Spring 2015 - Day 22 and 23: Japan
We had to meet our program at 8:30 in classroom 1, which is right inside of the deck 6 dining room. We signed in and just sat and waited while other people came and went around us. I didn't really know anyone else that was coming with us, although I recognized them from around the ship. The only person I knew, besides Jessi, was Erin, Marjorie's granddaughter. Marjorie sailed on my first voyage and bought my tour of Disney from the auction. She has sailed a lot and was once the president of the alumni council.
She was sailing only a partial voyage this time because it was Erin's first time sailing. She introduced us to Erin so I knew her and we hung out with her a lot on the program.
Right before Jessi and I went upstairs to meet our program I ran back to my room to grab my jacket. I was contemplating not bringing it because the first two days in Tokyo had been so mild, I would have gotten away without my jacket. I decided to bring my jacket and scarf but leave my hat behind. I ended up being really happy that I brought my jacket, it was really cold the whole day! Close to freezing.
We got off the ship as soon as it was cleared and met our bus. Our tour guides name was Myo. I have absolutely no idea how to spell it but that is how you pronounce it My-o. She was tiny, sweet, and carried a pole with a minnie mouse stuffed animal attached to it instead of a flag.
We went to the train station and boarded a bullet train to take us to Hiroshima. The train ride was a little over an hour and I slept almost the whole time.
We got off the train, boarded another bus and headed straight for the Peace Memorial Park.
It didn't take very long to get there. The bus dropped us of in the far top right corner of the park near the A-bomb dome. That was the first thing that we learned about.
The A-bomb dome was the building closest to the hypocenter that remained standing. The entire inside burned and everyone in it died but the exterior of the building survived. When we were there it was being surveyed and preserved so it was covered in scaffolding.
We walked around the building and Myo showed us the T-shaped bridge that was the target. She then led us out of the park and over two blocks to show us the actual hypocenter of the explosion. It was right above a hospital that was re-built. The guy who ran the hospital was away on that day and so survived. His son is now the owner of the hospital.
The peace park is large and is littered with many different monuments representing different things. We visited the majority of the big ones.
The first one we went to was the Children's Memorial. Sadako Sasaki was 2 years old at the time of the bombing, she survived but was diagnosed with leukemia 12 years later. She became ver popular all throughout Japan for folding paper cranes. It is said that if you fold 1000 paper cranes your wish will come true. At the time of her death she had folded about 1,300 cranes.
The Children's Memorial depicts Sadako holding a golden paper crane. Behind the statue of her are many clear boxes filled with paper cranes. The Peace Park is a popular place for schools to come on field trips. Students will fold paper cranes at school and then bring them to the park to be put in the Children's Memorial.
Not only Japanese people were victims on the day of the bombing. There were also Koreans, Chinese, and some students from other east asian countries. There were even a few America prisoners of war. We saw the monument donated by Korea to honor all the Koreans that were killed. The monument was in the shape of a large turtle with an obelisk coming out of its back. Many Koreans believe that the souls of the deceased travel to heaven on the back of the turtle. The turtle in the monument is facing Korea.
We visited a large mound of dirt that the ashes of 70,000 people are buried in. There is a hidden door that leads to the crypt. When we were at the mound our tour guide told us that people will visit the park and pray for peace at each monument. She showed us how to pray by putting our hands together and bowing slightly. She asked us all to pray for peace.
We then visited the Bell of Peace. It is basically just a giant bell that visitors are welcome to ring. The sound that the bell emits is considered the sound of peace. The peace park not only is a memorial to the victims of the bombing but also promotes world peace and the abolishment of nuclear warfare.
This is made clear in multiple moments including the Bell of Peace. It is also in the Memorial Cenotaph. It is a huge stone arch that is shaped like ancient Japanese houses. Underneath the arch is a stone chest. Within the chest is all of the names of the victims, there are 208,000 of them as of 2012. On the chest is inscribed in Japanese, "Please let all victims rest peacefully, we will never repeat evil." In this case evil = war.
Behind the arch is a peace pool and at the other end of the peace is a monument shaped like two open hands, the hands are holding a flame. Many think the flame is an eternal flame but it actually is not. It will burn until all nuclear weapons are eliminated from the world.
After visiting the Cenotaph and pool we went inside the museum. The museum took us through the events of the day and displayed clothing recovered. There were pictures showing badly burned victims and various artifacts showing how the heat from the bomb damaged different materials.
