Spring 2015 - Day 19 and 20: Japan
I woke up to a pitch black room and almost forgot that we were in Japan. I got ready quickly and went to meet everyone for breakfast. I had packed the night before so I was all ready to go as soon as we were able to.
I turned my phone on while I was at breakfast. I had gotten an international phone plan specifically for my Disney Professional Internship interviews later in February but my dad wanted to test it. It took a few minutes for my phone to connect but eventually it said I had service, I was connected to something called docomo and received a few free instructional text messages.
I called my dad and he didn't answer so then I tried my mom and she picked up! It worked fine from my end and sounded great. But the real test was whether or not they could call me. So we hung up and nothing happened for a while but then suddenly my phone was ringing! My dad said that he had to try three times before it went through. That makes me nervous for my interviews because I don't think they will try 3 times. But once he was through it worked great and I could hear him fine. Guess I will cross that bridge when I have to.
We got off the ship around 10:30. The morning was slow, we spent a lot of time just sitting in Jessi and Annie's room talking.
I learned that Jen has a DSLR camera and has absolutely no idea how to use it. She didn't even know the lens came off. She just got it for christmas when she asked for a camera. She prefers to use her little point and shoot. Oh Jen. She got some flack for that for a while.
They called us in seas to get off and go through immigration. I went with everyone else when they called the baltic sea even though I am the red sea. They didn't even notice.
We met up with Tori and Quinn, who were in a different sea and so got off before us, in the terminal. We were also joined by Irene. Irene is in my shipboard family and last night when we were discussing plans she said that she still didn't have any, so we invited her along with us. We didn't know that she had taken us up on our offer until she came up to us in the terminal. All together there were 9 of us, Jessi, Annie, Jen, Andi, Tori, Quinn, Irene, and Maddie. Plus me, of course.
Our first mission was to get to Tokyo. Conveniently they had a free shuttle that went right to the station. It was a hot commodity because almost everyone wanted to get there but we piled on and made it there all together.
When we got to the station we had no idea where we needed to go from there. It seemed like there was both a subway and a train, or at least there were things above ground and things underground. Some of us consulted a huge map while the others decided to ask someone for help. The map group decided we needed to go straight down the stairs in front of us while the group that asked found out that we needed to go around the side of the building.
We went along with the group that asked and walked around the side and down some stairs to a path that connected up with the path we would have ended up on if we had gone down the original stairs. So apparently it was all connected.
The next issue was that the giant map above the ticket machines was just in Japanese, there wasn't a lick of English on it anywhere.
We had no idea where we were or which stop was supposed to be Tokyo. We clearly looked like we were lost because a very nice lady stopped and asked if we spoke English and if we needed help. I said yes and walked over to the map with her. I told her we were trying to get to Tokyo and she pointed to a red square with two Japanese characters in it and told me that that was Tokyo.
She then showed me which one was Yokohama. Underneath the squares of Japanese there were numbers. The numbers indicated how much you needed to pay to get to that destination.
Ours was 440 Yen, which is about 4 dollars.
The lady then said that she would found out what track the train was going to be on, so she left for a moment and we bought our tickets. The ticket machine could be changed to English so it was easy to get our tickets. The lady came back and told us that we needed track 5 or 7, there was a train leaving in just a few minutes.
We thanked her profusely and she walked away. We finished purchasing our tickets and then went through the gate towards tracks 5-10.
The Japanese are very orderly, they so things in very specific ways. To get ready to get on a train they don't stand in a big crowd like we do in America. They stand in perfect single file lines right in front of where the doors will be. Then, when the train arrives, they step up to the side of the door, leaving the middle open so those on the train will have room to get off. As soon as everyone is off they file onto the train one by one. Standing in line made it feel like we weren't going to make it on the train, but we did every time.
The train ride to Tokyo was almost 40 minutes. We stood the entire time. The train was very full and also very quiet. Dead silent actually. No one was making any noise and no one was talking. We followed suit and just rode in silence. I watched the scenery that went by, it was all very urban. Apartment buildings and city buildings came all the way up to the train tracks.
