Japan!

Japan was….well expensive. Of all the countries we have been to, Japan is the only one where prices were equal if not higher than the US. Also you don’t bargain for prices in Japan. But other than watching my money fly away I loved Japan. It is a country based on honor, if someone drops something that item is put on a slightly higher place so when the person comes back to look for it they can see it more easily. I saw several wallets on ledges and was told that someone had put it there rather than leave it on the ground. Also people there are very polite, even though we couldn’t understand a word they said because hardly anyone speaks English. The first day I had a trip from Kobe to Hiroshima. I was really expecting a lot of anti-Americanism, especially after Vietnam. Vietnam would tell us that the war was in the past and to let it go, yet they teach that Americans were horrible, which is understandable but I have never experienced it to quite that level. But Hiroshima was different, it was a very peaceful place, and while they stated the facts I never felt like they blamed America for their suffering once. It was amazing. Another cool thing that day was we took the bullet train both ways! The whole day was just a really cool experience. The second day I had an FDP to Nara, the first capital of Japan. We saw a lot of temples and shrines, and deer. There is a park there that the deer come up to the people and you can feed and pet the deer even though they are wild. So I got my fill of petting deer and feeding them. To tell you how polite of a society Japan is, even the deer are polite (at first) they actually bow to you! We discovered this when one of the guys in our group bent over a little and the deer bowed back, we then spent several minutes bowing back and forth to the deer, most likely to the amusement of all the locals. But when you have food in your hand you better watch out, the deer get a little nippy when they want food. The third day I spent on the ship in transit from Kobe to Yokohama, it was a nice relaxing day with absolutely no plans, I got to sleep in for the first time this semester and literally all of us on the ship just had a bumming it kind of day, we were all quite happy with our decision. Day four Julie and I decided to go into Tokoyo, we went to a district called Harajuku which is where the young people apparently go. It was a lot of shopping and fashion, most of which we couldn’t afford (I mean t-shirts were $40) and we spent the day looking at stuff and moaning about the price. We took the subway into the city and back because taxi’s are crazy expensive in Japan, most everybody uses the subway and trains and I have to admit the subway map is just a little daunting. The last day I had another FDP (I have a class about Japan’s modern history, basically means I had very little free time in Japan) where we went to Kichojiji which is a place where you can still see some of the tranquility of “Old Japan” and see all the modernization of “New Japan”. Even when we were in these huge malls and department stores everything was very peaceful. We had lunch in a huge park that again was peaceful. Peace seemed to be my overall experience in Japan, everything was quiet, even when we were on the subway and you couldn’t fit another person on the car nobody spoke, everyone was silent. But it was nice and calm and I loved Japan.