The ground around the hypocenter rose to 5000 - 7000 degrees Fahrenheit. The melting point of most metals is around 1,200 to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It was unimaginably hot and it is clear how so much was destroyed so quickly.
There were melted bottles and glass bowls that we could touch and feel how the heat affected them.
There was a large diorama of Hiroshima with a red ball suspended over the hypocenter to show where the bomb went off and how large the explosion was.
The museum was very moving, it was emotional to see how the city and the people were affected by the first use of an atomic weapon. Jessi and I talked a lot about how the Japanese must feel giving a tour of the park to Americans. Some of the other students we were with were taking pictures with the memorials and we both felt that was really inappropriate. Even though we were not alive at that time it was still our people that dropped the bomb on them. It felt important to be culturally sensitive to that, to be there to learn but to also be respectful of this awful thing that happened to the city. I felt that it was disrespectful to take pictures with the memorials. I enjoyed learning about how to pray and found it completely acceptable that Myo asked us to pray for peace at each of the memorials we stopped at.
I really enjoyed visiting the park and museum, it was a very powerful experience.
After visiting the museum we had free time for lunch. Earlier in the day Myo had told us about a street that had a lot of good places to eat including a Subway. Jessi and I loved the idea of Subway. When we were able to head off on our own we went back to that street and walked down the whole thing trying to find the subway. We found a McDonalds and a KFC but no subway. We were only given an hour for lunch and we had just burned 20 minutes walking back and forth.
We eventually settled on a tiny restaurant that advertised vegetarian food. We went upstairs and sat down in a tiny cafe. They encouraged us to speak English, they had big signs telling you to speak in your own language, I think they were learning English.
We ordered, I got a panini with soup, salad, and two sides. Jessi ordered a vegetarian pizza and miso soup. We sat there and the minutes ticked by and we started getting really nervous. We had to meet back at the bus at 1:50 and it was now past 1:30.
I got up and told them that we didn't realize how short on time we were and so we were in a rush. I paid then so that it was over with and she started work on the pizza. We felt really bad because it was clearly a place where you were meant to sit and enjoy your food and take your time.
We didn't have time to take our time. It was past 1:40.
At 1:45 she came and gave me my panini and the pizza in a to-go sleeves. They had folded the pizza in half and had stuck some potato chips on top of my panini. She told me to wait because they were putting some miso soup in a cup for Jessi. I asked for more potato chips and she added more one by one instead of just grabbing a handful, I thought that was interesting.
We ran out of there. And by ran I mean walked very quickly because Jessi was holding hot soup. We had negative time by that point. The good news was that after failing to find a Subway we had walked all the way back down the street to the starting point, so we were fairly close to the park and the place we were meeting.
But I did do some running. I ran ahead and Jessi walked as fast as possible without spilling soup all over her hand.
I saw the bus but I didn't see anyone around it or getting on it. Oh no, they must all be on the bus and waiting for us. We ran.
We got on the bus and…no one.
Ok, not no one, but there were only 6 or 7 people on the bus. We thought we were late and we were early! The other people had also ran back and were eating their food on the bus, they too had thought they were very late.
We ate our food on the bus, it was delicious, and watched everyone else come sprinting back because they were actual late.
We drove away at 7 after 2. We totally could have sat there and eaten. Ok, maybe not but we didn't have to run.
We took the bus to Hiroshima pier to take the ferry over to Itsukushima island. On the island is a shrine that is the 3rd most scenic place in Japan. The shrine is a World Heritage Site because of its floating Torii gate and the fact that the shrine was built over water.
The floating Torii gate is a large, Japanese style gate that is out in the middle of the water. When the tide is in it appears to be floating on the water but when it tide is out you can actually approach it on foot. Interestingly, it is not buried deep into the ground, it is just sitting on the sand and is supported by its own weight.
Before we got on the ferry we went into the little convenience store and bought some Pocky. Pocky is a snack that can be found in the United States if you go to a world market store or some place that imports Japanese food. The best way I can describe it is like a very thin, unsalted pretzel, covered in chocolate. It is simple but very delicious. They come in packs and you can share them. Jessi and I got chocolate, dark chocolate, and strawberry so that we could try them all.
The ferry ride was brief, only 10 minutes, and we were able to sit in the enclosed second floor, which was heated. We arrived and headed straight to the shrine. Well, we tried to, but then we discovered that there are very friendly wild deer on the island. They tried to eat our maps and we got distracted trying to pet them. Myo had to pull us away from the deer and make us walk towards the shrine.
