Yokohama/Tokyo/Mt. Fuji!

Ko-nee-chi-wa! (probably spelled that wrong haha)

So how are you guys?!?! I hope you all are doing great!! So we just left our first port in Japan, Yokohama. We are currently sailing for one day to Kobe, Japan which is in Southern Japan and very close to Osaka. Okay Japan was way cool!! Gorgeous harbor and very unique cities. I will tell you all about it…just as soon as I respond to your-all’s comments first!

Oh I guess I should explain the picture too huh? This is me in front of Mt. Fuji! I know there is a big cloud moving in at the left side of the frame so the picture isn’t just great but this one has me with it. I have a ton of other pics that are much better with just the actual mountain that you all can see this summer when I get home.

Sara – Haha sis you good! I know how you like to stress for no reason, it’s no biggie! $6,000 for Swine Week…bahaha been there! Don’t worry, it will all work itself out. I’m sure you are doing better in Bio than you think, if I remember correctly this sounds a lot like last semester and you ended with an A. Just keep your priorities straight and it will all be good. That’s exciting about your Quartz audition…and yes I will definitely be praying! And you haven’t seen Top Gun?!?!!?!? What?!?!!? Yeah you need to fix that STAT!! Chris – Dude Edmond has been nuts with the snow this year. That is crazy!! I am so jealous of your Boston trip…you will have so much fun!! (Just not as much fun as we had in New York haha) And hey I actually looked for some sushi yesterday but none was fresh so I am waiting till Kobe. I’m gunna do it just to prove you wrong brotha lol. And yes I am already starting to go food crazy! Remember after Nicaragua how we all went nuts in the Atlanta airport cause we had eaten the same thing for a week? Okay multiple that by 3 and that is my current situation on the ship haha. Dude you will be one of the first people I call when I hit Edmond so we can go get some grub!! Alex – Bristow…hmmmm…been there!!! That sucks man, on the ship my teachers are like the coolest people ever and they don’t treat us like students. I actually was with a teacher all day yesterday and we talked frequently. No man I am not getting to watch LOST so don’t ruin anything for me…I will be watching it on DVD in the fall. Dude summer will come soon enough. When I get back I am bringing a summer’s worth of fun with me and it is gunna be Epic!!!!!! Uncle John – yeah we have been hearing rumors of the pro lockout and no-cap year. That would make for some interesting situations with a lot of teams/players. Thank you so much for the Jim Elliot quote. That is awesome and will be on my mind for the remainder of the trip! Mackenzi – I’m assuming this is Mackenzi Hargrove? What up girl?!? I didn’t know you were looking into studying abroad?!?! That is so awesome! You definitely need to look into Semester at Sea…it is the best experience EVER! You would love it girl!! And thank you so much for your prayers, they are very much appreciated!! Dad and Mom – that is so awesome about the zipline, although I am skeptical that mom enjoyed flying through the air haha. That is so tight about the volcano rumbling! Maybe it will erupt!! How sick would that be?!?!

So Japan!! First of all Japan is SO modern. Like it is one big city touching one big city, complete with subways, above ground train rails, and bullet trains. Honestly except for the signs in Japanese, you could totally forget where you were and feel like you were in LA or New York. Layouts are extremely similar to any other big city which is cool but at the same time nothing really sticks out as unique to Japan; although Japan was amazingly clean. I noticed as we were driving that there was no trash on the street whatsoever, so I asked my tour guide about it. Her response was very surprising! She said that Japanese people have a common understanding that everyone cleans up after themselves. There aren’t even trashcans except in the really big touristy spots. She explained that all the people simply carry around some sort of plastic bag and they put their trash in it as it accumulates throughout the day. Then they throw it away at home at the end of the day. This was one extremely respectable characteristic of the Japanese people; in addition, the Japanese people were incredible! They always smile and nod at you as you walk by and despite a language barrier you feel like you are still having a conversation with the person because they always smile at you and have very positive body language towards us. Some spoke very broken English but again it wasn’t really a problem because if you have ever travelled you know how to get around the city despite the language barrier.

