Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto

Konichiwa! I am writing from Japan as a very exhausted Morgan, so forgive me if this blog is a bit nonsensical. But I’ve been to 6 countries in the past month, so I think I have an excuse for being worn out. Japan was absolutely incredible; if I spoke the language I would move here in a heartbeat. Everything is clean and it’s so quiet! Of course there are the regular noises of daily life, but it’s practically silent at night and even the subway cars are quiet inside.

Our first port was Kobe. The first day, however, I went to Hiroshima. That was after waiting four hours for everyone to go through immigration. Japan was intense – we all had to get our temperature taken by walking past a video camera, kinda strange. Then we had face-to-face passport inspections outside the ship in a terminal. They took our photo and our fingerprints. Once you were off the ship you couldn’t get back on until everyone went through immigration. But my sea was called last anyways, and so I got through 20 minutes before my trip left. I went on the SAS trip just because none of my friends were planning on going to Hiroshima and I didn’t think logistically I could pull off getting there on my own the first day, not knowing the rail system and with limited time because of immigration. We took the bullet train, which was incredible; if I remember my numbers correctly it goes 280 miles per hour! And they’re so punctual – the schedule says it will come in at 3:21 and it does on the dot, with only a minute for everyone to get on and off as well. This was my first SAS trip that I’ve really regretted doing with SAS; I am so glad that I got to experience Hiroshima, but I have never been more embarrassed of my peers. They were just so incredibly disrespectful. I overheard conversations about how wasted they were going to get that night while we were walking through the memorials. Someone even said “Oh my god, why is it so quiet here?” Because some people are actually respecting the memories of the lives lost. But the experience of seeing Hiroshima more than made up for the idiots that are pervasive on this trip. The A-dome is the first thing you see when you pull up, a constant reminder of what happened August 6th, unchanged since that day. There are several memorials throughout the grounds; the land used to be overflowing with homes and shops, but it was absolutely demolished after the bomb, so they decided to keep it clear as a memorial park. There is a memorial mound that holds the cremated remains of 70,000 unidentified bodies; most of these were probably entire families that died together so no one was left to claim them. Draped around all the memorials are thousands of brightly colored paper cranes. Most of you probably know the story about the little girl, Sadako Sasaki, who was dying of cancer as a result of radiation poisoning; she thought that if she could make 1,000 origami cranes she would live, but she dies before she could finish. They’ve since become a symbol for the fight to rid the world of nuclear bombs. The main memorial is made up of three separate memorials that all line up in a row – in the background is the A-bomb dome, and then the flame that will not be extinguished until the last nuclear bomb is destroyed, and framing it all is an archway protecting the ledge containing the names of all the A-bomb victims. It is taken out once a year to add new names. The museum was shocking. We all got audio guides and everyone just walked around the museum for two hours in absolute silence, listening to all the stories. There was an entire wall with letters the mayor of Hiroshima sends any time a country tests or builds a nuclear weapon, and it was absolutely terrifying to see just how many there were. And how quickly you could spot one to the US. The hardest part, but most moving, was the individual stories about victims of the A-bomb. Most were stories of children, because at the time the government had a program where school kids were helping to demolish building near the dome to create fire lanes. Some children managed to make it home, but died because all medicine had been destroyed with their homes. Most stories were of parents searching schools and only finding bookbags or sandals. One school had taken bits of bones and wrapped them in scraps of calligraphy paper; one father took one home and treated it as his daughter, because he found nothing else. What I really appreciated about the museum was that there was no anti-American sentiment like there was at the Cu Chi tunnels. They just pleaded for peace.

The second day I went out with a friend and explored Kobe. There isn’t much to do in Kobe because it’s mostly a residential city, so we just ended up walking around the streets and looking through the mall. That was cool because we got to see all the Japanese fashions, although everything is so expensive hear that we couldn’t afford anything. We got a bite to eat and then I went back to the ship to pack. At 5 pm anyone not sailing on to Yokohama, including me, was kicked off the ship. My group traveling to Tokyo met up outside. We had a couple of hours until our bus left, so we walked around the city some more and then grabbed dinner. When we were waiting outside for our bus, these two guys in suits come up to us and start talking: “Wedding party! We happy! Hahaha! You welcome!” Unfortunately we had to catch the bus because that would have been a blast. They asked where we were from and then responded “Obama! YES WE CAN!” So funny. And they got our picture, so some newly-wed Japanese party has my picture in their wedding album now. We took an overnight bus to Tokyo. It was basically just a regular coach bus, but the seats reclined a little bit more than normal. I slept in one hour segments; either the lights would turn on and the bus driver would talk or I would have to change positions.