We had to wind through the streets of the tiny town to get to the shrine, it was very quaint and there were many stores and places to get food lining the streets.
At the end of the street is another Torii gate, a Torii gate is just a gate to the shrine. The one on land has statues of lions on either side of it. The lion on the right has its mouth open, representing the beginning of the universe. The one on the right has its mouth closed, representing the end of the universe. Because we are alive we walk between them.
Once you walk through the Torii gate you are greeted with a beautiful view of the floating Torii gate. When we visited the tide was coming in, so the gate was floating on the water but you should still see the posts that the shrine was standing on. When the tide is all they way in the shrine also looks like it is floating on water.
Once you enter the shrine you can not go back, it is one way only. When you go in the shrine you are asked to perform a cleansing ritual. When you walk under the gate you purify your mind and now you need to purify your body.
There is a basin filled with clean water. There are bamboo cups attached to bamboo pole. You scoop some water up with the pole and pore it into your right hand and then your left hand. You then may take some water into your mouth, swish it around, and spit it back out. Not into the clean water of course, there is a catch basin where you drop and spit the water into.
We walked through the shrine slowly and stopped often so that Myo could explain things to us.
The first thing we encountered in the shrine were small poles with strips of paper decoratively hanging off of them. You take the pole and wave the paper over your head to purify yourself. You can also purify others, or objects. Parents will bring their newborn baby to a shrine to be purified in this way.
We received fortunes. You paid 100 Yen and then shook a giant cylinder filled with rods. When a rod fell out you looked at the number on it and then opened the corresponding drawer. In that drawer was your fortune. Fortunes can be good, bad, or neutral. They can predict anything from relationships to jobs to luck, or even specific things.
My fortune said to use my energy for others, north is my direction, it good for me. It also said that my business is good and that I will find what I have lost.
Myo then showed us where we would tie our fortunes up if they were bad. If you had a bad fortune and left it behind then it wouldn't come true. There were hundreds of fortunes tied up.
There was also a place where you could write a prayer to the Shinto gods and then hang it up. You would buy a little wooden plaque and write on the back of it. The front always has a painting of the animal of the year according to the Chinese calendar. 2015 is the year of the sheep.
The final thing we saw in the shrine was a few woman praying in the main room. They looked like average people so may you can pay to pray there? Their prayers were being led by the priest, I do not know the same for the shinto priest but apparently he is technically considered a priest, he just has a Japanese name. He was praying and then he got up and walked away. A young woman dressed in a kimono who was kneeling to the side got up, went over to the front of the room, and look the objects that the priest was praying over. Then the priest came back with a large staff and waved it over the heads of the women in order to purify them. Then he left again and the women were given instructions by the girl in the kimono.
It was pretty interesting to see even though I could not understand what was happening.
When we left the shrine we were given free time to explore the island. There had been an aquarium on the map so Jessi, Erin, and I ran there as soon as we could. It was about a 5 minute walk from the shrine on the opposite side of the bay from where we had gotten off the ferry.
On the way we found vending machines like you would find at the front of a grocery store. The kind that dispense small toys. These ones dispensed aquarium figurines, and pins! I got two pins, one of clown fish and another of jellyfish.
We got to the aquarium at 4:30 to find out that they close at 5. Great! But their last entry was at 4. Damn. We missed it by 30 minutes. We tried to sneak into the gift shop but got yelled at for not having a ticket. Apparently you needed to go all the way through the aquarium to go into the gift shop. Now we were just cold and bummed.
We walked back towards towards the little town and where we had to meet. We moseyed through the shops and bought a thing or two. We hung out with a few deer and tried to selfie with them. In the shops there were a lot of deer souvenirs, also Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty is big and we saw here everywhere. You could buy almost any product with Hello Kitty's face on it.
I did not buy any Hello Kitty stuff, which I am ok with.
I did buy Stitch wearing a deer hat because it was fantastically random and relevant. Plus, who doesn't love stitch.
On the way we found a stand that sold these bun things. I don't know what they were called but it was basically dough wrapped around meat. Erin got beef and Jessi got eel and I tried a bite of both of them. The beef was better.
We met back up with group where the ferry docks and all took the ferry back to the mainland. We then piled back on the bus and headed to our hotel. When we got to the hotel Myo lead us down the street a little to show us good places to find dinner.