Okay so the most amusing part for me was watching the other SAS students in port. I mean we had been to Hawaii but that was still America and no one had any troubles. Now that we were in a foreign country it was very entertaining to watch people in a foreign environment. The kids who had never travelled before stuck out like a sore thumb. You had your kids who were decked out in heels, skirts, and blouses (yeah I said heels) that didn’t understand how much walking they would be doing. Like on my tour (which I will tell you about in a sec) there was a girl in heels and by the second stop she was struggling hard-core. Then you had your kids who had travelled before, they were the ones in comfortable walking shoes, jeans, and shirts with a hoodie or light coat just in case. (Japan tends to be rainy in random spurts throughout the day) Oh and watching people put on a money belt for the first time is hilarious, this one girl thought that you wore in over your shoulder like a single backpack strap. I was trying to explain to her how to like tuck it in to your waistband like a fanny pack under your pants and she was like “Well then you have to dig in your pants for your money” and I was like “Yeah that’s the point cause then no one can pick pocket you.” Just another group of things that I owe to my parents for teaching me early on! Thanks MOM and DAD!!!

Okay so day 1 in Yokohama. The ship arrived at port around 9:30 (we were late due to the storm detour we took) and we had a little welcome reception at the dock for us! I was actually awake and was able to watch as we pulled in at the last second. There was a traditional Japanese drum-line on the roof of the terminal which played for like an hour or so and they were so good!! It was a pleasant surprise to start our day. For the next 3.5 hours we went through the extremely slow process of going through Customs and Immigration. The Japanese officials were very thorough. They even screened us medically and if anyone was feverish they were not allowed on the boat. I haven’t heard of anyone that was stuck on the boat yet but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. So after finally clearing customs/immigration it was actually time for my tour to start. I signed up for a Modern Tokyo City Tour. We boarded our bus with our tour guide and set off for Tokyo. It was about a 45 minute bus ride into Tokyo from the Yokohama which isn’t that far at all! Our first stop on the tour was an Imperial Garden in the center of the city. It was the spitting image of Central Park in the sense that it was this random garden in the middle of skyscrapers and the hustle and bustle of city life. The garden used to be a resort for the Emperors of Japan and there were some very cool looking statues and structures throughout various parts of the park, and apparently Clinton met with the Prime Minister of Japan several years ago on some famous wooden bridge in the park. It is supposedly a really famous picture but I had never heard of it, which honestly isn’t that surprising, I tend to tune people out when I hear them mention the name Clinton haha. The coolest part of the park for me was these two stations that were built for the sole purpose of allowing the ancient emperors to duck hunt in the park. I thought that was pretty cool to see an ancient method of something that I do regularly in the present. After the park we went to the Toyota Showroom. Okay that was way cooler than I thought it would be! They had basically every model of Toyota and Lexus on the market right now on display. It was like a high tech state fair showroom. And I say high tech because there was a test track thing that looped through the building and another one outside. We weren’t allowed to do this however due to time constraints.

