Friends in Japan!

Journal #43 April 8, 2009

Today was the day that I had been waiting for the entire time in Japan. We were leaving Kyoto and heading to Tokyo. I was really excited because I was going to be meeting up with Chikae. Chikae was an exchange student from Japan who lived with my family when I was 9 years old. She came and visited us again about 5 years ago. So I had not seen her for a very long time.

We took the Bullet train to get to Tokyo and it took us about 3 hours. On the way we were able to see Mt. Fuji. The view was absolutely stunning and it looked so big. I had always seen the painting in pictures but seeing it in real life was fascinating. It was a little difficult trying to find Chikae in the train station. It took us about 20 min. and we had to find a guy that worked there to help us. It was funny because he kept using his cell phone to call her. When we finally saw each other it was amazing how different she looked. She looked soo pretty and spoke very good English. I said goodbye to my friends and Chikae and I met up with one of her friends to do some site seeing. We went to another temple and Chikae told me all the reasons as to why that religion does certain stuff. She told me why they cover themselves in the smell of incense, why they throw money in a box, clap three times, and say a prayer. It was really interesting.

When we left the temple we went to a café and got a Japanese snack. It was red bean ice cream with fruit and jello in it. It was actually pretty good. While we were there she taught me a lot of words that I would need to know in the next few days. When we left the café we went to a street that is called Scramble Street. If you saw the street you would know why. At this one intersection there are 5 streets that combine into one. At one point all of the cars are stopped and people come from every direction to cross the street. They make several x’s and I could not believe how people did not bump into each other. This corner reminded me a lot of Times Square. The buildings had TV’s on them and people were everywhere.

When we got to the other side safely we went to a shopping mall called 100. This shopping mall was 7 stories tall and only had shops for girls. I was in heaven. We stayed there for about 2 hours and I got a couple of cute clothes and shoes. After we were done shopping we were heading to dinner with some of Chikae’’s friends. The restaurant was right across the street from the mall so we did not have to travel very far. I was really surprised at how nice the restaurant was. We had to take off our shoes before entering and we had our own separate room for dinner. The seats were very low to the ground. When all of her friends got there I was happy to know that I knew one of them. Sarah had come with Chikae about 5 years ago when she came and visited us. It was exciting to see her again.

For dinner we ordered a bunch of appetizers, which were amazing, and just talked and enjoyed ourselves. Her friends were very nice and spoke very good English. One of the guys, Tay, owns is own internet company. The other guy, Go, works with Chikae at her dads office. Tay was very entertaining because he taught me some card tricks and tried to teach me how to b-box. It was very interesting. We stayed there for about 4 hours and just had fun. By the time we left it was 1am and we were all exhausted. They guys brought us to our hotel and we crashed.

Love
Michelle