We then checked in. Jessi and I were not assigned to the same room but we easily persuaded the girls we were matched with to switch. Our room was 5417, which we thought was on the 5th floor but it turned out that all of the numbers started with 5 and it was the second number that indicated the floor. After a second elevator ride we found our room.
It was tiny but warm and that is all that matter. The best thing was that the toilet seats are warm.
I can't believe I haven't mentioned the toilet seats until right now! Just like I learned in cultural pre-port, the Japanese love their toilets. Almost every toilet was very elaborate. They all had seat warmers, and many had a built in bidet and spray. They also all had a noise machine that would sense when you were going to the bathroom and make a running water noise. It was so funny, I guess they don't want other people to hear the sound of them going to the bathroom? But you're in the bathroom, of course that is what you were doing. It was so interesting.
But the seat warmers were amazing. You would think that they would be awkward but they were not at all. We need to bring toilet seat warmers to the United States. I hate getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom but if my toilet seat was warm I would do it in a heartbeat.
Jessi and I both enjoyed the heated seats in our hotel room after being out in the cold all day.
We had not really prepared for it to be that cold, I did not bring any gloves with me and only had one layer. Apparently China will be colder so we definitely need to prepare before then.
After using the wifi for a bit we went back downstairs and met Erin so we could find dinner.
We went down to the building Myo suggested. Our goal was to get okonomiyaki. It supposedly is a pancake like thing that you get to choose what you put into it. Myo said that it is one of the top three things to eat in Japan.
We went up to the 6th floor of the building she pointed out and found that the restaurant right outside the elevator was already full of SASers from our trip. We went around the corner and found another one that also had SASers in it but wasn't completely full.
Now, I use the term restaurant really loosely. Imagine a huge hibachi grill, like 5 normal sized hibachi grills put together. Three sides of it are lined in the grill, which is normal sized on the long side and only about a foot wide on the two short sides. In the middle is the kitchen. The outside is lined with stools and that is it, there are no walls and no doors. Some of them had plastic hanging from the ceiling around the outside and you sit inside the plastic. Ours was just open.
We sat in the corner along the side and attempted to read the menu. It was almost completely in Japanese but had a few English words on it.
I ordered the Pork, Noodles, and Egg one and added cheese to it. Erin got the same thing and so did Jessi except she didn't get pork and instead got double vegetables. He showed us two kinds of noodles, asking which one we wanted. Erin and Jessi got one kind and I got the other.
We ordered ginger ale to drink, which I thought was smart in case the food didn't agree with us.
We waited a really long time for the food to come. He brought us over a plate, some chopsticks, and a little metal spatula.
Eventually he brought over our okonomiyaki. It was a huge round dome that he scrapped off a giant paddle onto the section of grill right in front of us. You leave it on the grill so that it stays warm and you use the metal spatula to chop it up and scrape chunks of it onto your plate. Then you eat it with the chop sticks.
It had a sauce on it that was similar to A1 sauce, and I am not a fan of A1 so I it took me a while to get used to the taste.
It was pretty delicious. It was basically just a big hunk of noodles covered in cheese and then draped in an egg. It was messy and fun to eat as well. I almost finished mine, the big egg on top made it hard. That with the pork was a lot of protein.
We ate leisurely and when we were finished we paid and took the elevator back to the first floor. There Erin noticed that they had the Japanese version of slot machines. She had read about them and wanted to see how they worked.
We went inside and it was so loud! I thought casinos in the US were loud but this was ridiculous. My head was ringing in seconds, it was just a lot all at once and you couldn't distinguish one noise from the other. The interesting thing was that the currency seemed to be tiny metal balls. They were flowing out of machines left and right. I have no idea how much one ball was worth but some people had buckets and buckets of them stacked up behind them. It was insane how many they had.
We walked around and took some pictures and then Erin decided she wanted to try it. She got out a 100yen coin and tried to stick it in the machine. It didn't really do anything, just a few balls rolled around inside it. She tried again but her second coin wouldn't go in. Then the attendant came over and said that it was 2,000 yen, which is about 20 dollars. We were like, ok never mind and left.
It was only a 10 minute experience that was absolutely insane. I had never been in some place so loud and chaotic that also involved a language I couldn't understand.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a 7-11 because Erin lost her headphones and wanted to buy new ones. There I bought gloves and hand warmers. They were cheap and I definitely need them.
