Yokohama

Today I got up and went to meet Rachel in front of Ichigaya station and we were going to figure out what to do for the day. This time I actually got on the right train and ended up at Ichigaya instead of some other random place in Tokyo. I also got there not only on time but early. It was a proud moment. Before I met Rachel I wandered into some bookstore and was looking around and I heard english so I went over to see what it was. It was a tape recording of a man talking about the diversity of America and how being American can mean you came from Europe, Asia, Africa or wherever. (Mind you Japan is 99% ethnic Japanese) He was talking really slow on the tape so I assume it was for an english lesson.

I met Rachel and she told me that some of the girls were planning on going to Yokohama today and invited us to go along. (The girls being the other exchange students going to Hosei, from the UK and America) I figured that was a pretty good plan. Yokohama is the port city to the south of Tokyo. It's the second biggest city in Japan by population.

So went went off to Yokohama. I'm not sure how long it took but it was closer than I thought, probably less than an hour. We got there and got went just looking around the station to see what was close. We went to this huge department store and got something to eat in the food court. The food court was crazy busy and We couldn't find enought seats to fit us all so we ate on a bench for a while. After lunch we headed out to find some of the parks in the area to just sit around and relax. We found one called 山下(Yamashita). When we got there we heard an ambulance coming but when the paramedics got out they didn't seem like they were in any rush. They took the stretcher out kind leisurely and strolled down the park and when they came back with the man on the stretcher who was bleeding pretty bad somewhere on his head, they were still walking pretty slow like they didn't have anywhere to go. I'm guessing we missed some vital details.

After the park we continued to walk down the main street and went into the Chinatown district. It was so crowded. The already small streets were crammed with people probably doing some Sunday leisure travel. We just walked up and down the streets looking in all the little shops. We stopped inside an arcade and decided we needed some little pictures of all of us to put on our cool new Japanese phones so we could be hip like the rest of Japan. Everytime I go to one of those picture places it cracks me up. We then decided to walk back towards the station to see what else was over there. We found this massive ship looking thing that had a park on top. There was a boardwalk around the outside of the ship and on the inside there was grass for people to relax in. We went there for a while and watched all the people. It must have been dog day, because everyone was walking their dog. And all the dogs looked like sauseges. A lot of the dogs were dressed up in sweaters and even jeans. The grass on the top of the ship was kind of weird. It almost felt plastic but it was sort of soft.

We then went back to the station got on a train and went back to Ichigaya. And I went back to my dorm. When I read back on that it doesn't sound like too much happened today...but it was a full day with the walking and such.

I bought a pillow today from a store. So no more rock pillows. I was asking the girls how they liked their rock pillows and they said that they immediately went out and bought a western pillow after one night. So I guess I'm not the only one who prefers not to sleep on some rocks.

A funny only in Japan story: Last night at about 10:30 pm I heard a bunch of banging outside in the street and when I checked to see what was happening I saw that there were construction beginning...at 10:30. It wasn't just some light construction, they were tearing out a large part of the sidewalk and replacing it. This street out here is already noisy enough. But last night was awful. I really need to invest in a pair of earplugs. I suppose they had to do construction at night because the road is just too skinny and too busy to conjest traffic any more than neccesary.

To any of those thinking about going on a new diet. Try the "new in Tokyo" one. Since I got here I just haven't been hungry enough to want to eat. So when I eat I haven't been eating much lately. I usually have been trying to stuff myself when I eat just to make sure I eat enough. I also have been walking everywhere. I noticed that I am definately losing something today when I had to hold up my pants because they don't fit like they did 3 weeks ago when I wore them. I guess it's all that rice and non-fatty foods. Instead of the "freshman fifteen" you get the "tokyo ten" here. You lose 10 that is.

Oh and the email address for my phone I won't really use like a real email address. Because it would take way too long to type back an appopriate message, but feel free to send me short little emails on my phone if you want. It's free and you can't beat that.