When we got to Tokyo we got off the train. Now we needed to get to Shibuya, the district our hotel was in and where we were going to spend most of our time. We asked at the information desk and they told us to get on another train. That ride lasted about 15 or 20 minutes.
Apparently we could have stayed on the original train we took from Yokohama and it would have stopped at Shibuya. Oh well, we now knew for the future.
We walked out of the train station to find a very busy street in front of us. There were skyscrapers in every direction. We picked a way, left, and walked. We had to go up on a bridge to cross the street. We went up the stairs and then picked a random staircase to go down, again to the left.
We decided our first goal was to find food. It was about 11:30 and we were all very hungry. We walked down an ally and then another ally. It seemed to get more and more residential and barren, also more sketchy. But we found place that looked like the kind of Japanese food we wanted to try.
Nobody went for the pizza place we passed, we were in Japan so it was time to get brave. They sat the 9 of us in tables near the front of the restaurant, we could see out the windows to the street. They had a very limited lunch menu and all of it had meat in it so Jessi was SOL. But the rest of us all saw things we were willing to eat. The best part? All of the lunches were 500 Yen, which is less than 5 dollars.
I ordered the fried chicken. It was basically like chicken nuggets but also not. It was less perfectly fried and the breading was more like the breading you would find on tempura. My meal came with white rice, miso soup, cabbage, and what looked like spinach but ended up being cold seaweed. I gave my miso soup to Jessi so she would have something to eat. All in all, it was a pretty great first meal in Japan.
When we left the restaurant we decided to walk back in the direction we came, our goal was to find our hotel. We went back in the train station and asked at the information desk. They gave us a map, turns out our hotel, the Cerulean, was right on the street to turned into the ally from. But, it also turned out that we had walked the complete opposite direction of the center of town. I guess it made sense that it started to feel a bit sketchy.
Since we still had over an hour until we could check into the hotel we decided to head towards all of the shopping. We wanted wifi.
We found a Starbucks easily. Generally Starbucks in the perfect place to get free wifi because you know it will be the one place that will have it. Well, in Japan they like to make their wifi complicated. You had to go on the website and register with an email and then use the log in you make to log into the free wifi. So basically you needed wifi to get wifi, it didn't work very well for us.
The only upside was that the Starbucks was in the middle of a huge store. The store sold only media: movies, books, TV, and video games. It was all organized by floor and it was all in Japanese. Some of the movies and video games I recognized but all of the music was Japanese. There was a floor for J-pop and then a floor for hip hip. It just went on and on. It was pretty cool. Irene bought a CD and later in the hotel room we listened to it, it was really different but really good.
We eventually left the store, it took awhile. Rallying 9 people together is definitely challenging. There were a ton of stores in the area including an Apple store and a Disney store, the two places I wanted to go the most!
Everyone was voting to check into the hotel but the hotel was in the opposite direction of the shopping and Jessi and I decided that it didn't make sense for us to go there and then go back out and then go back to the hotel again and then go out again for dinner. So we made the executive decision to just keep shopping and go to the hotel when we were done. Looking back, I don't think anyone else was really ok with that plan. They all had really huge and heavy bags and were not too keen on carrying them around. But we did it anyway.
Our first stop was in a store called Zara. It's a clothing and accessories store. Jessi had visited a few when we were in Europe and loved it. They are not many places in the states. We spent a long time in there. Jessi bought some things and so did a few of the other girls.
While we were in there a few girls got a bit antsy, their packs were really heavy and they wanted to check into the hotel. But by the time we left the store they decided to just suck it up and make it work.
The next place we went was the Disney store! Well, I went in there and I dragged Jessi, Irene, and Jen along with me. Everyone else went in a few other stores. The Disney store was awesome. It was three stories, all connected by this really cool spiral stair case. They had a lot of weird things there including tiny Tums Tums. Tums Tums are the next big thing. I already knew about them so the are known in the states but apparently you cant really buy them their yet. They are basically disney characters shaped like little bugs. Like a roly poly bug! That is the best way to describe them. You can get tiny ones, medium sized ones, and big ones! I got a tiny mickey mouse one. He is pretty cute.