In the morning it dropped us off right outside Tokyo Disneyland at 7 am! We had some time to freshen up and then took the monorail to DisneySea. Gates weren’t until 8:30. And it was raining, which put a damper on things, but Disney spirit made up for it! It was so great because the Japanese are already so happy and polite when they serve you, even at 7-11 (yes, they are in Japan), so obviously Disney workers have to be even more chipper so it was pretty intense Disney spirit. It was also full out Christmas spirit. Now, normally I have a ban on Christmas music until December, but it was impossible to avoid in Japan. They LOVE Christmas; it’s not a religious holiday here, they just love the lights. It’s also a time for couples to exchange gifts – the guy is supposed to give a gift three times greater in value, I like that thinking! Even the Tower of Terror workers were overly happy, which kinda ruined the mood. Tower was way different than Disneyland – it had an Americana theme and the story was about some cursed Aztec statue, or at least that’s what I think since it was all in Japanese. Indiana Jones was almost identical though which was cool, and hearing him speak in Japanese was hysterical. I was in heaven though because they have a Little Mermaid section! I really wanted to meet Ariel, considering I would probably be the only other redhead she’d ever seen on the job haha, but there was a 45 minute wait. I did get to meet Prince Eric though! And we ran away together. Literally – after my friend took a picture with him he grabbed my hand and pulled me to another spot for our picture, and then he spun me around. The little girl inside me was swooning. We asked him where he was from, because he was white and had an American accent, and he goes all innocent, “I’m from here! Ariel and I live here.” We saw the Under the Sea show; so incredible! It felt very Asian because it was all acrobatics. Everyone was suspended in the air and they had puppets for the fish. Ariel sang in English but spoke in Japanese. The lines were super long, even with fastpasses, and I am not used to spending a full day at Disney so it was pretty intense for me. I thought it was great though that the entire day I only saw seven white people, and three were other SAS-ers and two were Ariel and Prince Eric. It was a long day – 12 hours at the park total – but so much fun. We got turned around a bit finding our hostel, but if you just stand on the street with a map looking lost, someone stops to help you so we found our way back. That night we just went out to eat, we were so exhausted. My friend and I split an order of assorted meat skewers; we ended up getting one skewer entirely of chicken skin, and one of chicken cartilage, which I tried but the entire time I was just imagining chewing on my nose, it was so gross. It felt so good to sleep in a bed that night, I was out so fast.

Our third day we explored the Asakura section of Tokyo where we were staying. We went to McDonald’s for breakfast since our hostel’s idea of breakfast was toast, and the Japanese idea is rice. We were really lucky with our timing, because there was a temple right down the road from our hostel that was having a huge festival celebration for the year of the rooster. It and the market around it were absolutely packed. The temple was an Ortori shrine dedicated to the rooster, and one of the best known in Japan. The big thing was street vendors selling lucky bamboo rakes decorated with symbols of good luck and fertility. They had this really neat fortune system at the temple, where you would take a can and shake a stick out that corresponded to a drawer. Inside the drawer were papers with your fortune on them; mine was horrible! It told me I had bought too many material possessions – too true after this trip – and that my house was going to burn down! If it’s a bad fortune you’re supposed to fold it up and tie it to this rack to give it away. I wanted to keep mine for a souvenir though, so luckily it had a caveat at the bottom that said as long as I believe in God I’m good to go, so I figure my house is safe. We also went to the 100 yen store, the equivalent of a dollar store. We spent way too much time there but it was awesome. You could find almost anything that was being sold on the street for cheaper. After that we navigated our way to Yokohama to get back to the ship. <;That night we went out for karaoke! Karaoke in Japan is different from the states – your group gets a private room, and it comes with an unlimited drinks package and you get huge phonebook size books of song options. It was so awesome. The environment seemed so much better to me – you didn’t have to sing in front of a bunch of strangers, everyone just belted along to every song and danced and had a blast. It was a good night.

Today we went and explored Yokohama. Ironically enough, we ended up in Chinatown, but it’s what this area is really known for and it was cool to explore. There was an entire store of panda merchandise. We went out for lunch at a Japanese restaurant where we got to sit on the floor, which was a cool experience. Before we headed back to the ship we got snacks to take back with us and I got one last thing of mochi, basically my new favorite dessert. After I got back on the ship and was settling in and getting stuff done, I had to go back outside for face-to-face inspection again. Now I’m actually having to start on homework since I have nine days at sea until Hawaii and I haven’t done anything this past month. So much to do, and so little motivation. I’m relieved though that I won’t have a huge blog to write every month though! This takes a lot of energy, especially since I’m keeping a separate journal as well that’s even longer. This really feels like the culmination of this trip; no one’s really counting Hawaii and Costa Rica as ports especially since they’re shorter and are surrounded by so many days at sea. I’m going to count on all of you to e-mail me and keep me entertained, or I may go out of my mind! We’re all prepared for the homesickness to really set in since we’re getting close to the end and we don’t have traveling to distract us. I miss you all!