Yokohama

Our second day off base we had to come up with our own plans, figure out the train system, and show ourselves around Japan. Twelve of us chose to go to Yokohama, which is the second biggest city in Japan. It was about a 30-40 minute train ride and luckily we didn’t have any trouble getting there. The trouble was figuring out to do when we got there. The train station was connected to a huge mall so we briefly walked around to see what it was like. I am having difficultly trying to describe what my first Japanese mall experience was like. In some ways the malls are very similar but in other ways the mall was much more pristine and clean. I remember almost everything being white. It was surreal walking through a mall where everything is in Japanese and no one spoke English, it really sunk in that we were in Japan. We were deer in headlights and we stuck out like sore thumbs. After a while I got impatient because we still didn’t have a plan. About three of us at this point tried to take lead but we ended up stepping back to let Zach do it. He did an amazing job and is now nicknamed Papa Zach. Our first stop was Pokémon world. It was a shop full of everything Pokémon themed you could ever imagine. There was also a room where people were intensely playing with Pokémon cards. It was fun to look around for a while but we left pretty shortly because most of us didn’t feel the need to buy anything. 

A picture with Pikachu inside Pokemon World

Next we were off to the boardwalk where there was rides and a Ferris wheel. We were all really excited for the rollercoaster, which ended up being WAY more fun than any of us thought it would be. After this we had plans of finding a place to eat but stumbled upon a Cup of Noodles Museum! We checked it out and found you could make your own cup of noodle from only 300 yen or about $3! We got to color the outside of our cup, pick the ingredients that went inside, watch them seal it, then we got to put it into this blow up bag so we could carry it with us all day. Check out the finish product below! After the Cup of Noodle Museum we knew we wanted to go to Chinatown but to get there we needed to wait for a bus. Walking all day had tired us out so all the girls sprawled out on the grass as we waited for the bus. Japanese people walked by and stared at our weird American ways but we were too tired to care. 

The Boardwalk. That is the roller coaster we went on.

The Cup of Noodle I made!

Too tired to fuction.

When we finally got to Chinatown, again we had no plan but it was fun to just walk around and window shop. We ended up running into a temple that was very beautiful but I have no idea what the name of it was. We started to get hungry so we decided to get dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Because we were such a big group we had a room to ourselves upstairs. This was nice because we all got to bond and be loud Americans together away from everyone else. Who knows maybe they put us up there on purpose. At dinner we had a ton of good laughs. At one point I even started choking and spit some of my food out because I was laughing so hard at something Joseph had said. Papa Zach was also cracking jokes left and right. We all went around and said what our Highs and Lows of the day were. This must be a Camp A thing but I like doing it. You will probably see it in my blog more often because I want to use it to snapshot the days I have with my kids and save the longer posts for my weekend travels. Anyways after dinner we finally decided that our day had come to an end and headed back to base. On the train Arran and I fell asleep because we were exhausted! We didn’t realize it but we were already fitting in! Remember a lot of Japanese people sleep on the trains.

A temple in Chinatown.

On the train ride back that night.