I also bought stickers and buttons and a set of bowls. They didn't have any pins which was really, really depressing. That is what I wanted the most. But I guess I will just have to come back and take a vacation to Tokyo Disney.
I spent a while in the store, everyone was standing out on the street waiting impatiently, but I didn't care. I was in Zara with them for an hour and this was what I wanted to do the most. I am still really bummed that I didn't actually get to go to Disney, but I have accepted it. Like I said, it gives me a reason to come back and do it for real.
After the Disney store we went to the Apple store!! The place that I had been anticipating since we got to Tokyo.
I walked in and said konnichiwa to the first guy that greeted me. Then, another guy must have noticed that I spoke English because he came over and said hello. I told him I was interested in buying a computer, specifically a macbook pro. He said alright, awesome, and led me over to one of the demo computers. He showed me the different kind of macs they had available, the 250GB and the 500GB, which are both advertised online. He then said that they had one other option that was not listed online, the 1TB. I asked if he had any in stock for me to buy off the shelf. As soon as he said yes I said ok, I want a 15inch, 1TB hard drive, with a US keyboard.
He seemed a little taken a back that I knew exactly what I wanted and was an easy sell. He definitely was ready to have to sell it to me. He did ask if I wanted Applecare and had to push me on it a little but I definitely needed it, it was definitely worth it.
He had me take a seat and he went upstairs to get the computer. The inventory guy brought it out to me and went over where on the box it said that it was 15in, 1TB, with a US keyboard so that I knew it was the correct product. They then needed my passport. Since I was traveling and was not a citizen of Japan I got a tax break. At that moment I was thankful that we were required to carry them in port. As he was ringing me up I was thinking wow, that was so easy! He gave me the total and I calculated the conversion a few time to make sure it was correct, and then gave him my card. He swiped my card and… declined.
They had good wifi in the store so I logged on and check my bank account, I definitely had enough. I didn't really know what to do, there was no reason for it to decline, I had notified my bank that I was going to be in Japan and I had enough money.
I turned my cell service on and it just sat there saying no service. I wasn't entirely sure who I was going to call. My first instinct was my dad. Call dad, he'll know what to do! But it was 1:30 in the morning back home and I don't think he would have appreciated being woken up, although I am sure he would have helped.
I walked outside and it connected back to docomo. But as soon as I would hit the call button it would go back to having no service and nothing would happen. I was getting so frustrated. I didn't know what to do, I had to buy this computer, I needed it. One of the other sales people, David, heard what was going on and came to help. He had a Skype account with unlimited minutes. He used his phone to call the international collect number on the back of my card.
It worked! It went through and they said they would accept the charges. I went through the Charles Schawb automated menu until I was connected to a real person. At first he couldn't hear me and I started to panic that I had gotten this far and then would be stuck again. But when I moved to the middle of the store the connection was fine. He verified it was me and then looked at my transaction. It was declined due to a fraud alert because it was such a large amount of money. He put me on hold for a really long time. I mean a really, really, really long time. But both of the sales guys were so patient and awesome. David talked to Andi and Jen about places for us to go to dinner.
Eventually he came back on and told me to try it. So I handed my card over again and he swiped it again and …. declined.
I was put back on hold for another really, really, really long time.
I was standing in the middle of the store almost pacing and the guy kept coming over to me and trying to get me to sit on the stool.
The good news was that because there was such good wifi none of the other girls minded having to sit there.
After an eternity he came back on the line and told me try again. I handed over my card a third time and it worked!
We all high-fived and jumped around, it was very exciting. They packed up my computer in a bag, I called to the girls that it was done and we could leave, and they walked me out of the store. I was so excited and so relieved.
We found the rest of our party in a little cafe right down the street. They had gotten coffee and a snack. We stood there while they finished and Jessi and Annie ran into a store next door. I decided to put my new shiny laptop in my backpack so I wasn't carrying it around out in the open.
