harajuku girls and rice rolls.

Last dance. Yes, it’s my last chance. So, let’s dance! Let’s dance. Last port! Last port! Yes, it’s my last port. Juuu-pan. Japan! No. But, for real, guys. This is it, my last port. Well, other than Hawaii, but at that point we are back in Amurica and all the fun is gone. It’s back to cell phones and internet and cars and elections and malls. But that’s a different post. Now, we are talking about Japan.

So, let me preface Japan by saying that I was having a…sort of, psychological…thing the entire time I was in Japan. I felt like, because it was our last foreign port, I needed it to be the best it could possibly be but I also wanted all the other ports I had just experienced within short succession of one another to make sense, to be processed and filed away, at least temporarily, in my catalog of ports, by the time I had gotten there. Well, I am not sure I accomplished either of these things. I certainly, even still, have not begun to processed Vietnam or China or Singapore. I think all of that will have to happen when I get home and will continue to happen long into the future. 

at the second hand market.

I decided to travel Japan with a small group of just four. The nice thing about Japan was that it was small enough and easy enough to travel that we could constantly run into other Semester at Sea’ers if we wanted to or explore on our own as a small group if we wanted to. Fun fact: Japan is about the size of California but 128 million people live there. About million shy of half the population of the entire US. Japan was organized like China by Semester at Sea, in that you were able to travel overland from Kobe to Yokohama or choose to get back on the boat for the one-day transit to Yokohama. I chose to travel overland again.

The first day, we decided to explore Kobe. We wanted to find some Kobe beef but decided we didn’t want it bad enough to pay the $30 a bite it costs to say you had Kobe beef in Kobe. Literally. Thats what is costs. Instead, we explored a secondhand market downtown. This market was so confusing because it was not a market full of secondhand Japanese items but a market full of secondhand clothes and knick-knacks from the United States. They had random things like old pins, old football jerseys from high schools in places like Nevada and Iowa, just the most obscure things you could think of.

We spent most of the day there and then took the subway to Osaka, which is only about 45 minutes away. That night we stayed in a capsule hotel. This is "a thing" in Japan and its so interesting! Each person gets their own little capsule with a bed, a T.V., towels for the showers, all the necessities in a probably 6 by 3 foot space. It’s actually really comfortable and was only $12 a night!