Court Hotel Shinyokohama

... dance, Grace recited the poem "When I grow up", Ashley played with the Chinese yo-yo, Jake did a drum solo, Justin juggled, Jillian sang S@S reinvented songs, and many people sang and played the guitars to songs that they had composed. It was the best talent show yet. The most surprising act to me was my buddy Lindsay dancing hip hop with three other girls. She is my bstudy facilitator and I had no idea that she can break it down like she did! She ...

... convenience. Convenience stores at least. If you can walk more than a block without seeing at least one 7-11, Family Mart, Daily Mart or Lawsons convenience store, you are either walking with your eyes shut, or you have walked far enough so that you aren't in Yokohama anymore. Angela's Birthday, Yokohama Zoo and Landmark building (which we decided to forgo today) are on the agenda for tomorrow. Tomorrow night we are going to be tired.

... stumble. My analogy for today- Running; I go down a path that starts in a residential area goes down a hill and then leads into a navy base. Once you reach the base it's all fields. You run down seeing the pebbles, stones and all sorts of rocks. There is no set paved path, just a path that is created through rocks and sometimes by the wheels of the trucks that go through carrying equipment to farm. You keep on running and the farther you go the more into nature you get. I just ...

... as well as girth. Watch as they indulge in their 4 minutes of pre-wrestle posturing and you can see thigh muscles rippling every time they ritually stamp out evil spirits. The pros weigh over 150kg and they can lift each other out of the ring. That takes serious strength. Their weight isn't just for strategic inertia. We watched one makuuchi propel his opponent out of the ring with a well timed belly expansion. It has to be said that it is still quite amusing to watch such big men ...

... for the opening after twenty years underground. Whilst we watched the undoing of the screws, volunteers were issuing the crowd with fire crackers. Around the capsule the crowd took out cell phones to photographs the historical moment. The men simply lifted the lid. The crackers fired a moment later amid the flash going off from cell phones. It is often assumed that Japan is a heavily conformist society and that ...

there was 4 girls from hong kong and 1 girl from japan. we took NWA, but it was delayed for three hours. we wake up at 5am, but we got on flight on 11:30am. therefore, when we arrived to tokyo, and then downtown, it was 6:30 pm. I met my funny sister in japan again!!

Yokohama is just a half an hour outside of Tokyo, but from where we where staying it was bit of a trek, but it meant we had to go the route we would be taking at 6am the next morning to catch our flight, so it was not all in vain. We got to Yokohama only really to see the tallest building in Japan and the harbour and we did not much more to say. Yokohama is a pretty lively place but it is no Tokyo...

... quadrupled over the last 5 years, so they renovated four floors in a really nice office building, so the campus is ultra modern and very nice. After checking in and purchasing our books, we had some spare time to explore, so we walked around the neighborhood and found a small café. Turns out a small cup costs about 500 yen (approx $4.5), and does not include refills. Afterwards we went back to orientation. All of ...

... Eiffel tower of sorts, with a panoramic view of the city from 150 metres up. The rest of the time was spent strolling the endless busy streets with their fancy shops, neon screens blaring commercials and an endless stream of people. Tokyo is made up of 23 cities... I stayed in Chuo (Central) city, in the Ginza area. I didn't see one prostitute as someone (John!) warned me. In fact, Ginza is the a fashionable shopping area with a popular avenue lined with ...

... called Tokugawa and his descendants). And the Tokyo period (the change over was 1868). It was a very cool exhibit, there were models of things that were so elaborate and informative. They had even built a to-scale model of the Nihombashi bridge back in the 1600s (to scale in terms of width and height but exactly half the distance). The level of detail that had gone into things was amazing, when you walked under the bridge they had carefully carved lots of little ...