Day 22: Feeling A LOT Like a Tourist!

Location: Miyjami, Japan

The futons last night were so comfy! I slept like a rock. We had a buffet style breakfast; I think they said it was a traditional Japanese breakfast. Personally, I just stuck with something semi-familiar after last night -- fruit, potatoes, toast. That’s right, I was way outside my box and still remembering the eyes staring at me from my plate.

The view from outside our ryoken. And also the path we walked to get to the shrine. 

It felt like we were on a movie set.

 We walked to a really cool shrine on the island.  When the tides in the water are high, and the water comes in around this shrine, it looks like it is "floating".  

The shrine on Miyajima. 

When the tide is higher (and it isn't the winter) the water would 

be under the shrine so it would seem as if it were floating.

This shrine is also on a lot of the postcards that people from SAS picked up but had no idea about it. After touring the shrine we played total tourist. We walked in and out of shops to pick up a few souvenirs for home. Around noon we headed back to the ferry which took us to the bullet train to take us to Kobe.

A pagoda that was near the shrine in Miyajima

Our cute tour guide.

 She kept us informed about Hiroshima, the atomic bomb, and Miyajima. 

She was even willing to tell us an embarrassing story about how she walked into the boys bathhouse (naked).

 Such a pretty view. A picture was a must!

 Deer run wild on Miyajima. They aren't afraid to get really close to you.

Brianna and Jillian

Miyajima, Japan 

When we got back to the port terminal I had a few Yen left in coins. I decided to go find a vending machine in the port terminal to spend the rest of my Yen. I bought a whole bunch of Cokes. We aren't allowed to take bottled or screw tops onto the ship. We are only allowed to take cans on and even then the security people have to be able to read the ingredients. I knew they wouldn't be able to read it but I thought they would let me take my Coke cans on because everyone recognizes “Coca Cola”. I then attempted to get Internet in the terminal before I hopped back on the ship but with everyone else trying to do the same thing the Internet was terribly slow. It basically wasn't worth it.

I took a much needed shower after returning to the ship. Then I went down to Shelley and Lauren's room to have story-time and hear about Shelley's adventures in Japan.  Alexa, Kyle, Sawyer, Shelley, and Lauren had dinner together so that we could hear about what everyone did in Japan and squash any rumors that had developed over the course of our time in Japan.

Around 2000 hours we went to the seventh deck. There was a band that was playing as we left Japan. It was a very sweet gesture. I think they did it since they didn't do the water show when the ship entered Kobe. 

When we were on the seventh deck we ran into Doc Micah's son Zev (he's a fourth grader). Zev was telling us what it means when the Captain sounds the horns of the ship. He said the first one means that we are leaving the dock. And the next set of horns "tells the other ships to get the hell out of the way." We were quite surprised that this little guy was talking about this on the seventh deck. We went inside one of the classrooms and conducted our own little interview with him. Hassan (he joined us listening to Zev tell us about the horns) asked Zev a few random questions about his time in Japan as well as his story about the horns while Sawyer videotaped it. Let’s just say you have to get pretty creative to entertain yourself when there is very little to entertain yourself with on the ship.

Observations about Japan: 
• There are advertisements everywhere in Japan. Our senses were definitely overstimulated after our time in Japan. 
• Trash cans are hard to come by. I later found out that after the 1995 Subway bombing in Japan they got rid of all their trash cans. Even with no trash cans it seems like a very sterile place -- there is none if any trash around the city. 
• Japan youth culture is really into boy bands: J-Pop. 
• The Japanese dress very well and extremely fashionably. 
• At many of the restaurants, and other places where I ordered, the drinks were in much smaller containers. They only had one drink size to choose from (such as a tall size drink from Starbucks). We are definitely a super-sized culture!
• Japan is a very quiet place, especially compared to the United States.