The showroom was a building built into the side of a shopping complex and of course there was a McDonalds and Starbucks right outside next to the bus. Again you saw all the little American kids run into get their mochas, lattes, big-macs, and chicken nuggets. My friend Christina and I were like “Shoot we want Japanese food.” I mean c’mon, you are in Japan for crying out loud!! I’m sure the burgers and coffee were good (and I’m not saying I wouldn’t have enjoyed it) but you can get that at home!! How often are you in Japan?!?! So we decided to go into this little Japanese shop and pick some random things off the shelf to try. She got some kind of rice/pork roll wrapped in seaweed and I got a type of rice cake thing that I’m pretty sure was cooked in some kind of chicken broth or something at one point. She ate half of mine and I ate half of hers so that we could try different things. Okay both were really good. I actually liked the seaweed wrapped one better than the regular one (now that’s a sentence I thought I would never say). While I am talking about food I guess I will just go ahead and tell you what other Japanese things I ate. I had some sort of bread/pastry thing that was definitely cherry something. The best way to describe it was like a croissant/doughnut with about half the sugar. That was bomb!! Then I had these little wafer things covered in some sort of caramel milk coating, I mean I had to try something simple and snacky. A type of drink I tried was this milk tea drink that was chilled. I didn’t hate it and I guess I would drink it again if it was the only thing available but it was really the only thing I have tried so far that I didn’t really like. But I mean it’s all about trying stuff so I didn’t mind! Then for dinner one night I had this Japanese marinated Chicken that was very good…I also tried some Avacado Sashimi that I thought was going to be sushi but turned into just being a lumpy form of guacamole. Oh and these like ginger gummy candies and they were very interesting to say the least. Because of my tours and what I did in Yokohama I didn’t have too much time to eat meals so I was just trying to grab as much as I could along the way. But in Kobe I will have more free time and will get to eat more traditional food and hopefully sushi…just for you Chris ;).

Okay so the rest of my Tokyo tour. After the Toyota building we headed to the electronics district!! This place was mind-blowing!! They had everything. Dad I saw a camera lens you would have peed your pants if you had seen. It was $9000 US dollars and massive!! So for a mental image…think of a city block…20+ story building…all floors just decked out with everything electronics. Mike all I could think of was you walking around and finding the best parts to make the best computer ever. You would have loved it man! From high tech refrigerators, to home theater systems, to state of the art massage chairs (which we got in trouble for sitting in and taking pictures), this place had everything. We were also told by our tour guide that this is where the CIA comes to buy the pieces to their listening devices and transponders. Really really cool to think about huh?!?! Oh and while I was walking around, a guy totally tried to pick-pocket me. He did the whole, “bump into me on accident” routine. I totally felt his hand in my back pocket for a split second. Too bad for him that nothing was there but my big booty!! Money belt…boom!! So after the electronic capital of the planet, we headed to our last stop of the evening, Tokyo Tower!! I can’t remember exactly how high it was but it is the highest building in Tokyo, but ironically not the tallest tower in Japan. Anyways we got to ride up to the observation decks which were around 175 meters up. Some people were freaking out cause the elevator was glass and they did not like the fact that they could see out lol. On the observation deck there was this section of the floor that was glass so you could stand on it and just look straight down to the pavement below. It was intense!! Only about half the kids were brave enough to stand on the glass but it wasn’t scary at all. There was like 8 of us on it at one point and nothing happened. The coolest part of the tower was the views of Tokyo at night! Altho a lot of the pictures aren’t the best because of the windows in the way, but it was still awesome!! After Tokyo Tower our tour of Tokyo was finished for the night. The bus took us back to the ship in Yokohama and from there, Sarah, Natalie, Abby, and I decided to venture into the heart of Yokohama for the night and try our luck at finding an internet café. It was like 9:30 when we left the port area which was fine because the subways run in Yokohama until after midnight. We rode the subway a couple stops into the heart of the city and were able to find an internet café that Sarah had researched beforehand. The subways in Yokohama were amazingly simple, nothing compared to Barcelona or Russia. They made the Japanese Subway seem like it was in English, but it was fun riding the subway super late at night. Just another side of city life that not everyone get to enjoy…those are the experiences that I really enjoy. Internet Cafes in Japan are a really big deal and are a subculture of their own. All the computers are their own personal cubicles and it is common for people to spend the night in the café. We poked around for an hour taking advantage of amazingly cheap internet compared to the ship. I caught up on my OU email which didn’t take long and then caught up on the sports world news. I saw the video of Shaun White winning gold at Winter X a week or so ago and that run was SICK!! 95.whatever on run 1…who does that?!?!?! And that one hit on one of the middle tricks was so huge…ahhhhh it was really nice to get to watch that cause I was bummed I missed it. Oh and I also saw his wipeout video and that just makes winning that much more impressive after a fall like that in practice. He is a man among boys when it comes to snowboarding. USA all the way baby!! I also did some research about possible Brazil trips because I don’t really have anything planned and I wanted to use the good internet search engines to find out what I could possibly do. So after working on the internet for a little less than an hour we walked around Yokohama for a bit and then caught the subway back to the port area. We walked around the city some more and then decided to call it a night cause 3 of us had 7 a.m. trips the next morning that we had to wake up for. And that was what we did day 1 in Japan!!