My backpack was barely half full but it isn't very wide so the box didn't really fit. Irene offered to stick it in her bag, which was a lot bigger. Once we were settled we set off again, this time to the hotel.
It was easy to find, we just had to retrace our steps back to the train station and back over the bridge. We then turned right instead of left. The hotel was just does the street a little and was easy to spot because it was a huge sky scraper.
We went inside in three different groups with an agreement to meet on the second floor. We didn't want to look sketchy since we were fitting all of us in one room. It ended up not being an issue, the inside of the lobby floor was vast and you could get to multiple banks of elevators without going anywhere near the front desk or running into any people.
While Jessi and Jen were checking us in the rest of us people watched over a large balcony that looked into a restaurant and part of the lobby. The hotel was huge and really nice. We knew that a lot of SASers had chosen this hotel to stay in and we saw some sitting in the lobby. I didn't recognize any of them but it is easy to pick out a SASer, especially now that we are in asian countries.
It didn't take them very long to check us in and soon we were on our way up to the 20th floor. Our room number was 2014 and it had a fantastic view of the city.
We lounged in the room for a while, using the wifi, taking pictures of the city, and just relaxing. We were glad to not be carrying around our backpacks anymore. I used the time to open up my computer. It is beautiful and perfect and I am obsessed with it. I couldn't do much on it but I was finally able to unload all of the pictures off my camera and delete them from my SD card. I had been keeping pictures on the card because I didn't trust my other computer. I had pictures on there from all the way back in November.
We also took our time in the room because we were waiting for David. Jessi and I have a friend from our previous voyage, Carlos, who knew David from high school. David currently lives in Tokyo, goes to the University of Tokyo, and was going to show us around for the evening.
It ended up being really nice to have someone who spoke the language and sort of knew where to go. We told him about the restaurant the guy at the apple store had recommended. David knew of the building it was in but had never been there. Apparently it can be hard to get into just because a lot of people want to go there, so the line can be really long.
It didn't take us long to find it. It was in a huge skyscraper mall that was just down from the train station and was right across from the Starbucks.
The restaurant was not very big and there was a line to get into it, there were people sitting on a long bench lining the wall outside of it. David put in our names via a little kiosk and then asked the girl seating people how long the wait would be. She said 1 hour. We decided to split us, 5 of us would sit on the bench for 30 minutes while the other 5 explored and then we would switch. I was in the group that sat on the bench with Jessi, David, and Maddie. The lady seating people kept coming up to us and asking if two of us, or four of us, wanted to eat right then because she had tables for two ready. We kept saying no, we all wanted to eat together. It was getting really annoying and we didn't really want to eat at that specific restaurant that badly. It was Andi and Jen that had heard about it and wanted to go there. The three of us, Jessi, Maddie, and me did even really want Sushi. We were scared of it.
We decided to call the girls and find out where they were and David canceled out name. He said that he knew of a sushi place that was near where we were and was inexpensive. It was a place that a lot of students go it. We were on board with that. We found the other 6 people in another restaurant having a drink. We had to wait for them to finish so we went to the waffle place next door and got waffles. It was one waffle folded in half around whip cream and strawberries. Jessi and I split it, it was delicious.
When they were done we headed off to the sushi place. David led us through the streets, off the large main streets and down through some small alleys.
It was a little hole in the wall that didn't look like much from the outside. The whole front of the building was windows and inside you could only see a bunch of seats for waiting and the front counter. It didn't look all that big and we started to realize that a group of 10 was probably not all that common.
We filed in and they had us sit in the chairs all along one wall so they knew we were all together. When they called us we had to split up into two groups of three and one group of four. We were led into the back of the restaurant where there were rows and rows of counters with seats lined up next to them. All of the counters came out of the same wall.
It was conveyor belt sushi! We ordered from a screen in front of you and it came out from the kitchen behind the wall and traveled down the belt until it stopped in front of you. Once you had removed the plate from the tray you pressed a button with a sad face on it and the tray went back to the kitchen. It was fun, and really cheap. It was about a dollar per plate, and each plate had a few things on it. I got cucumber rolls, shrimp tempura, another shrimp thing that wasn't fried, and calamari.
