Aloha, Konichiwa

HELLO EVERYONE!
I am writing this email from a hostel at 2am (Sept 13th) in Asakura, Tokyo in... JAPAN!! (if things are spelled wrong or have incorrect punctuation forgive me because the keyboard keeps switching to Japanese every few minutes). We got into port this morning, but it took almost 6 hrs to get into port. But first, before I even begin to talk aboutJapan... HAwAII UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so last time we really talked, I was anxious to get off the ship. Well, I made some new friends with several guys who were interested in doing independent travel. So when we finally arrived in Honolulu, we decided to go hiking at Manoa Falls. We got into port and took a cab into the suburbs of Oahu and basically climbed through a jungle. I was so 　ready to see George of the Jungle jump out of the branches at any moment. One of the guys (Brian) actually climbed up a vine halfway up this one tree - don:t worry! i have a video of it. The leaves looked so fake that I couldnt believe they were real. It only got better as we climbed higher.

Finally, after 2 hrs of hiking, we reached a waterfall that looked like it was straight out of an herbal essences commercial. rachel and i eventually ventured through the FREEEEZING water (which had some warning sign about rat syphillis... oh yay) to stand under the falls. One of the guys with us is a pro photographer so he took tons of pics and they turned out so well! We walked back down to the bottom of the falls and decided to walk to the Manoa Market which was supposedly 15min from the falls, but we ended up getting lost in the suburbs of Hawaii. We had to walk through some school yard, several back yards, and a pool to finally reach a place where we could get a taxi to pick us up. We ate some sushi for lunch, then headed to Waikiki Beach.


This is basically a toursit beach, but still equally as breath taking. The water was slightly refreshing, but rather warm. The water depth stayed at 4ft deep for about 100 yds out, but then Rachel cut her foot on some rocks and had to get stitches later. My friend Danny and I took a surf board out and enjoyed the mild surf for an hour or so. Don:t worry, Mom - my back is still in shape. After the beach, we had to find a wal-mart to get the essentials... you know.... candy/gum/noodle floaties/major amounts of aloe. There was a 9pm curfew for the boat dock, so we got there around 7 but didn:t actually get ON the boat till 4 min to 9. If you:re late getting on the boat, you get punished with "dock time", so people started rioting on the dock. I almost got smushed by 300 drunk college kids chanting "WE WANT DOCK TIME" as a rebellion against SAS administrative for holding up the line. Needless to say, it was quick the experience.

So then it was off to Japan. 9 days across the roughest sea of the voyage, and 9 straight days of classes. I started to get cabin fever around the 4th day, already hating my psychology teacher for being a stereotypical psych professor (never getting to the point, never contributing anything to the lectures but rather relying on her students to make up for her inadequacies). I went to pub night once to break up the monotony, but they charge $3.50 for a *shot* of wine... basically 4 shots makes a standard glass of wine in the US. Thats the last time I ever partake in pub night on the ship. So mandy, my roomie, started missing her boyfriend and Rach was getting homesick. I think it:s times like these that make people bond together, because I made a whole another group of friends (who I am traveling with today). We began to plan our Japan trip, while trying to tough it out as the voyage became increasingly rough. Sept 10th I could barely walk because the ship was rocking so bad. I had a class i nthe front of the boat (which feel;s its the worst) where i could barely keep from barfing into mynotebook. I did get VERY sea sick later that night, and of course it was the night before the big Global Studies test that everyone on the ship has to take.

