Arrived New Years Eve and caught a train to Tokyo. As I guessed their transportation system is fantastic and I had no trouble figuring out where to go. Also, since I was at the airport station there were a lot of personal to help out and everyone spoke some english. Since I look totally white and pretty American too, people would just start speaking english to me and the escalator helper lady said welcome to japan! Lot's of bowing too. I've gotten use to that already now :)
New Years Eve was pretty anti climatic. A new years in japan consists of: eating soba noodles, watching some talent show on TV, going to a temple at midnight to pray etc or just staying with you family, and watching the sunrise. Not many parties and even less fireworks. I meet Jordan and we left in search of food. Found a delicious place but they didn't have soba so we picked some up from a 7-11. Tasted like wheat flour dough. Bleh. I've had soba since then and I'm pretty sure we accidentally bought raw soba. Oops. Next we went to Shibuya where I had read people countdown in the middle of a big street crossing (the shibuya crossing of course). We got there at 1130ish and there were tons of foreigners and police everywhere who apparently had shutdown the event. So we just went back to the hotel. Oh well! My room faced east so I set an alarm for sunrise and opened my eyes just enough to catch a glimpse of red between all the sky scrapers. Sunrise, check ;)
On Jan 2 we went back to Tokyo to the imperial palace where we saw the entire imperial family and watched the emperor give a 28 second speech to welcome the new year. I recorded his speech but have not translated it yet. I was quit surprised it was so short! But I have seen royalty and I have stepped inside part of the imperial palace that is not normally open to the general public.
From Tokyo we took a bullet train to Nagano to see the snow monkeys! There was snow everywhere through town but we made it ok and there was a ton of monkeys!! Little tiny baby ones, adolescents, grumpy big males, and normal ones. They are very use to people and would literally run in between your legs and do whatever they felt like. Jordan was hoping one of them would steal someone's camera that was being shoved in their face but no such excitement. Witnessed several squabbles between the monkeys though. They would run around, jump across the hot spring and screech at each other or dive in the water. Most of them were pretty cute!
That evening we went to one of the Olympic parks where the opening and closing ceremonies were held in '92? The area has now been turned into a large park/sports complex with the main building becoming a baseball stadium. The next day we went to a temple before heading to Yokosuka. Jordan's impression of the temple was that if Jesus was there he'd be wreaking havoc.... it felt more like a street fair with all of the vendors selling things in and around the temple grounds. It was also extremely busy because of the new year.
Started work, it's super busy, overtime will soon come. Let's not talk about that...
(1/10) Today Jordan took me to a park at the end of the peninsula to the first lighthouse (Kannonzaki) to be built in Japan. It stands at the entrance to Tokyo bay and was built in the 1800s when Japan started to trade with the western world. We mostly went there to find a sweet playground. Japanese playgrounds are a huge lawsuit waiting to happen if they were in the states. They are fantastic!! And kind of scary.... just lots of ways you could seriously hurt yourself. Got these rollar slides you can go super fast on but you have to sit on your feet unless you have a very padded bum... lots of balance stuff, climbing stuff, and the spring animals that you ride are super springy! It's hard to say on! Not like ours that barely move.
This last picture is Fuji-san close to the part of Yokosuka where we are staying. This was our view from the 5mi bike ride on the way to the park!
In other news almost all of the food I have had is DELICIOUS! mmmmm so much salt and fried and raw things! It's amazing Japanese people aren't as large as some of their Polynesian neighbors because they eat very similar. Jordan thinks it's because they all smoke. And smoking is allowed in most restaurants. It's very gross and we try to avoid those places. I'm taking a Japanese language class through base as well as yoga and other workout classes to keep busy during the week!
Next to come: Things I like and dislike about Japan AND tomorrow we are going temple/shrine hunting in another city -Kamakura.
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