The cucumber rolls were delicious and light. The ship tempura was good but really dense so it was challenging to chew. When I went to eat the other shrimp thing I just popped it all in my mouth. It was good but what I didn't realize until that moment was that, when you ordered, you chose with or without wasabi and I definitely chosen with because all I got was a mouthful of wasabi. They put a tiny drop of it on the rice right under the shrimp. It was enough to be very spicy. I attempted to scrape it off the second one and it was better. The calamari was awesome! It tasted exactly like the fried octopus you can get in the states except they don't try to make it undistinguishable. It was clearly an animal. They just took the whole thing and put it in the deep frier.
Yum.
I tried one of the tuna rolls that Maddie got and didn't die. I survived my first raw sushi experience. It helped that I dipped it in soy sauce so that was almost all I tasted.
For dessert I got a hunk of pineapple, it also came out to me on the conveyor belt. The whole thing was an awesome experience.
We are in Japan! Woo!
After we were all done with our sushi David took us to a little bar that was completely hidden unless you knew where you were going. It was Irish pub themed and was pretty nice on the inside.
The only issue was that they allow smoking inside restaurants and bars in Japan and so there was couple smoking right near us. It was gross and got to me really quickly. I had a headache fast and didn't feel great at all. So I just sat, utilized the free wifi, and talked to everyone as they drank.
Around 9:30 Andi and Quinn left us. They both had a field lab for class the next day and so needed to be back on the ship by midnight. We were down to 7.
We didn't get too crazy and we called it a night around 11:30. We were all exhausted from the day. We said bye to David and made our way back to the hotel. We weren't that far away, only one street farther up from where the Apple store was.
It had rained when we were in the bar but we had missed it, it was just faintly drizzling. We were lucky, the weather had predicted that it was going to rain all day. It also hadn't been too cold, I probably could have gotten away without my coat but I was glad I brought it.
In the hotel we all settled in slowly while we talked and reflected on the day. We also made plans for the next day, we were going to try to go to a shrine that was one subway stop up from where we were.
I felt ok until the moment I got under the covers and laid down on the bed. First of all, the bed was the hardest bed I had ever laid on. It was like a concrete slab. It hurt by bones no matter what direction I laid. Then, I started to feel like I was going to puke. Knives were in my stomach attempting to digest my food.
I got up and went in the bathroom where Jessi had just finished showering. She sat in the bathroom with me while I reached 90% sure I was going to throw-up all of the sushi. I didn't, thank goodness, that would not have been fun. It took about 40 minutes for it to not feel like my digestion was trying to kill me. Jessi gave me the bathrobe to wear and I ended up using it as a blanket and sleeping on top of the comforter to give me some extra cushion.
By the morning I felt fine. Sleepy and achy, but fine.
We all woke up around 8:30/9ish and began the process of having people shower. We weren't really in a big rush, our check out time was not until noon.
We made it out of there by 10:30 and went back to the Starbucks to get coffee and breakfast. Jessi and I did not like the look of the food at Starbucks. It was all prepackaged and expensive. While everyone else was waiting in line we ran across the street to the McDonalds and got dirt cheap food that probably tasted better than the weird packaged croissant.
We ate our McDonalds quickly and were ready to go before the girls were. We did not want to spend a lot of time sitting in the Starbucks, we wanted to get going. We were going to go to the H&M that we had found while walking around with David last night. We didn't want to spend that long in there so we would make it to the shrine before needed to leave.
Irene, Jessi, Tori and I left them sitting there and started out for H&M. We started going in the right direction but then circled around and ended up going in the wrong direction. I kept telling them in was farther the other way but they didn't believe me and who ended up being right? Me.
We found it eventually, it was a glorious 4 stories. I bought a few things, a sweater and two shirts. Clothes are fun.
We spent a long time in that store but made it out eventually, caught the train, and went one stop up.
The garden that the shrine was in was right behind the train station. We got there around noon. We and to be back on the train and headed back to the ship no later than 3.