Day 2 in Yokohama was just as crazy as the second! As I mentioned above, I left the dock at 7 a.m. for my trip to Mt. Fuji and Hakone. The bus ride was 2 hours Northeast of Yokohama in the opposite direction as Tokyo. So many people signed up for this tour that we had two charter buses. The majority of my bus (like everyone but 3 of us) slept most of the way there. When we got to Mt. Fuji, it was absolutely amazing! The tour guide had told us that the majority of the time you can’t see the mountain because it is always so cloudy or overcast, but it was clear except for one little cloud at the top which actually made for some really cool pictures!! I was sitting right behind the dean of students on our bus and she was telling us that this was her 3rd time to do this exact same SAS trip and the only time she had ever seen Mt. Fuji except being on it in a cloud. We got so lucky and it was awesome! Mt. Fuji was breathtaking to look at!! I have seen my fair share of mountains before but Mt. Fuji was one of kind for sure. It is a volcanic mountain so it literally stands off by itself which is a big part of its grandeur. The top chunk of the mountain was covered in snow and it was literally like looking at a postcard the whole time. We made a stop at the visitor’s center upon arrival and everyone was hurrying to take pictures of the mountain while we could still see it. There was a nice little second story balcony for picture taking and everyone went straight there (everyone except those with tiny bladders). After about 5 minutes of picture taking the clouds moved in and covered up the mountain almost instantly. We really did get lucky getting to see as much of it as we did because it was covered up within about 20 seconds once the clouds rolled in. Don’t worry dad, I got plenty of quality pics while I had the chance. After poking around the visitor center for awhile we headed into the national park and started our ride up the mountain. Like I said it was cloudy so the views at the various stations were hindered but we didn’t care cause we all realized how lucky we had been. The temperature got significantly colder with every station we went up the mountain and I felt sorry for my friend Cara because all she had on was a really thin T-Shirt. She said she had a hoddie in the bus, but for some reason she didn’t have it on and she was not happy at the 4th station (the highest point we are allowed to go in the winter season).

