Day 1 Tuesday April 10, 2012: We arrived in Kobe, Japan! Once we got into the port terminal we had to go through the longest immigration process so far. Japanese officials got on the ship to take everyone's temperature. Don't worry I passed! Apparently if you didn't they took you to a Japanese doctor who deemed you sick or not sick. That would have been terrifying! After this we waited on the ship for a long time. Finally we were allowed off the ship. Little did we know that we would be standing in line for an hour going through immigration. We had to get our fingerprints taken, photos taken, and our passports checked and stamped, and go though customs. Annoying, but I got done with this process around 11:30 am and we got to the port at 7:30 am so it took awhile. The terminal was in a weird spot and you needed to take the train from the terminal to get anywhere. I figured out how to buy a train ticket and the lady at the information desk in the terminal told me to go to Sannomiya, which is their downtown. So I got on the train and made it Sannomiya! Once I got there it was a little chaotic trying to find my way out of the station. I could tell right away this was definitely going to be the hardest country to get around by myself. Everything was in Japanese and no one spoke any English. In China there were some people that spoke English and a lot of the signs were in Chinese then English as well. Not in Japan! I got lost for the majority of the day but it turned out well! I stumbled across the best bakery and got some food and sat outside in a really pretty park and people watched. People in Japan have the BEST fashion. I thought people in China dressed nice, but in Japan it is more my style of clothing. I was literally obsessed with every girl's outfit that walked by. After exploring around Kobe I went back to the ship to retrieve Bridget from her FDP. We showered and went out to the best dinner! We were walking along this street and happened to find a restaurant on the 7th floor of some building that had a dinner deal on Kobe beef and wine! We had the most amazing dinner and it was fairly cheap between the two of us. When we walked in we realized it was a traditional Japanese restaurant and we took our shoes off at the door and sat on the floor cross-legged at a table surrounded by rice paper walls. We ordered beef, sushi, dumplings, edamame, these fried cheese and meat things, and sake bombs! Yum! It was such a good dinner. We then went out for the night and had a fun time in Kobe!
Day 2 Wednesday April 11, 2012: I woke up early in the morning to go to Hiroshima. We took a five-hour bus ride to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was a long bus ride, but a beautiful one. Japan is stunning. The small mountain villages we passed that were tucked away in the mountains hidden behind cherry blossoms were picture perfect. It was crazy how much of a contrast urban Japan is from rural Japan. They are both pretty in their own ways. I prefer rural Japan because of the landscapes and peaceful quality it has. Once we got to the museum I spent two hours inside. The first thing I saw when I walked in was a huge picture of a watch stopped at 8:15. It said Atomic bombing 8:15 am August 6th, 1945. It has a quote at the bottom of the picture that said, "A dragonfly flitted in front of me and stopped on a fence. I stood up, took my cap in my hands, and was about to catch the dragonfly when…" I braced myself for a very depressing day. It was very informative and I never knew a lot of the events leading up to the actual bombing of Hiroshima. It seemed as though my teachers and textbooks left a lot of detail. It is one thing learning about this event in American classrooms but it is a whole different experience actually seeing first-hand the complete devastation we caused to this city and Japan as a whole. I walked through a part of the museum that was a remembrance for all the children lost. I almost started crying because they had a real-life depiction of what people looked like right after the bomb hit. Their skin was hanging off their bodies and their clothes were bloodied and tattered. The descriptions I read on the plaques were disturbing to say the least. After visiting Hiroshima and the museum and memorial monuments I don't understand how The United States could have done that to these people. It seemed like a science experiment to me as I was reading the leading up to the A-bomb. It seemed to me like the United States acted like a 5-year-old boy on Christmas morning. Excited to find a new toy, use it, and show it off to their friends. Henry Stimson said this in his diary on June 6th, 1945, " I told him I was anxious about this feature of war (area bombing/nuclear bombing) for two reasons: first, because I did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities; and second, I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapons would not have a fair background to show its strength." The reaction of the president was a laugh. I cannot even explain how mad these diary entries and all the documents between scientists and the president made me. After the bomb was dropped in August, by December 1945 140,000 people were dead. However, the number of people affected was much higher than that. There were people with severe burns, mutilations, deformities, diseases, infections, etc. Women who were pregnant when the bomb went off either died, or survived and their babies died or were born with severe deformities and mental retardations or died days after being born. Years after the bombing there were physical and mental problems with many newborns because of the radiation from the bombing. After leaving the museum I went to the memorials. I saw a lady surrounded by cameras and security men putting peace flags on a monument. It was the Queen of Cambodia. How cool! The most eerie thing I saw that day was the city center left behind with it's twisted metal beams that were reshaped by the heat of the bomb and the bubbling cement with black rain still staining its surface. It was one of the only structures to survive the bombing and it stood next to a river surrounded by the prettiest cherry blossoms I had ever seen. It showed that Japan has been able to survive and move on from this catastrophic event that left the city and people in rubble and ruins. The Japanese were very strong in every sense to not retaliate after the bomb but declare they wanted peace and they wanted no one to use a nuclear bomb ever again. They then began to rebuild what we destroyed. Not that they could ever replace what they lost in terms of loved one's lost. I understand the Japanese were not all innocent. I understand they killed Americans with a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. I understand we were at war with Japan. I don't understand how we thought using a nuclear weapon was a justified action when Japan was on its last breath and it was only a matter of time before they surrendered. I'm not quite sure how Japan has forgiven us for what we did, and maybe they haven't. I had a similar feeling in Hiroshima that I did when I was in Vietnam. It is easy to declare war on a country as a whole, but we forget that these people are just like us. It was a very eye-opening experience and I'm glad I decided to take the day to visit the museum and memorial structures. It is something I will never forget. When we left the museum we took the bullet train (the coolest, nicest, fastest train I have ever been on) back to Kobe. I got on the ship and we set sail that night for Yokohama!