We visited the shrine, it was beautiful, but it was hard to understand what we were looking at and what it all meant. It just felt like a large, beautiful, outdoor courtyard.
There is a ritual that you do before entering the shrine, it is a purifying ritual. There is a water fountain and you take the bamboo cup and pour water into one hand and then into the other hand. You then can take some into your mouth, swish it around and spit it out.
I learned later that when you go through the gates of the shrine you are purifying your mind and then you use the water to purify your body.
We got in trouble inside the shrine for sitting on the steps. Oops.
After that happened we knew it was time to leave.
We still had a bit of time so we went to Takeshita Street. It is a shopping street that has some weirder stuff. Jessi really wanted to find some really weird Japanese pop culture stuff. She didn't really succeed. There was some weird stuff but their clothes are so small none of us would have fit in them, and it was also really expensive there.
I did find pins though! I was happy about that.
We did see some stores where celebrities go to have their costumes made, like the sparkly unitards and stuff like that they wear on stage. They were elaborate and beautiful. There were also large candy stores that had some weird stuff in them.
It was a cool place and a great place to people watch. We stayed there until it was time to head back to the train station.
Outside the station we split up. Jen, Annie, and Maddie were staying in Tokyo and then traveling overland on their own. Jessi, Tori, Irene, and I were headed back to the ship to transit with it. We were sad about missing two nights and one day in Japan but in this moment we were all glad to be going back. We were exhausted and needed time to recover.
The map on the outside of the station was again not in English. Tori went and asked and the guy told her that the easiest way to get back to Yokohama was to take the subway.
So we walked down the block and went underground to where the subway was. I still don't understand the difference between the subway and the normal train, they looked the same, went the same speed, and cost the same. But what ever.
The subway map was equally as confusing and didn't say Yokohama on it anywhere. Jessi asked at the information desk and he said that we needed to take the brown line and needed to buy out tickets down near it. So we walked forever, down a million stairs, to get to the brown line.
We found one tiny section that said Yokohama. We bought our ticket and went through the gate. We were still unsure if we needed to change trains or not. I thought not and the girls thought it was more complicated and that we did.
We got on train 3 and went a few stops to where we thought we had to change. We got off, consulted the map quickly, saw that it said Yokohama was train three and hopped right back onto the train we had gotten off.
We sat on the train for about 30 minutes, it wasn't too bad of a ride and it helped that we were able to sit down. We got off at the Yokohama stop and walked out of the station. There was no longer a shuttle, that service was only available the first day.
We wandered up some stairs and into a mall area. We still had about 20 minutes so we found a convenience store and bought some snacks. I just got some chocolate covered blueberries.
We walked through the parking garage of the mall, following a sign for taxis. The signs led us to a phone that we apparently could use to call a taxi. We attempted to use it but it was all in Japanese and so didn't help us at all. We ended up just walking out to the road and flagging a taxi easily. He dropped us off right at the front of the port.
It felt like we had been away forever. We stopped for a few minutes and used the wifi in the terminal but it didn't work very well and it was coming up on ship time so we just gave up and went. It was a good thing we got in line when we did because everyone came after that and the line got really long.
The gangway was on deck 5 so they went through our bags by hand. It felt way more intense than the past, the guy completely took everything out of my bag and even opened my makeup case. It was kind of violating, I didn't like it. But I am sure they catch a lot of illegal things that way.
Once we were on the ship Jessi dragged me up to the 7th deck to try and take pictures of the sunset but getting on the ship had taken too long and it was already gone.
We parted ways and I went to my room and stripped off my clothes and shoes. It felt amazing, I was so tired.
We went up to dinner and after dinner I attempted to take movies off Annie's laptop. But she had bought most of them so I ended up with movies that I didn't really want to watch. I went back to my room and organized my stuff while I watched Get Him To The Greek. It's a terrible movie, never watch it.
After the movie ended I just couldn't put my computer down. I wanted to do things on it, it is so pretty. But there was nothing to do, there was no internet. I just laid there looking at my pictures and pretending there was stuff for me to be doing. Eventually I realized I was being ridiculous and put it away and went to sleep.