After driving around the various stations in Mt. Fuji National Park, we headed down the mountain and set off for Hakone. Hakone is a region of Japan near the Japanese Alps that is a more rural area of Tokyo. Although rural in Tokyo is definitely not what I would consider rural but whatever. In Hakone there are 5 big naturally formed lakes that dot the region and the big attraction for the Japanese are the hot springs that are abundant in the region. We didn’t get to see any of the hot springs in Hakone because it wasn’t part of our tour but our guide told us all about them. She also explained that a lot of the bigger corporations and extremely wealthy individuals had vacation houses in Hakone. Similar to American beach or mountain houses as far as vacation houses go. In Hakone our first stop was one of the lakes which we got to take a boat ride across. The lake was incredibly gorgeous and all the low level clouds just added to the incredible landscape around the lake and surrounding hill country. The boat ride took us to the opposite side of the lake where we transferred to a cable car (really big gondola) that took us up the highest mountain in the Japanese Alps. Okay I have ridden in ski gondolas before that seat like 6-8 people. Yeah we crammed over 100 in this gondola!! Actually it made for a really cool pic, but anyways, it was crazy with so many of us in this one cable car. And some people we had to convince to do it cause they were scared of heights. The cable ride was 7 minutes, although it got really awesome about halfway up. We started going into the clouds and all of the sudden visibility just dropped. We were literally in the clouds. I have never been in weather like this before and it was so intense, although the people that we had talked into riding with us were not happy that they couldn’t see the ground, let alone 5 feet in any direction. All the sudden we arrived at the station at the top, I say all of the sudden because we didn’t even see the station but rather felt the cable car enter the station. We all clambered out of the car and realized that the “scenic views” were not gunna happen. I mean it was just white cloud all around us! About half the group started having a little pitty-party in the station and saying that “this was the worst idea ever, we can’t even see anything.” I was like “shoot let’s go explore!” So the brave people went outside and started walking around. There were marked paths but the trick was remembering when to take a left or right because if you forgot you were screwed. We counted off the visibility so that we could tell you guys back home. My friend Natalie stood in one spot and I started pacing off the yards and she yelled when she couldn’t see me at all anymore. Guess how far it was…23 yards!! I am not exaggerating at all…at 23 yards you couldn’t see anything…just a white wall!! So we kept walking down various paths kinda just moving as a group when we happened to come across a Shinto Shrine. It was cool cause it all the sudden appeared out of the cloud, seriously like a movie. Really dense cloud/fog and things start materializing out of it. We took some pics (again really cool with the fog/cloud cover) and then started to make our way back to the cable car station. By this time all the girls’ hair was soaking wet. It looked like Natalie, Abby, and Cara had all just stepped right out of the shower. I had a hat on so just the sides of my hair were wet. As we were hiking back we noticed that the cloud had gotten thicker, so we decided to pace it off again to see what the visibility was now. Ok guess what it had dropped to…14 yards!!!!!!!! 14!?!?!?! That is like nothing! Ahhhhh it was soooooooo cool!! We made it back to the cable car station and rode back down the mountain to meet up with the rest of the group who didn’t stay at the top cause they were “unhappy and grouchy.” Well they missed out and we had a great time!! After a couple more minutes of walking around the little town we boarded the buses and headed back to Yokohama. We had worked our way farther north throughout the day so the ride home took 2.5 hours. After walking/hiking/picture taking all day most of the students crashed again on the way home. My ADD wouldn’t let this happen though so I enjoyed the scenery and had a nice conversation with my Politics professor about Moab, Utah and all the cool stuff to do. He and his wife live in Moab and he was very impressed that I had heard of Moab, let alone been there. Like I told Alex, my professors on this trip are so cool and treat us like equals so it is so easy/natural to talk to them. We got back to Yokohama around 5:30ish and some of us decided to head into town to grab some Japanese food for dinner. I tried the chicken and avocado sashimi (described above in the food section). The girls I was with decided to do some shopping before heading back to the ship and I didn’t really want to shop so I headed back to the ship to take a run before we had to be back on the ship to leave. The terminal that our ship was docked on was huge and the roof was a scenic boardwalk type area with random grass patches and a lot of wood planking which a lot of the locals used as a running track. I haven’t gotten to run in like 5 weeks because of the blizzard that hit Edmond before I left and then there is nowhere to run on the ship, and I wanted to run in Japan!! I just ran on the roof of the terminal in laps and had an amazing view of the harbor at night. One of the best runs I have ever taken! It was awesome cause the city was all lit up and it was a clear night (which again was really rare for Japan). After I ran a couple miles I returned downstairs to get on the ship and got back on for the night. And that concluded day 2 in Yokohama!

After seeing Mt. Fuji and experiencing something so magnificent, it gives a whole new meaning when scripture talks about mountains bowing down and rejoicing to Christ. It is humbling to see such a unique and breathtaking piece of God’s creation in such a setting. God’s creation is so incredible and I was blessed to experience it. Then being all alone on the top of the mountain in Hakone, (another example of such isolation, just like the cave in Hilo) but at the same time knowing that God is always with me and nothing can separate me from Him. He is with me always and there is no greater feeling in the world than having Him on my side.

I hope you all are doing well and I miss each and every one of you! You are in my prayers and I greatly appreciate your prayers as I go through this adventure.

In His holy and majestic name!

T