Japan! Day 4

As Winnie The Pooh would say, it was a blustery day out.  That kind of impeded the goal of the day which was to see the beauty of Mt. Fuji and Hakone.  Instead we used our imagination of how pretty it would look if we could see it.  haha  I still had a fun day though.

It was an early one, with my alarm going off at 5:45 am.  Then a quick breakfast and a dash to the bus by 6:45.  (I realize there was an hour of time in there, but for some reason I am always in a rush in the mornings.)  

The drive to Mt. Fuji was dismal, but relaxing.  I divided my time between listening to the guide talk about the area and listening to podcasts about neuroscience (don't judge.  Everyone has to have a hobby.)  :0P  

Mt. Fuji is the tallest mountain in Japan and seems like it is quite beautiful based on the pictures I have seen of it.  We were lucky that the roads up to half way up the mountain were open despite the fact that it was snowing and around 20 degrees F out.  Many of us, including myself were very much not prepared for this cold weather. 

 Luckily, I don't have temperature sensation in my feet so the fact that I was wearing flip flops actually didn't matter.  I even tested if I could feel cold by sticking my foot in a snow bank.  Nada.  After a while of walking around my feet went completely numb and kind of hurt, but other than that the cold was no problem.  For my feet that is.  The rest of my was quite cold.  

One of the highlights of the stop was to go to a Shinto temple for the goddess for good marriage.  Since one of my most bestest friends has recently gotten married I made a special wish just for them.  :0)  My guide showed me the proper way of doing it which goes: toss the coin in the well, bow twice, clap twice, close your eyes, fold your hands and say a prayer, bow twice, and clap twice more. 

The rest of the brief half hour stop (worst part about tours is you always feel hurried) I spent trying to stay warm in the gift stores.  I didn't want to buy anything (way too expensive!) so I kept myself busy by taking pictures of some of the cute/strange items for sale.

This wasn't for sale, but I didn't know where else to put this picture.  haha  I want my toilets with seat warmers back!  

Now that is an epic cheese stick!

From what I can tell, these were plastic baby heads, like off of a doll.  You could lift up their skull and inside was something that looked like Vaseline and lotion mixed together.  It it hadn't been $30, I would have definitely bought one.  haha

Is this golden poo?  Awesome!

This mysterious object was in the port but also didn't know where else to stick this picture.  

I got back to the bus early and my ship dad and I built snowmen.  :0)  It was too bad my hands don't share the immunity to temperature that my feet do!  Still, it was very fun making my first snowman in 5+ years!

Then back on the bus to the Mt. Fuji museum.  Again we only had a half an hour which I spent watching a dance and music performance.

We got our lunches on the bus and I took a picture.  EVen though I think those lunches were usually pretty disgusting, I know I will miss the sight of them when this voyage is over.

I could tell Hakone would be beautiful when the sun was out and visibility was better, but as it was, things all kind of looked pretty dreary.  I did have fun riding on some gondolas and boat across the lake.  The fog even cleared enough for a few minutes for me to get some pictures of the shore.  :0)  

Then a bus drive back and I had to say goodbye to land for a long time.  I think we have 10 or 11 days at sea now which will be full of the mountain of homework I haven't had time for over the last month.  I'm actually looking forward to the rest and being able to just hang out with people.  There still may be one or two people I know on this ship who I have not converted to Whovians.  :0P

We got a send off from port by an excellent band playing a mashup of every American song I can think of (disney, christmas, patriotic, etc.)

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.