August 6, 1945

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We arrived in Japan on August 6, the 61st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Isn’t that ironic?

We were on the ship sailing for one day in between our stay in Korea, and our arrival in Japan. That day of sailing might have been the best ever. If you look on a map, you can see all of the tiny islands around Korea and Japan. We had to sail through all of those, and it was so pretty. So we saw land the entire day basically. That day, we also passed under the Kurushima Bridge, which was pretty cool and really pretty to see. The land around it was so pretty. That night, we anchored right in the middle of the ocean, and we could see all the lights and cities of Japan. We had to anchor because the ship didn’t want to pay money to be docked an extra night, since we would have arrived early.

Anyway, the next day we docked in Japan at exactly 8AM; however, the ship clearing process took FOREVER. I can’t imagine how long things would have taken with the normal amount of people of the ship (on this voyage, there are about 300 students, whereas normally there can be as many as 600). So, while we were waiting, the people of Kobe had a welcoming ceremony for us. They presented the captain and deans with gifts, and they had a drumming performance. It was really cool, and the Japanese people are really nice. After that we had our diplomatic briefing, which was a little boring. By this time, it was like 11 something, and the ship still hadn’t cleared. This port definitely took the longest, it was just ridiculous, we just wanted to get off and see Japan so everyone was getting pretty irritated. Finally, it cleared at about noon or so.

We met by the gangway, and headed out into the city. Well, by city I mean first the terminal, then the monorail TO the city, THEN the city. Oh, and I just realized that in all of my entries I just say “we” all the time. By “we”, I usually mean Jess and I, and two other girls we hang out with Ashley and Wylly (pronounced “Why-Lee”). Ashley is from Orange County, CA and Wylly is from Orlando, FL. They are so nice and so much fun to hang out with. In case you were wondering. Anyway, we were SO hungry, so we looked for a place to eat, and found Yoshinoya. Yoshinoya is a Japanese chain restaurant that was also in Singapore. There are some in the states. No sushi, just rice bowls with meat or something and miso soup. So, that was all right. Then, we went to Chinatown and walked around there for a little. It was a lot different from the other Chinatowns, less people and not as many shops. I like to go to the Chinatowns in all the countries to compare them, you know. Oh, and I found this Chinese dessert that I really like, these like sesame ball things. They are good. After that, we had wanted to go to a sake brewery. Sake is a rice wine really popular with the Japanese. So, we tried to find the right train, which was extremely hard. As with many of our other ports, no English whatsoever, which was surprising to us. And I know it might seem like I say this everywhere, but it’s really hard to get around in Japan. Korea turned out to be not so bad, so I think now the hardest places are officially (I can say officially because this is our last port) Beijing and Japan. We finally got on the right train and waited for our stop. Weeeelll, after a few stops we realized we were totally on the wrong train, so we got off, had no clue where we were, laughed about it for a couple minutes, got back ON the train going the other direction, and this train turned out to be the right one. So, we finally got to Nada, where are the Sake Breweries are. Walking there after getting off the train had to be one of the prettiest sights. It was a little trail, but you could see the huge mountains in the distance and then little houses and buildings, and trees, and…yeah. Japan is beautiful. So, we get to the sake place, and we tasted sake. Most of it was really good, there were strong ones that I wasn’t a fan off, but we all loved the frozen sake. The frozen sake had a plum-like taste and came in little jars. So, after we finished the tasting, we each bought a jar. That’s right, a jar of sake. They were really tiny, I saved it to bring home because it was so cute. It was just really refreshing because it’s so damn hot out!

After that, we took the train back to Kobe and looked for a place to eat. In Japan, we can eat and drink whatever we want. So, we looked for sushi because that’s what we’ve been dying for. We had it once in Singapore, and have pretty much been craving it ever since. So we found one of those little conveyor belt sushi bars, but three of us only had one plate because Wylly doesn’t eat seafood let alone raw seafood, so we felt bad making her sit there and stare at it all. Sooo, no big deal, we found an Udon Noodle place, and that was just delicious. I think now I can also officially say that the places with the best food were Vietnam and Japan. After that, we just explored around the rest of the city of Kobe. It’s a really pretty city, we came across some really cute houses and temples and all. Then we just headed back to the ship around 9PM because the next day three of us were waking up at like 5AM for a trip to Hiroshima.

Okay, this is super long and that was only the first day, so I’ll just make another entry for Japan because we have a lot planned.

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