By that point we were exhausted, we couldn't think of doing anything else. We went back to the room and used the wifi until it was late enough to sleep.
In the morning we had to meet at 8:30 in the hotel lobby. There was free breakfast that started at 6:45 but heck no were we getting up for that. We got up at 7:00ish and showered and got ready in an hour. It took us a while to get ready because the wifi was good in the hotel so we both took the time to talk to people back home.
We got down to breakfast at 8:15, which was not much time. The breakfast was weird. There was some western breakfast, some sausage and Canadian bacon, there was also toast and some granola and yogurt. There was also french fries.
Then there was Japanese breakfast. I couldn't even tell you what it was, it was strange. The only identifiable thing was white rice.
I ate french fries and yogurt and drank lots of water. We shoveled it in and made it down to the lobby by the meeting time.
We were headed to Kyoto.
Kyoto is the ancient capitol of Japan, it was the capital for than a thousand years before it was moved to Tokyo. In Japan the word for capitol is translated to the place that the emperor lives, so the emperor resided in Kyoto for more than 1000 years. Kyoto has 17 World Heritage Sites, it also is the location of the Nintendo headquarters.
Kyoto is surrounded by mountains so summer is very hot and humid and winter is very cold. Within Kyoto, buildings are restricted to 40 meters tall but the train station is 60 meters tall, making it the highest tallest building in Kyoto.
We were able to walk right to the train station from the hotel. We boarded the bullet train for an easy 1 hour and 30 minute ride. I slept the majority of time.
We passed through some towns that were beautifully blanketed in snow, it was gorgeous.
Kyoto did not have snow, but it was raining, and it was freezing! It was colder than Hiroshima was, not fun. But I had my gloves! And I had the hand warmers, but I was saving them until I was really desperate.
We got on a new bus at the train station and headed to our first destination, a buddhist temple that was on a mountain. It was called Kiyomizu-Dera. To get to it we had to walk through streets up a hill. It felt very similar to the shrine we went to on the island yesterday, walking through the streets filled with stores to get to the temple.
The temple was founded in the 8th century, 1,200 years ago. There are 3 different sects of Buddhist temples, one that I can't remember, Zen, which is for meditation, and another that is for saving lives. This temple falls into the saving lives sect. Within it is a 1,011 armed Buddha that is for trying to save as many lives as possible. It had so many arms so that it can reach out to as many people as possible.
The main building of the temple has a wide veranda over a cliff that is supported by 48 pillars without any nails.
We toured through the temple partially with Myo but it was so crowded that we got separated from her and so just went through the rest of it on our own. They had two large metal staffs that were carried by the warriors. They were there so that you could try to lift them. I don't remember how heavy they were but one of them almost everyone could lift and the other one no one could life.
We also were able to walk into the main part of the temple where candles were being lit and there were various buddhist statues, but we had to take our shoes off. My shoes were soaked but my feet weren't that cold..until I took my shoes off and walked on the freezing cold wood floor.
I didn't spend all that long in that room.
The rest of the temple was beautiful, there was a 4 story red temple up on the mountain side that made for beautiful pictures.
We were also really tired of walking around in the rain and we were hungry so we walked briskly out of the temple and back into the shopping streets, stopping to enjoy the heated toilets.
I had seen part of a sign down an that said -taurant so I thought maybe that was a sign that it would be American food or something.
Yeah… it was a tofu restaurant that did not really seem to have real food. So we back tracked to the main street and found another alleyway that we saw people come out of. But the restaurant back there ended up being a weird dessert and coffee restaurant. It was warm in there but we really wanted real food. So we back tracked again.
We ended up getting the same bun things we got the day before. There was a stand right next to the bun stand that had different kinds of buns. They were more like a solid piece of dough with something spread out through it rather than the stuff all being in the middle.
Jessi got me a potatoes and butter one. It was ok but it was cooked in the same place as the octopus and fish ones so it tasted a little seafood-y and my tongue didn't appreciate it very much. Jessi then gave me the rest of her carrot one and that one had a hint of seafood too. My tongue wasn't very happy, it wanted something that it really liked.
While we were sitting inside the little shop eating out buns suddenly a guy carrying a huge film camera came into view and started filming the stand we had just brought food there. A guy and a girl with fancy umbrellas bought buns and ate them, all while being filmed. It was cool but we had no idea what was going on.
Later, Jessi asked our tour guide who they were. Myo didn't recognize them but said they probably were news anchors or minor hosts of some television show. Apparently that day they were walking around the temple and trying buns from stands on the street.
