Day 4

This was the day of awfulness. Katy and Emily and I had our FDP to the Kabuki Theater and we had been told, by our teacher and the field office representative, that we MUST return to the ship and we weren’t allowed to meet up with the group at the theater. Well, after our 3 train-rides and 2 hours of stress attempting to make it back to the ship, we finally made it back only to find out that the FDP location was only 3 stops away from our hotel in Shibuya. SO we wasted time, money, AND brain cells from freaking out about making it back to the ship in time… Let me tell you, I was beyond furious when we arrived at the theater and at least 50 kids were meeting up with us. Then, after arrival, we found out the play was a 4-hour show with several intermissions. After the first 2 Acts, all in Japanese, with no translation, and no direction from our teacher as to what to expect or look for, other than “color relating to psychology,” we decided it was time to leave and not waste our time with a performance that everyone in our group, teachers included had fallen asleep in. That whole experience certainly put a giant damper on my day.

Once we were finally rid of that, we headed back to our hotel to see if the girls were back, but they had gone to the Harajuku district to shop. We dropped our stuff off and went out to find outfits for our special “Harajuku Girls Night Out.” If you don’t know the Harajuku girl culture, look it up. That’s what I looked like for the night. Think pop culture, frilly things, lots of makeup and some just really bizarre stuff all mixed together. We found some fun stuff and headed back to the hotel room to change. Kaila and Liz were already back and getting ready when we arrived so as Katy and Emily and I started to get ready, we looked up places for dinner.

Tokyo is known for their themed restaurants and we had heard of some really fun ones, like Alice and Wonderland, Medical, Ninja. Most of them were far away but luckily we found a few that were close. Our first one was “Alcatraz E.R.” and had an hour wait, which seemed good because it was a weird theme of medical and jail and the waitresses were dressed a little too scantily. So we went to the next place “Lock Up,” and it only had a 30-minute wait. As we entered, the special effects in the “dungeon” we had to walk into had a fake mannequin get jolted in an electric chair and scared the crap out of all of us. Once we finally made it through the entrance, put our name in (we really hadn’t thought about reservations), we sat down for a 15-minute wait until we were seated.

The tables are all in jail cells, with a door and everything, and to take you to your table, someone is chained up and taken into the cell. The whole experience was a little spooky and so fun. The meal was so delicious and the drinks were funky with weird themes to them. The scariest part of the night was the “breakout” of the prisoners. The “prisoners” in the jailbreak out of their cells and then come freak out all the people eating. There are guys with masks running around in the dim lighting, just trying to freak people out. I guess that lights had actually turned all the way off, but we had ended up with drinks with lighted ice cubes in them and we had a little bit of light as we’re being terrified out of our socks.

We finished up dinner and it was time to make it to Roppongi, the nightlife district. We tried to take the subway but we only go to our first stop and when trying to transfer lines, it closed on us, because they close at 11 p.m. So we had to get in taxis and drive to the Roppongi station, hoping we would be able to find the bar some of our friends were at. On the way, our taxi drivers lost track of each other and Kaila and I got dropped off at the random staircase that leads to the train, which was close. We wandered around, running through the rain for probably 20 minutes and we were just about to give up and head to the bar when we luckily ran right into the girls.

Our first stop was a random club that we would have been able to walk right into, thanks to ladies’ night, but everyone else forgot their i.d.’s and the bouncer, who was actually American, wouldn’t let us in under any circumstances. We ended up running into some friends, though, and still had a blast. We even finally ended up finding the place where all the SAS kids ended up, because that always happens. After staying up until 4 a.m. it was time for us to head to the fish market, for some early morning sushi. We ended up wandering through the aisles of fish just as the market was starting to open and walked into a restaurant to have sushi served fresh to us. The sushi was absolutely delicious, probably due to the fact that we literally watched them pull the fish out of the tank, chop it up, and serve it to us. Now that’s service. We would have stayed longer to wander and watch more of it open but we were all freezing and exhausted, as it was now 6 o’clock in the morning. We headed back to the hotel, with a few directions given to our taxi driver, who luckily spoke a little English, and made it back in no time.

Day 5

After about 2 or 3 hours of sleep, we all woke up and packed up to check out and head back to the ship. After we got on the correct subway (after wandering around for a while trying to figure out the extremely confusing signs) we arrived in Yokohama much faster than our first stop. We were basically pro’s on the subway now. After trudging through the rain, we spent the last few hours wandering around the market, and eating good food. We ended up at a Hawaiian burger place for lunch, of course, and then just wandered around for a few more hours. Once back to the ship, we had to clear immigration but everyone had to be off the ship before anyone could get back on so it was a confusing afternoon. Before we knew it, we had cleared and our last international port was over and we were on our way to Hawaii.