sleep ever on the ship. Mckenzie and our friend Kayln woke up the next morning at 5 am to take the train to Hiroshima. During the planning stages of our trip to Japan, I told myself that I wouldn’t be disappointed if I didn’t make it Hiroshima – its okay, I’ll see it at some point, I said. As the time went on though, I realized how important this was to me and that I had to somehow figure out how to see it. We were nervous to plan out the trains by ourselves, worried that we would somehow have a major glitch or worse – not get back to the ship in time for departure. Luckily, everything worked out beautifully. We arrived at the Kobe train station, got our tickets and figured out the stops perfectly. In Hiroshima, we stumbled upon the tram system that took us straight to the Peace Memorial Park and near the location of the Bomb dome. I really can’t put into words what Hiroshima was like for me. It touched me in ways that I wasn’t expecting and from the time we arrived until the time we left, there was an eerie feeling of sadness that completely covered the place. First, we walked through the Atomic Bomb Dome Building. This is the only building that Hiroshima has left and not rebuilt – physical evidence of the horrors of the atomic bomb. It was located about 500 meters from the hypocenter of the bomb. The building is a complete shell; the only thing left intact is a tall dome. Just standing next to the building I was struck with a feeling of grief, a feeling that would only continue throughout the morning. We next moved on to several structures throughout Peace Memorial Park, each dedicated to a different group that suffered as a result of the bomb. One was in honor of the children who had to leave their families to work in labor services during the war, one for the family members of victims, one for the victims of radiation who died slow and painfully in the years afterwards. The most striking structure was one in honor of a young girl who died of leukemia ten years after. She folded paper swans everyday while she was dying and these origami swans have come to represent the goal of world peace. Now, schoolchildren throughout the world send paper swans to Hiroshima every year – there, they create beautiful murals with all the swans. Finally, right outside the Peace memorial museum, there is an eternal flame burning, which is said to burn until the last nuclear weapon is destroyed from the planet. The entire area is so touching, and beautifully thought out. We entered the museum and spent the next two hours reading and learning everything about the day of August 16, 1945. The museum really focused on personal stories from the day of the dropping, about schoolchildren and regular people going about their lives. What struck me the most was the realization that the people had no idea what was happening around to them, why their whole world was crashing in. Several times through the tour I was overcome by the sheer terror these people must have felt – I had a lump in my through the entire time. But I was also amazed at how the Peace Museum presented the information – not in a way to make the United States feel guilty, but in a positive light that we still have the opportunity to change the world and not let the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ever happen again. This optimistic attitude was the underlying approach throughout the museum, where we left with a feeling of empowerment and less with a feeling of regret and guilt. I will always be so grateful that I made the effort and got to Hiroshima during this trip. It broadened me in ways that I still don’t think I fully realize. After just visiting Pearl Harbor, witnessing the destructions of war in both locations is indescribable. It was such a gift to see both places consecutively.
I loved every minute that I spent in Japan. I enjoyed the people and I am amazed by the culture. Unlike China, Japan has been able to amass great economic wealth without the sacrifice of its cultural traditions. It has not fully succumbed to western ideals – I liked that a lot. While I do think the West has influenced a lot of society in the big districts of Tokyo, Japan still maintains a unique legacy that is missed by much of the globe. Everything is ridiculously expensive, the train system was so complex, I truly realized the struggles of a language barrier – but I wouldn’t change anything about those 5 days. In Global Studies we are constantly being taught the issues surrounding the “American complex.” As an American, we expect us to be treated differently, we expect people to speak English, to want to help us and to look at ourselves as above all others. Japan was my first lesson in the teachings of this theory. I found myself asking people “Do you speak English?” While many did speak some, it isn’t their responsibility to know English for me. As a visitor to their nation, it is my responsibility to follow their customs – not to be brushed aside as “the American” when I do something wrong. I was touched by how helpful people were, it made the trip so much more pleasant.
Surprisingly, I was really looking forward to getting back to the ship after Japan. I was so excited for areal shower, not living out of a backpack and a real pillow. We have only two days of class before our arrival in Shanghai, China. China will be a whirlwind, just as Japan was. I am looking forward to more opportunities to learn, to experience the culture and people and to broaden my perspective once again.