日本に行った！！
April 30-May 10, 2012
Much of this was written while I was in Japan, so it's mostly in present tense. Please disregard that. :)
Sunday, April 29 was the day that we went from Korea to Japan. The flight was super nice because there was hardly anyone on it. (it was a continued flight from Japan to LA so I think that's why.)
My first dinner in Japan. Miso soup, rice and crab meat croquettes. Super yummy!!
My first breakfast in Japan. Mister Donut. :)
Monday (April 30,) Katie and I went to the hostel, which was horrible because the directions had us go right through a huge tourist center in Tokyo. It was ridiculously crowded because it was a holiday but it was alright once we got there. Later that evening, Jaren arrived in Japan, so we went to Shibuya to meet with him and Chrys. Oh but get this- I had to lend Katie money every day because she cannot withdraw money from her account. She tried when we got to the airport on Sunday evening and then on Monday before we went to the hostel she called them on Skype and they said that she wasn't using the correct pin number... so I had to up my with-drawl limit per day so that we're both covered. ...it was quite the ordeal...
It's been nice being here again. Katie thinks I am biased because I didn't like Korea as much as I like it here, but I rather like understanding things and being able to order food to eat. And there are so many good things to eat here...!!
Tuesday we went to Fuji Q Highlands, which is an amusement park near Mt. Fuji. It was fun, but it also rained on this day. That means we couldn't see Mt. Fuji and they also closed the rides for quite some time. Later on in the day, we went on one of the fastest roller coasters in the world! Do you believe that I did that? Because I did!! It was really fun! But it was also really scary...
Okonomiyaki! It was so yummy too! We had this on Wednesday. :)
Wednesday we intended to climb that mountain that I climbed last time I was here with Chrys and Jaren, but it rained that day which was unfortunate. But, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because Katie's legs still really hurt and I think that she would have been miserable to climb that mountain had we gone. Instead, we went shopping for Jaren (he wanted a lunch box,) went to the biggest book store in Japan, where Chrys told my to buy a specific set of books to practice for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (which I think I will take in December if possible.) And Chrys took us to eat okonomiyaki on this day as well.
Thursday, we met with Hiroko. She was one of the program coordinators for CIEE when I was here, and she recently had a baby who is so cute! We had sushi for lunch and then we took her to a parfait place that we have been to in the same area. It was really fun to see her again.
Yaki-salmon-mayo. The best sushi that I have ever had.
Friday we all stayed the night at Chrys' apartment together. We intended to do many things that day as well, but it was raining and we had to take our things from the hostel so that wasted a lot of our time. Unfortunately we didn't get to do anything super fun that day.
On Saturday, Chrys' friend Soojin arrived. My friend Jaren was still here on Saturday so while Chrys went to pick Soojin up from the airport, Katie, Jaren and I played games together. After she arrived, Chrys took us to a place called Bubby's in Yokohama that she likes to eat at (it's American food, hamburgers and stuff like that) and then she showed us the port in Yokohama and also her school. It's a very lovely place as well. After we finished that, we went to meet some of our friends from karate. I felt bad though because we were quite late. When we saw them, all my friends told me "yasseta" but I didn't know what it meant... Chrys told me that it means I lost weight?? But I don't think that I am skinnier than I was the last time I saw them so it confused me. But, I kept getting asked if I was on a diet or something and why had I lost weight and things like that so maybe I have?? We went to a drinking party with them and had dinner which was fun. There were only four people that I knew from when I was here last time, but it was really fun to see them again and talk to them. Chrys and I are going to join their practice tonight as well. Jaren had to leave on Saturday night, so we left from our friends and took him to the bus station to go to the airport.
Yokohama
Sunday, (May 6) we went to Tokyo Tower with Chrys' friend Soojin who came to visit from South Korea. It was kind of crowded, and it was cloudy (which it has been cloudy for a lot of the time we have been here.) After Tokyo Tower, we split up from Chrys and Soojin and Katie and I went to Harajuku. We wanted to go to Yoyogi park to see all the people that go there on Sundays, but we were late and missed a lot of them. We had to cut that short though because there was a totally unexpected downpour and we almost got caught in it. We didn't do much in Harajuku besides look around in the shops and eat lunch. After that we met up with the same friend from yesterday (Erika) for dinner in Shibuya and had okonomiyaki (it translates as savory pancake, it's one of my favorite Japanese foods but it's really hard to find at home unless you make it yourself.) Before that, Katie and I rode the train for about 1 and 1/2 hours killing time (there is a train that goes around in a circle called the Yamanote line, and that's what we rode.) Katie has been having shin splints, and because it's difficult to find places that you can just sit around for a while here, riding the train aimlessly is the best thing to do.
