Travel Diary: Japan Part I

Kon’nichiwa from Japan!!! (Well in all honesty I’m in a plane hovering over Beijing while writing this, but let’s pretend I got it done in Japan)

Day 1: Kobe, Japan

We’re here. We made it. We’re alive. Let me just say, 11 days on the ship without seeing land, it’ll get to you. BUT I’M IN JAPAANNNNN!!!! 

So the first thing we did was get off the ship and put on mouth masks—1/2 a cultural thing and 1/2 because they don’t want us getting sick. And let me tell ya, those puppies get real toasty when you wear them in a warm room. But that is beside the point. We got through customs and then we were truly in Japan.

We had to figure out how to get from the ship to downtown Kobe via the train system. Can you imagine 25+ clueless Americans trying to operate a Japanese map when we don’t even know where we are trying to get? It could have been a reality TV show. 

When you get a ticket, you feed it through and pass through the gate (which remains open) and if you don’t feed it through the arms slap together and keep you from getting through. It only took one person getting whacked by the arms for us to learn. 

We finally got a grip on what we were doing, kinda (how many Americans does it take to figure out Japanese subways? Answer: at least 4). The four of us made it to downtown Kobe and spent the majority of the day exploring the half indoor and half outdoor shopping center. And by exploring I mean getting lost, but hey we figured it out. 

Turns out the Japanese are night-owls, not early birds, so all that was open for food at 10am was McDonalds. I’m sorry to report my first international meal on this trip was McDonalds. I attempted to order a breakfast sandwich and water, but ended up with fries and a Coke, oh well.

A bit about what we observed while shopping: everyone there is very uniform, really only wearing black and grey. Everywhere you go is practically silent— even in downtown, there are no horns, no yelling, even the cars are quiet. The people rarely walk around in groups, mostly just by themselves, and they don’t smile. As someone who tends to smile more than necessary (probably to the point of being obnoxious sometimes) this threw me for a loop. 

Fast-forward to later that night and late-night sushi seemed like a FANTASTIC idea with 18+ people (future reference, don’t attempt this). Luckily in the midst of our confusion, this GEM of a woman rescued the lost Americans. She could tell we were helpless and she ended up calling her favorite sushi restaurant and made a reservation for all 18 of us then WALKED US ALL THE WAY THERE. She was not only a lifesaver, but a wonderful woman to learn from. 

The restaurant, Ganko Sushi in Kobe, was incredible. We showed up (again with so many freaking people) and they welcomed us right in. We had to take our shoes off and put them in lockers when we entered and then we were guided our table. The table was in its own ‘room’ separated by sliding paper walls and the table was only like two feet off the ground. In all honesty the room smelled like feet after a while, but the experience was awesome, go figure. 

Turns out it takes that many people who don’t speak Japanese about 2 hours to get food and pay at a traditional restaurant, but you know, it was part of the experience. So was the experience getting 18+ people back to the ship, yeesh. Everywhere we went there was more to eat, more to drink, and more to look at, hard not to stop every 5 seconds. 

Day 2: Osaka, Japan

My International Finance class’s field class (think of it like a mandatory field trip) spent the day in Osaka visiting the Japanese Stock Exchange, the Bank of Japan, and had a Q&A with expiate, Steve Zurcher. 

Shocker (for those of you that know), finance is not my cup of tea. I’d rather be interacting with people or doing something interactive. BUT, it was interesting to see how the Japanese operate in that world. I think my favorite part was the traditional lunch we got (I didn’t know what any of it was) see look:

Holy buckets though, what was really interesting was seeing the inside of the Bank of Japan. Our guide had said that she hadn’t even seen the inside of the gates before, so it was incredible we got to do this. The Bank of Japan acts as a third party for all the transactions that happen in Japan— they process over a trillion Japanese Yen worth of transactions a day. They are also responsible for all the Japanese bills, which are impeccably kept. Even a tiny little fold and they shred it to make a new one. That being said, money in Japan is revered to a completely different level than the US (its wild)… they’re only in circulation for a year!!

Any who, after that we got to meet with Steve Zurtcher, an American who has lived in Japan for 30+ years. This was SUCH a great experience because he knew what we were seeing, but had a different insight, awesome to process with him. Some crazy things that we learned from this meeting:

-There are 60,000 people over the age of 100 in Japan right now. 

-The Japanese population is supposed to drop by 30 million by 2050.

-Japan sells more adult diapers than children diapers. 

-Soon there will be only 2 working Japanese for every 1 retired Japanese.

From there, a group of us RAN (literally— can you imagine eight Americans running through a train station all with huge backpacks on? We stood out JUST A LITTLE) to catch our bullet train to Tokyo. 

THANK GOODNESS WE MADE IT. Fun fact about Japanese bullet-trains (they look practically the same as an airplane), you can turn the seats around to face each other. So we turned our row of three to face our buddies. This made the 2.5-hour trip 10x more fun. 

But remember how I said that Japanese literally don’t talk? Well its legitimately silent on the train, so we had to be mindful of that. Which is kind of hard when you can face all your friends. 

FINALLY we made it to TOKYOOOOOO!!!

Day 3: Tokyo, Japan

So day three, here we are. We stayed in Roponggi, which was 10 minutes from the heart of Tokyo (perfect location, so thanks mom for finding that!!!!). So the first thing we did was Shibuya Crossing— which is basically an intersection that every few minutes changes and people literally go in any direction they want through the intersection. It was so relaxed and then all of a sudden there were people everywhere… it was unbelievably chaotic. I thought it was pretty cool, but I thought it would be way bigger to be totally honest. 

Up next: Harajuku, which is basically just a different part of Tokyo (just like saying you’re from Minneapolis when you’re really from 10 min outside of Minneapolis).

Harajuku is where the food and shops of Tokyo are, but holy nuts it was so crowded. For Minnesota people, its like the MN State Fair at 1pm on a Saturday. 

After a few hours there, we were Harajukued-out. But not until we got our famous cotton candy and crepes (I know… not very Japanese, but we still got them). Just LOOK at this cotton candy, its HUGE and it was so tasty. So was the crepe (in all fairness, this wasn’t my crepe, it was Caroline’s… I ate mine in like .2 seconds so I had to take a picture of hers). Talk about a sugar rush after this!!!! 

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In Tokyo they have go-karts that are decorated like Mario Kart and you wear an outfit that looks like a Mario Kart character and you go on the streets like normal cars, it looked WILD!!!! Could you just imagine us zipping around downtown Tokyo like that?!

For dinner, we had conveyor-belt sushi…no words (it was that good). It took a bit to find in downtown Tokyo, but it was worth it.

Needless to say, our first three days in Japan have been nothing short of awesome. There’s just so much to say. So with that, I’ll chill out a bit and check in again once I write about days 4 & 5 (they’re just as exciting, let me tell ya). Arigato gozaimasu ta, thank-you for reading!!

P.S. you wouldn’t believe how many people would say grasias instead of arigato gozaimasu or would say arigato gozaimasu mucho…

P.P.S. check out these awesome robes in our hotel!!!!

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Til then, Sayonara!! (Glad to leave you with a picture of us in robes!)

Katelyn