Japan! (Day 3 Part 1)

   Transit day between Kobe and Yokohama was a strange sort of day.  There were so few people on the ship because most students had decided to travel independently to the next port.  Andrea and I had our sleepover and spend the day trying not to fall over as we were doing our homework.  (Rough seas.)  Since it was the anniversary of the Titanic sinking we watched a bit of the movie (probably the worst thing to do if we wanted to honor the victims) and took pictures of us on the deck in Titanic movie style (ok that is the worst thing we could have done.)  Not much else to say about that.

   I woke up in Yokohama having no idea what I was going to do that day.  I had been signed up for a home stay but I guess some of the families backed out so a few of us got bumped from the trip.  Everyone else I knew was on their own field programs.  Luckily, I met up with Andrea at breakfast and she had found someone who was also looking for a travel buddy for the day.  

   We got ready and then headed out with no idea where we were going (as all good adventures start.)  I got a map from a tourist office and we decided to head one direction to end up at a park.  Along the way we found a different park with some beautiful cherry blossom viewing.  There was also a mini-garden show going on which was cool to browse.  

    Having done the park thing, we turned back from the shore to head into the city.  We found a doll museum and I knew my mom would never forgive me if I had skipped that.  :0)  It was pretty cool.  There were dolls there from all different times in history all over the world.  I saw several dolls that my grandmas, mom, or I had growing up.  

I thought this one was a little scary actually.

NOT a Samantha doll as I had thought.  It's a Jennifer doll.  

Another rather creepy looking doll.

A Shirley Temple Doll!  (Queue "When I grow up.")

(Above) A friendship doll ceremony.  (Below) Friendship dolls.  Best idea ever!  :0)

Oh and I found some yummy maple candy.

    Our next goal was to find a mall.  We never quite made it to the big mall, but we did find a small one.  Things were pretty much way to expensive, but it was still fun looking around.  There were some beautiful fabrics and designs that would be totally worth all that money if I had had that much to spare.  We found a dollar store (really a $1.20 for us) and I picked up some snacks and, randomly, an eyelash curler.  I had always wanted one despite the fact that they kind of freaked me out and I was in Japan so.....(BTW I tried to use it tonight and I blinked while it was clamped and that led to ouch.  Maybe I'm not quite old enough to use one yet.)  

    At that point we were both pretty darn hungry.  I was being enthusiastic (difficult) because I absolutely wanted to have sushi and all the places we could find were western food.  Bleh.  Finally we found a grocery store in the basement which had an excellent sushi choice.  And don't worry, I made sure not to eat any endangered species.  :0)

    We took our lunch to the park outside of the baseball stadium to eat since it is considered obscene to eat in public here.  I was even hesitant to eat in the park, but lots of other people were eating lunch there, so I figured it was ok.  The sushi was SO good!  And the setting was beautiful!  There were huge tulip gardens all over the park and big trees sheltering the area.  We weren't the only ones enjoying the sights.  There was a street fair going on to celebrate the blooming of the tulips and cherry blossoms.  It was really cool but we didn't have time to really explore since the person I was with wasn't feeling well.