Anyway - on to Japan. I somehow became the leader of our group, booking hostels and hotels and managing time. EEK, scary to have 11 people looking to you for answers in a country where YOU REALLY ARE ON YOUR OWN! So we get into port around 7am and my group planned to be on land by 11am so we could head to our hostel, but we don:t get off the ship till 2pm because customs look a lifetime and a half. Because it took so long, the free shuttle that was to take us to Yokohama station to exchange our rail passes were canceled, so all 700 of us had to find our way by foott to the train station. When we finally got to the station, they tell us that we can:t exchange our rail passes there and we have to do it at tokyo station. So we pay fora ticket to Tokyo, abou 500 Y, and then take a 40 min train ride into the city. We all get off at the station and it hits us. We are NOT IN AMERICA ANY MORE! EVERYone is Japanese and looking at us like we have eyeballs growing out of four eyebrows. The signs are all in Japanese and we can:t find the right booth. So a bunch of SAS students started following my group, who i left to the wrong booth 2x before finallly getting it right, and then we broke away from the group to head to Asakusa in Tokyo (Tokyo is broken up into several different prefectures... or like Manhattan and the boroughs). So we take 2 JR trains and FINALLY find the subway we are sup@posed to take (all the meanwhile, we are totally enjoying getting lost because it just adds to the excitement) and everyone just walks through to the subway platform without paying. I try to tell them that our JR passes do not cover subways, but no one wants to listen. We ride the subway to Asakusa no prob, but then when we tried to get OUT of the station, we didn't have a ticket to swipe through the gate with. Aaron and the other girls somehow sprinted through the gates while no one was looking, but Rachel, Blake, and several others got stuck behind the gate.

The JR master did not speak a word of englsih and kept asking for our subway passes from the previous station - obviously we didn't have them. So aaron bought 5 subway tickets to some random place and snuck them to the other side f the gate where I was with the rest of the group. We tried to swipe through, but the tickets didn:t work. The JR master tried to talk to us and we tried to talk to him about why we didn:t have a ticket from the previous station and why couldn］twe just use the ones we had jsut bought bc it was of an equivalent amount, but in the end he didn:t understand us/we didnt understand him, so he let us go.

So from here we had an 11min walk to the hostel, which was the most suprisingly amazing walk of mylife. All of a sudden we were in the middle of this huge temple grounds and then all these shops in this market that was not meant for toursits but rather the real deal. Then out of the blue we run into our bio professorwho tags along with us and we lit some incense infront of a shrine and wafted the smoke into our faces (it:s tradition).

We finally get to the Sakura hostel at 19+00 down some alleyand FALL IN LOVE WITH IT! It is the best hostel ever! We got a dorm style room with 8 beds, but there are 4 guys and 6 girls, so we are just squeezing everyone into one room. The showers are so cool and the people are so nice. They speak english and understand everything we are going through. Internet is free, a kitchen is included, and basically we just met people from all over the world tonight. I met two guys from france, and made good friends with this guy named Owen from Austrailia. We had a long discussion of what was the proper name for minorities.... he called Japanese people Japs and Mexican people beaners... which is totally accepted in his country. We had a laugh over a few sake bombs at a resturant in the market and had some traditional tempora. OH MY GOSH! FOOD! So the portions are totally different here. Our american meals are 4x as large as theirs. I feel HUGE compared to people here, not just width wise but height wise as well. So anyway, we walked around Asakusa for a bit and almost went into this club before realizing that it:s. a strip club!!!!! We began to talk into the building then notice bullitens with naked women on them (which are actually visible from teh street..... i:m talking nudity from waist up, in the eyeshot of little kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Lesson learned. Survey the scene very carefully before entering. So instead, we went to this samauri cafe and met some Japanese 20 year olds that didn:t speak a lick of english but were very eager to try to talk to us. Rach and I headed back after an hour because we wanted to use the internet.

Tomorrow we are going to stay in another hotel in Tokyo called the Capsule Hotel. Each room is modeled after the cockpit of a jet. Its really cool!! i think that we are going to hiroshima obn the 14th, kyoto on the 15th, and kobe/baseball game on the 16th. My int]l claling card isn:t WORKINGbecause appretnly it only can make calls TO other countries FROM the US. I:ll try to email again after japan, but china is only 2 days after so it will be a tight squeeze! love love love!