We just arrived back at the ship in Kobe about an hour ago. After my field trip to the gender and equality center in Yokohama, i headed to Tokyo to meet my friends. I had to take the train from Yokohama to tokyo by myself, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but when nothing is in english and no phone in case i got lost was a very nerve-racking experience!!!!! However, i ended up making it just fine, so that was a great start to the trip!!! Once i met up with everyone, my friend chris from school who has been living in Tokyo for the whole year took us out to this very traditional japanese restaurant and then to the Rappongi district to go clubbing!!!! We got up very early the next morning and went to the fish market, which was an awesome experience (definately worth getting up early for!!!!) Then my friend chris took us on a huge tour of tokyo. We went to the government building that looks over the entire city, some shrine, the central park of tokyo (cant remember the real name), all these crazy shopping areas. It was extremely nice of him to show us all around because it would have been very difficult on our own!!! He also took us to the Park Hyatt Hotel for drinks. It is like the top 8th best hotels in the world and it was where lost in translation was filmed so that was pretty cool to see!! The next morning we headed to Kyoto on the bullet train and stayed there for the night. Today in Kyoto we went to some more shrines, the golden pavilion, and some others, but you will see pictures of it because i took a ton!!! Then we took the train back to Kobe to meet the ship and that's where i am now!!! I never thought that i would be soo excited to get back on the ship, but these past 4 days have been amazing, but exhausting!!!! We don't actually depart from Kobe until tomorrow evening, so we will go out in kobe tonight and check it out more during the day tomorrow!!! We just decided that we would sleep on the ship tonight because it's convenient and saves some money!!!!!

Love
Em