Waka Waka Takes on Japan

The first day, my friends and I weren't signed up for any field programs, so we spent it exploring by ourselves. We were ported in Yokohama, Japan, but woke up early to take the train to Tokyo. The machines at the JR train station had an English option, but that didn't prove to be very helpful. We ended up having to ask a lady in a bookstore who pointed us to the ticket office where another lady helped us out in very broken English. About an hour later, we found ourselves walking the mile to the imperial palace in the center of the city.

After walking around the gardens of the palace, we found a metro station. There are three different types of trains in Japan - the JR system is a normal train that takes you city to city, the bullet train does the same as the JR but is faster, and the metro which is the subway within the city. The metro is the cheapest and easiest option for getting around Tokyo. We bought a day pass so that we could get on and off as much as we pleased.

Our second stop in the city was Tokyo Tower, which is essentially a replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It was awesome to go to the top and be able to see the city from above. We could even see Mt. Fuji and Tokyo Disney.

By this point, it was about noon, and my friends and I were all hungry. We wandered down the street until we found ourselves surrounded by police officers in riot gear. I'm still not sure what had happened, but we ran fast. A few streets over, we stumbled into a tiny little restaurant playing Shakira's Waka Waka. Nothing was in English, but there were a bunch of pictures so we just pointed to a picture and hoped for the best. I ended up with beef curry and rice, which I loved. Indian curry is one of my favorite foods, but this wasn't as spicy as I liked it. We also had rice tea to drink, which looks like water, but had a bitter aftertaste and wasn't my favorite.

After lunch, we made our way on the metro to Harijuku, a shopping district of the city. It's aimed towards a younger audience and the teen culture, so there was a lot of bright colors, strange clothing, and yummy treats. I ended up with a cotton candy larger than my head. Don't worry. We shared.

It was really crowed, so it was difficult for my group of friends to stick together as we dodged in and out of shops. I didn't end up buying anything in Harijuku because it was a little pricey, but it was interesting to see all of the clothes. A lot of places looked like thrift stores in the states, but were expensive. One store we ventured in had a lot of old tshirts and sweatshirts, and we picked through to find some from colleges around the US including Clemson, Northwestern, and Texas A&M to name a few. They were all more expensive than it would be to just buy a new shirt, but I guess that came with the character of it.

Our final sightseeing stop of the day was the Senso Ji Temple complex on the other side of the city. It took a few interchanges on the metro and about 45 minutes to get out there, but it was worth it. In the temples, you could make a 100 yen donation (about 80 cents in the US) then grab a prayer/fortune and tie it to the racks set up around the temple. This was my favorite stop of the day because we ended up seeing the temples, then walking through the markets that surrounded it. The market stalls sold pretty much everything.

My last event of the night was dinner. My family has friends who live in Tokyo, so my friend Maddie and my roommate Eleanor and I met up with them for a traditional Japanese dinner. We had sukiyaki, which is a hot pot of food cooked in soy sauce. We each had our own hot pot full of beef, noodles, vegetables, and tofu. I loved it. Our tray also had miso soup, a small salad of Japanese radish and cabbage, raw crab as an appetizer, and a large bowl of rice. At that point, dessert wasn't necessary. (Plus the cotton candy was probably enough sugar for days)

After we stuffed ourselves at dinner, Maddie, Eleanor, and I navigated back to the ship in Yokohama for the night. I was awake for almost 20 hours straight, because we had gotten up so early, but it was definitely worth it.