After all of the commotion was gone we decided to go back to the little dessert and coffee shop so we could sit inside.
Every item on the menu looked really, really weird except for the ice cream. I ordered a tiny one in a cup.
It was really, really weird.
Well, the ice cream itself was already but also in the cup was red bean paste, which basically tastes like refried beans, and some really strange yellow goopy thing. It tasted horrible and was impossible to separate. It just stayed all together in one goopy blob. Jessi said that it looked exactly like the placenta she took off the pigs when she birthed them, only yellow.
Yeah, I stopped eating it after that.
My tongue was still unhappy. Very, very unhappy and unsatisfied.
We sat inside that little restaurant until it was close enough to when we needed to meet. We went back to the warm bus and waited for everyone else. On the bus I decided to break out one of my hand warmers. Totally worth it, one of my hands was nice and toasty the rest of the day.
Our next stop was at Ninomaru Palace. It was a palace built for the Shoguns. Shoguns were the head of the government during the last feudal Japanese military government, which existed between 1603 and 1868. The Ninomaru palace is the location that the Shogun gave power back to the emperor.
We were not allowed to take pictures or do sketches inside the palace and we were required to remove our shoes and wear these rubber slippers they provided for us. We put all of our shoes on shelves. My poor cold feet were not happy to leave my shoes, but at least we didn't have to go barefoot.
The palace is made up of five connected buildings and is built almost completely out of hinoki cypress. It is decorated with gold leaf and elaborate wood carvings to show the wealth and power of the Shogun. All of the original paintings and carvings were removed and taken to a museum so we were just looking at reproductions, but they were still beautiful.
As we walked through the palace Myo told us about the different rooms. There were multiple gathering rooms where visitors would wait. If you were in one room it meant that you were trusted more than if you were held in another. There was the Shoguns living quarters and his sitting room where he would have tea with women. If he drank the whole cup of tea that meant "I love you" or "I will spend the night with you." If he didn't drink the whole cup it meant you "weren't his cup of tea"
Ba dum ch.
The coolest aspect of the palace were the floors. They are called nightingale floors (uguisubari) or their nickname, ninja floors. They were too protect the Shogun from sneak attacks and assassins. The floors were constructed so that it squeaks like a bird when you walk on them. And they really did! There was a very light speaking noise following us the whole way. They are called ninja floors because ninjas are able to walk on them without making a noise.
After the palace we went to our last stop, the Golden Pavilion or Kinkaku-ji. It is a three story tall Japanese style pavilion that is covered in real gold, it sits in the middle of a garden. It is famous because it was burned down right after the end of WWII and re-built again but has a long history. It was originally a Shogun's palace but when he died it was turned into zen buddhist temple.
On the gate to the temple are the five buddhist teachings:
- Don't kill
- Don't still
- Don't commit adultery
- Don't lie
- Don't drink too much
We didn't spend too long in the garden, just long enough to look at the pavilion and take some pretty pictures. It was freezing cold but the sun actual came out for a minute and we were able to get some beautiful pictures of the sun coming off the gold pavilion.
Right before we got back on to the bus I got a hot chocolate out of the vending machine. The vending machines are another really cool part of Japan. From one vending machine you can get hot and cold beverages. And it isn't like hot vending machines in the U.S where it dispenses liquid into a cup, these come out in bottles and cans like a normal vending machine, but they are scalding. It is awesome. It is worth the 130 Yen just for something hot to hold.
When we got back on the bus we were headed back to the ship. It was about an hour and a half drive and we all just relaxed.
Myo gave us all a paper with Japanese characters on it. It was a good luck charm that was meant to be hung above the door to your house to banish evil. It said well being for your family and that good fortune would come.
Getting back on the ship was not hard at all. Jessi wanted to stop in the terminal for wifi but I was damp, cold, and exhausted so I just got back in line.
When I got to my room I just stripped off all my clothes and put on comfy warm things. Then Jessi and I got dinner and after dinner we curled up in her room and watched The Wolf of Wall Street.
Around 10 Annie got back so we heard some of her stories, then we finished the movie and I crashed around midnight. I probably should have gone to bed earlier but after I was warm and snuggly I felt much better.
Tomorrow I have my field lab for photojournalism and we have to meet at 9:30 in our classroom. We are headed to Osaka, I have no idea what we are doing there, I guess I will find out.
