Oh, the places you'll go!

The first city that I visited was Yokohama. It is the second largest city in Japan.Highlights for the day included visiting the mall where I got this absolutely positively deliscious parfeit. It was a combo of frozen yogurt, whip cream, bananas, caramel and a waffle. yummy! I enjoyed seeing a guy that made his dinero by playing music on the streets. He was stationed in a yellow box with an opening at the top. He starts advertising by shaking a maraca-like object, until someone drops money in his tray. After the money is deposited, he opens the front flap and plays music. It was actually kind of funny. Japanese people are big on wearing anything that has English writing on it, so at the mall I kept seeing T-shirts and accesories with English phrases on them that made absolutely no sense! One lady had on a bag that said "I love grass grow" Look at this T-shirt, it says: "Make love to like it too much, move over darling please when me your love" I guess ignorance really is bliss. I wonder if that's the same situation for Americans that get those Japanese and Chinese tatoos.Who knows?

A collaboration of college students

I shared my ride to the Atsugi naval base with an astonishing group of colleagues/teammates from Oregon, Cally, Colorado, and Iowa. The navy base that we stayed on was great. Basically, it's an Americanized navy base with lots of diversity, entertainment, grocery stores, apartments, schools, etc. On base we had the advantage of using the commisary (where everything was super cheap by the way) There is a really cool McDonalds here where they don't use any carbohydrates and they put eggs on their big macs! During my first week in Japan, my group and I went to a comfy and cool Korean restaurant. It was actually a Korean Bar-B-Q where you cook your own food in front of yourself and everyone else. Deliscious! We went to Lawsons and 7-11 where we bought Pocky-a popular Japanese candy- and other basics. One of my favorite stores was the 100 yen store, (aka dollar store). Everything in the Japanese stores seemed to be very clean, neat and orderly. Apparently, Japanese people are the nicest people you will ever meet. One night there was a Japanese restaurant owner who offered to buy dinner for some of my teammates and the other half of the group that I was with decided to stop by to say Hello. Apparently, the owner thought we wanted to eat there, but of course there was no room because the place was so tiny. So, the guy wanted to take a picture with us and his english was terrible, but he tried his best to lead us to another hot spot about two and one half blocks away. In turns out that we loved the restaurant, even though we never intended on eating out that night, but It's rude to leave a Japanese restaurant and not order anything.

Examining the Culture

One of the first things that I noticed about Japanese people is that they are very vein. Just about every women that I saw was dressed in heels.Everyone had fresh haircuts and stylish clothing and accessories on. The businessmen even wore stylish suits with the spiky hair and everything. It was crazy.Just like in America, the majority of Japanese people are very thin. Very seldom did I see a Japanese person that looked like they weighed over 130 lbs.I also remember seeing toilets with five or six buttons on the sides. There was one button that played music; another that sprinkled water; one for fragrance and two anonymous buttons. I heard that the music button is used by Japanese women so that people can't hear them when they're pooping. How weird! In some subway stations, there are traditional style Japanese toilets that are in the ground. Imagine that! There were vending machines everywhere. I even saw vending machines for beer and cigarettes.Japan seemed to be very clean and structured. Seeing as how there are usually no garbage cans anywhere I couldn't see Japan being anything else but clean. Near the airports, there are smoking booths. People always pay in cash (or yen) when eating out. Recycling is very imperative.People actually stand in lines when getting ready to board the subway train and everyone is quiet on the trains.Japan is one of the safest countries, if not the safest country in the world. I saw six year old school girls riding subway trains in stations that were 3 times as crowded as the ones in Times Square! Although the country is a bit structured, I suppose Japan is an example of what works. America needs to take notes.

The journey began

My journey to Japan as a camp adventure counselor/leader began on June 7, 2008 when I boarded a flight with Delta airlines from Tallahassee, Florida at 7:15 am. My plane took off to Altanta, Georgia where I boarded the final plane to Narita airport in Tokyo, Japan. I actually really enjoyed my 14 hour flight! I met two of my fellow camp adventure counselors and an interesting plane buddy on this flight. Of course the majority of the passengers on the airplane were Japanese, but to my suprise, there were a few African Americans, Hispanics, Phillipino and White passengers. I had my own personal television as well as a plethora of movies, sitcoms, music and games. The flight attendants served me numerous times and my favorite meal was the japanese noodles (I can't remember the name) They were cold thin noodles sprinkled with black seeds. On the side of the noodles was a liquidy dipping sauce that was so deliscious and it was a mixture of ginger, onion, etc. Overall the plane ride was very relaxing (probably because I slept for most of the ride), but I felt like the sun never went down! Jet lag kicked in hard when in I landed in Japan. I arrived in Tokyo around 1:00 pm and besides making a phone call to my grandma, meeting a few new faces and reading a few signs, all I can remember doing was sleeping!