Day 4 Friday April 13, 2012: Woke up nice and early in Yokohama, Japan to go on my last Semester at Sea trip! I couldn't believe this was my last international port. I headed to Mt. Fuji and was so excited to finally see this mountain I have only read about in books about global warming. In Al Gore's book An Inconvenient Truth he talks about how the amount of snow on the top of Mt Fuji has been significantly decreasing because of global warming. Anyways! Our guide told us that this is the second time all year Mt. Fuji has been open to the public because normally the road conditions are not safe to drive on, and you cannot even see the mountain because of the cloud cover. As we were driving all of the sudden the massive snow covered mountain was in front of our bus. It was so beautiful. The presence of this mountain is seen for miles and the beauty of the cherry blossoms with the white mountain in the background was amazing. We drove up to about the halfway point of Mt. Fuji and it was freezing! It reminded me a lot of Boulder, snow everywhere and 32 degrees, just like home! It was weird being in snow because I feel like I have totally skipped winter this year. What a contrast from Ghana and India! After walking around outside and taking in the snow and mountains we went to the town of Hakone. Hakone literally means boxed-mountains, because it is a small town enclosed in the center of a ring of mountains with Mt. Fuji peaking up through the greenery atop other mountains. We went on the Konagatake Ropeway, which took us high up in the air over sulfur hot springs and mountains. We ended the ride at Lake Ashi where we took a boat ride across the beautiful lake, taking in the serene landscapes as we floated along. After relaxing in Hakone for a while longer we finally were off to Tokyo! Once we got to Tokyo we checked into the Hotel Grand Palace. It was a very nice hotel and I got a room to myself, AND I they had free internet which made me the happiest girl in the world. I finally got to get in touch with friends and family, which was very nice to say the least. I then showered, got ready, went out for some delicious Japanese cuisine, and went out on the town for a little bit on my last night in a different country!
Day 5 Saturday April 14, 2012: I got to sleep in until 7:30 am! How exciting! The hotel bed was so comfortable I didn't want to get up. The weather wasn't helping either. It was about 40 degrees in Tokyo and pouring rain all day. I wasn't prepared for such miserable weather so I was freezing all day. I had a delicious breakfast at the hotel and then we headed for the Meiji Shinto Shinto Shrine, which is a shrine dedicated to the spirits of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. After that we went to the Imperial Palace Plaza. Of course we couldn't go in to meet the emperor, what's up with that? Then we went to lunch at a local, traditional Japanese restaurant, similar to the one I first went to in Kobe. The food was interesting. We were served tofu soup, raw squid, raw tuna, and raw shrimp with the head still on it and the antenna things were spilling over my bowl, white rice, edamame, and mushrooms. I politely ate everything except for the raw stuff (after my stomach bug in Beijing I have been weary of raw food). I was still hungry when I left lunch but we went to the Asakusa Kannon Temple, which is the most popular Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Even though the weather was bad I found myself looking out at a sea of umbrellas waiting to get into the temple to pray. After visiting the temple we got to walk around in the nearby markets. I ate at a sushi bar that has a conveyor belt that serves the sushi. Each plate is a different color and each colored plate is a different price. You just grab what you want when it comes by on the belt! It was amazing sushi. I did some last minute shopping for gifts and took in all that I could knowing this was my last country I would be in before I headed home. We all headed back to the ship after this, bummed about leaving Japan, especially the food, beauty, and the friendliest people.
Japan was seriously amazing! The culture is so rich and incredible. I envy the women's fashion and beauty. I will miss the food more then in any port. I will miss being in a big city and traveling an hour outside of it and being greeted by Mt. Fuji and Lake Ashi in Hakone. It was a beautiful country filled with shy but friendly people. The language barrier was extremely frustrating at times because it was rare to find at least one person that spoke English but I made it through. I am so grateful for the opportunity to have seen all that Japan had to offer and hope that one day I can visit again to see everything I wasn't able to in four days!
I have 18 days left at sea filled with final papers and final exams. I will have a one-day break in Hawaii on Wednesday April 25th and then I will arrive in San Diego May 2nd in the morning where my parents will be to pick me up! I cannot believe this is my last blog post I will be writing on this trip about a foreign country. It is going to be really weird not looking forward to a different country for next week, but I am looking forward to being back home :)
Miss everyone!
Lots of love,
Alli
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