We are in Japan!!!

We are in Japan!!! The day we arived in kobe Japan November 21 I was supposed to meet the American Embassy officials at the gangway and welcome them onto the ship, show them around, and then have coffee with them and the deans. Well the RD that is in charge of all the ambassadors told me that I could sleep in til 9 because they were going to be an hour late. Well I wake up to an announcement saying that the Embassy officials had already had their coffee and their speech would start in the union in five minutes. So I hurried and got ready and got all dressed up and went into the union and there were only like two people in there, then i went to the deans offices and there was no one there. So I just went back to my room and finally I decided that I would go try and find them one more time. When I went to the lobby I saw one of the deans and he told me that the embassy officials were in the dinning room having breakfast with the academic dean and for me to go there. I finally found them had a glass of juice and then the dean asked me if i would show them around the ship so i did. Then escorted them into the union where they gave there presentation to the student body. At the end of it I stood up and thanked them for the student body for coming out (it was a sunday) and gave them SAS presents. After escorting them off of the ship the dean tells me and the other ambassador that we will need to make another presentation for the Kobe (the town where the ship is docked) people that come on board. They had soo much stuff probably an 18 wheelers worth. They started out by giving the dean a really nice set of Samari soards. As well as the captain and senior officers. And they gave me in front of the hole ship a realy nice crystal plate that has the background of the city as well as the name on it. It was really nice and a bunch of the kids on board came up to me after words saying they were jelous. What all the stuff was that they brought on board was drums and different musical instruments. They put on one of the coolest performances i have ever seen. Oh yeah I forgot to say before the kobe performance started JP the assistant dean went up to the other ambassador girl and asked her if she could get dressed up before we went on stage. At first I thought that it was a little rude and in hind sight everyone could word things better. I also asked her if she thought that i should put on my suit and she said no maybe just a tie. I say this becuase the Japanesse culture is very formal in everything that they do. They always try to give give give, and always try to give more than they recieve. This makes things as an American kind of dificult becuase in a way you are always trying to one up the people around you with hospitality. In a way it is a total competition but definetly pretty interesting. Another thing when anyone ever gives or hands you somthing you always take it with both hands and look at it very carfully otherwise it is very rude and insulting to just take somthing and walk away weather it be a business card or whatever. So as soon as the program was over they asked if we would give them a tour around the ship which we were glad to do. It is always funny to hear some of the questions that are asked. THe funniest thing that i think that was asked when the dean was not there by both the embassy officals and the kobe people was about alchohol and the avalibity of it. They thought that is was funny with us being college students and there being so many bars around the ship for it to not be avaliable or as little as it actually is. So when we got off the ship we got a little money exchanged and made our way to the subway that takes you into the city. There we were able to trade in our vouchers for a rail pass (about 240 us that lets you be able to take any of the trains for seven days) this is where we were introduced to the waffle stand. In a lot of different places in Japan there are different stands that serve gourmet waffles. Anyways we had originally planned for it to just be AJ, Ammo and I going to Tokyo but it ended up having two more girls go with us to Kyoto which is on the way to Tokyo. It is a town that is supposed to have all kinds of tourist attractions with most of the stuff being very very old. When we got there it was probably 2 or 3. It is kind of funny because very very few people speak any english at all and usually those that do are business people that have usualy only been in the city for a couple of hours atleast it seems that way. As well as all of the signs not having much if any english so it takes a little while to do anything. Anyways they drop us off in this mall type area and eventually we find some maps to different tourist areas. The first is this huge garden that has a huge gate around it probably walked a mile on each side and by the time we found the entrance the security guard said that they were closing. So we made our way to the next one which was a shrine (one of the signs called it Amida Hall you might be able to google it) anyways it was huge. They had just finished a construction project that enclosed it in steel to protect it. It is interesting I am not sure what religion it was probably Budhist but anyway it was much more plain then those that we had seen in India and in Myanmar. I really couldn:t tell what the people were praying too. Later we decided that we might get a quick snack so we went back to the train station/mall area. We were told that the restaurants were on the 11th floor. It was amazing becuase it was about 5pm or so and there were people everywhere. They also had a huge christmas tree up that was really nice and had christmas music playing that made me miss home. Anyways we walked through the different restaurants and looked at them. None of us were particularly hungry and the prices were all 30 US plus and there were lines at all of them. So we decided that we wanted to go ahead and make our way to Tokyo which is 2.5 hours away from Kyoto on the bullet trains which generally run every 30 minutes to whereever you want to go to. We told the girls good bye and got tickets. The train was interesting because number one it goes like 400 miles an hour, and two unless you get a reserved seat then you are back in other cars that are like reserved but they are first come first serve with tones of people standing side by side in the aisle ways. Which is what we had to do, not knowing weather or not we were going to be able to get a seat in the future not knowing if the bullet train stops or not. Well it did stop ocaissionally and eventually we were all able to get seats. At first Kobe and Kyoto and all of Japan until we got to Tokyo in my opion looked rather drab. I mean I know the sky was pretty over cast but the buildings are all grey. Anyway when we get to Tokyo it is 8pm thinking that this was great we would go try and find a cheaper hotel and then have dinner and go out. Well this turned into some what of an ordeal with AJ and his ticket and trying to find a cab that would take us to the intercontinetal. We wanted to go there because in Koyto I was on the internet and saw that they had rooms for like 134 US which it is a five star hotel and the rest of the 5 stars were all over 350 US (don:t get me wrong we wanted a really cheap hotel and suprisingly that was the cheapest. We ended up finally going to another hotel and they put us into a taxi to the intercontinetal. We went in and they wanted over 200 a night. So we just left and went to this area that is like time square but on a much smaller scale. Where we asked a hotel there and they wanted over 200 so we got on the internet and were able to book at the interconitnetal for the 2 nights. So I went to the hotel with all of our stuff and checked in. The hotel is really nice and the room is great. The view looks out at the bay.
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-hotel-341488-action-pictures-intercontinental_tokyo_bay-i;_ylt=AgM_SabAy7EOse33_Ru7ygTiphQB
There is a link to some photos of the hotel. Anyways we ended up going from place to place trying to find one that we liked and we ended up running into some SAS kids. They told us that everyone was over at the Irish pub across the street and we went. It was funny because one of the girls that is on the ship is from Tokyo and she arranged for like 30 or her friends to come and stay with her there. Which was funny because she knows all the best places to go and we ended up there by chance we have had this same good luck for most of the trip. We ended up going later with them to a club called Vanilla you might be able to google it. Well I got to run. I wanted to give you a little teaser of my time in Tokyo. We are having a great time and enjoying every minute. I hope everyone is doing well. You should not that the below blog was just posted which has all of Hong Kong.
ChowChad