Tokyo Tower!
Monday May 7, Katie and I went to Kamakura with my friend Erika (who lives here.) Kamakura is near the ocean and it's a very lovely place. It's one of my favorite places in Japan. A long time ago, it was the capital of Japan and so there are many temples and shrines there. We spent a lot of time on the beach, but we didn't swim because it wasn't warm enough to. After the ocean, we went to the biggest and one of the oldest shrines in the area and walked around. Then, we headed back to Yokohama (where Chrys lives.) But, we all fell asleep on the train and missed Yokohama station by quite a long shot, so we ended up hanging around in a part of Tokyo called Shibuya instead. We have been spending a lot of time in Shibuya because it's the most convenient place for everyone to meet.
Tuesday, Chrys and I attended karate practice, like old times!! We were late, because Chrys and I had a misunderstanding about time. -_-;; It would have been nice to have had my cell phone during this trip... so we had to stretch and warm up on our own, but it was so fun. I miss karate practice a lot. Yu-chan is the captain of the team now and he is so amusing. After we did partner work, we split into groups for sparring, kata and basics. Yu-chan had Chrys and me go with him to work on kata... We originally wanted to go with Omura-san because he was teaching the first years basics, but Yu-chan and the girls wanted us to do kata instead. I have totally forgotten all of the kata that I used to know, and Yu-chan danced around singing 「忘れちゃった～～？」(You've forgotten~?) at me, many times... with a towel on his head. He's so silly.
Wednesday, we went to the Natural Science and History museum in Ueno. It was so. freaking. cool. The museum is located in Ueno Park, and it is amazing. I would like to go back there. We had to leave the museum at 5 when they closed and we had 3 hours to kill until dinner... so we rode the train around again... It decided to rain that evening, so it was much better than the other option of walking around in the rain. Katie and I met up with Erika one last time for dinner (Standing Sushi in Shibuya), and then Thursday morning we had our last meal with Chrys at Mister Donuts. Then, we headed to the airport.
Thursday was horrible after that though. We spent a ton of time in the airport, which was fine...whatever, we knew that was going to happen. But then it started to storm. Thunderstorm. It delayed our flight, which was fine... for the time being. The flight was the shortest that I have ever had from Japan to the US. It was only 8 1/2 hours long. It was fine, no real problems until we got close to the US. Then we hit a hard bit of turbulence, and I got a bit sick. After that, we had to go through customs and re go through security. There was only an hour before our connecting flight and we missed it. We were exhausted and it sucked. We were then put on stand-by for another flight. I decided that since I had no idea how stand-by worked, that I would ask the worker at the desk. She told me that someone would call my name but when that happened, Katie and I were in the wrong area. So, we missed the stupid flight, because someone else jumped ahead of us while we were trying to get to the lady.
I was pissed, with dead electronics, so I decided that I needed to find a charger. The flight that we got rescheduled for was set to go at 15:00, which was so annoying because it was 11:00 at the time we missed the flight. We SHOULD have been HOME by 15:00, not waiting for a stupid flight still. Katie called her mom, and she told her that there were some other flights that would arrive in Denver earlier, and so we asked if we could get on stand-by on one of those flights instead. We had to ask the lady who was announcing stand-by on the previous flight, and I think that we guilted her into making sure we got something.
We got onto a flight at 13:00, which was scheduled to arrive in Denver at 17:00. This did not happen. The flight was supposed to be boarded at gone, but because of the same weather that caused the turbulence earlier was causing problems. We took off late, and it was horrible. There was so much turbulence I felt like we were on a roller coaster. I tried to sleep, but it was miserable because of the bouncing of the plane. I honestly felt like I was going to throw up, many, many times.
We finally got back to Denver, and Katie's mom, Kelsey and Chelsie picked us up.
I decided that I am never, ever coming home through San Francisco again.
All in all it was a good trip. Even though the end was a bit of a bummer.
日本はすごい楽しかった。懐かしかった。
まった、夏に会うね～日本。<3