Japan - My Last Foray Into Asia.

I'm back in Hong Kong now though not for long. These past two weeks have gone by in a blur.

I arrived in Tokyo Wednesday afternoon, and explored the area while waiting for the guys from Australia to show up. Forcing ourselves up from our surprisingly comfortable tatami beds at 4:30 AM the following morning, we headed to the Tsukiji fish market. The fish market is massive, with half of all fish consumed in Japan passing through its doors. We watched as auctioneers sold 300 lb frozen tunas, painted the fish with the name of the buyer, and dragged them along the ground using hooks. After exploring the market, we stopped at a nearby restaurant, and enjoyed the freshest sushi of our lives at 7 AM.

With a full day ahead of us, and Shavuot beginning at 6:30, we set about exploring Tokyo. Each district is big enough to be a city on its own, so it was difficult deciding where to go in the limited time we had. We checked out the Sony building, which was cool. Sony turned the lower floors of its building into an Apple store-esque museum of Sony's latest technological advancements, so I got to see what a walkman mp3 player looks like. Amazing how much the brand has fallen from when it completely owned the portable music market. We then went to the famous four way intersection that you always see in movies. Growing crowds awaited each light change, and when indicated, a sea of people crossed the road in every direction (including diagonally). Next we checked out the government city center and the electric district.

We found the chabad house after an hour of wondering in the pouring rain, only to find that we were the last guys needed to make the minyan. Our hotel seemed closer on the map than it was in reality, and the walk was at minimum 45 minutes. We never would have found it ourselves, if not for someone from the community who volunteered to walk us home through the rain. Conveniently, he spoke Japanese, so when we got lost he was actually able to ask for directions. Here was something that surprised me about Japan - unlike in Hong Kong, Japanese locals truly do not know English, which makes getting around often quite complicated. The next day we found the chabad with no problems, though the rain did not let up for a second.

When the holiday was over we rushed out to catch the last train of the day to Nikko. Nikko is a small town north of Hong Kong, near the foot of Mount Fuji. The area hosts a number of beautiful shrines and buildings as well as a massive 97 m waterfall in a large national park. After a short hike to the Nikko Pak Lodge, we were pleasantly surprised with our accommodations.

The following week from Saturday night to Saturday night contains too many sites to describe each in detail, so I'm just gonna give you the gist. Also, a word of advice: if you ever go touring through Japan, buy the Japan Rail Pass. You can only buy it from outside the country, and it seems expensive at $300/week, but it is probably the best deal you can get on anything throughout Japan, giving you unlimited rides on almost every JR train throughout the country, including most bullet trains.

• Sunday: Explored the park and all the touristy sites in the area. Not too much to do, but the area is beautiful, and definitely worth checking out to see the incredible natural scenery of Japan. That night we went to an onsen, a Japanese hot spring. There are pretty strict cultural protocols that come with entering an onsen, but everyone was very friendly, and explained it to us as best they could with absolutely no English.
• Monday: Woke up 5 AM to get to Tokyo DisneySea before opening time. Don't ask why... To my surprise the day ended up being fun. The park was nice, and the fireworks show was actually really cool. I was hesitant when asked to go to Disney, but it turned out alright.
• Tuesday: Woke up early again to get to Disneyland before opening. This time I understood why everyone warned us to be there early. Half an hour before opening the lines were not insignificant, and when the doors parted people started sprinting. Seemed ridiculous to me at the time, but by eleven AM the wait at some rides was as long as four hours. With all due respect to Disney, those rides better be pretty good if I'm gonna wait three or four hours for a three minute ride. We ended up leaving a bit early to see some more of Tokyo, including the Imperial Palace, which was impressive from the outside, though we couldn't actually enter the castle grounds, since the royal family was currently living there. Afterwards we caught a train to Nagoya, where we would spend the night.
• Wednesday: Went to Nagoya Castle, which is really the only thing to do in the city besides for the Toyota museum. Made our way to Kyoto, and checked out Nijo Castle.
• Thursday: We crammed in as much as is humanly possible in one day in Kyoto. The city has seventeen UNESCO World Heritage sites, and in one day we hit eight of them. The Golden pavilion was strikingly beautiful, though the tour of the Kyoto Imperial Palace was probably the most interesting.
• Friday: Out by 6 AM, headed to Hiroshima to see where the a-bomb was dropped. The area where the bomb fell was once the center of a bustling industrial center. Today there is nothing left but one standing frame of a building. Though the rest of the city has been rebuilt, the area where the bomb fell has been kept as a memorial park. A museum on the premise was very well done, refusing to make any political statements or placing blame at one party. The only really political statement was a declaration by the government of Hiroshima demanding that North Korea cease its nuclear weapons tests. We were in Osaka by the afternoon, and visited the very impressive Osaka Castle. We made it to Kobe by 5:30, and were at the JCC before Shabbat began.
• Shabbat: Kobe is a beautiful city that once hosted a thriving Jewish community, when it was the world's pearl trading capital in the late 19th century. A beautiful JCC was built in the seventies, but now the shul has about 15 members, comprising mostly of Israelis who arrived in the last 15 years. Halfway through morning services a bunch of local university students joined us to see what Jewish prayers are like. Everyone was respectful, and it was funny to see the look on their faces in reaction to the Torah reading. Now I know what is must feel like for every Cathedral or Buddhist temple that has to deal with tourists going through their buildings all day as they try to pray.
• The meals were great, and conversation was interesting. I sat next to Hero, a Kobe local who decided to convert after surviving a childhood illness. He spoke about the strong feelings some Japanese have about Jews, many convinced that some of their ancestors were among the lost tribes of Israel. We arrived back in Tokyo after Shabbat and made our way to the airport. Overall our trip to Japan was short, but we definitely made the most of our time and got to see a good portion of the country. Seven cities in seven days isn't bad in my book.

So now I've got two days in Hong Kong, then back to the States. I can't believe my semester is almost over. These past few months have been among the best and most interesting in my life, and I'm looking forward to my return.