Well, we are back in Korea now. The day we came back we went by train, plane, bus, and taxi. Here is a summary of what we did in Japan.
We went to Tokyo and saw the Imperial Palace! Its really pretty, though you can't get very close due to a moat, high stone walls, and guarded gates. There were cormorants swimming in the moat! Riley and I aren't really used to cities, so we found this Communications Museum on the map and decided to check it out. It was really really neat! I recommend going if you are ever in Tokyo. The museum had information about the post office and ancient messenger service, plus telephone and radio exhibits. There were 3D videos, interactive exhibits, video games (in Japanese, so we couldn't get that far), and really detailed information. You collected stamps and got a prize when you left. It also had the most massive stamp collection from all over the world!
We went to a couple of other museums in Japan, local folk museum, and they were also very interesting and well done. We had to go to the conference most of the week, and it included a tour of a nuclear reactor at the end! First we had to go across Japan by bullet train (up to 300 km/hr!). Then we went up a rock coastline. At the security checkpoint we had to wear hairnets and hardhats. Then we went through two security gates where we had to stand in a tiny room and wait for your visitor badge to register with the system before the machine would let you out. We went to a room where we exchanged our hardhats with gloves, socks, a caps, new hard hats, shoes, a lab coat, and a dosimeter. then we got to go into the containment dome for the sodium cooled research reactor! What this means is that we got to see lots of giant equipment. It was really neat, though since its sodium-cooled, we didn't get to see the blue glow. Then we had to de-contaminate. We gave back our gloves, socks, shoes, coat, cap, and helmet. The we washed our hands and got to go into this machine that scanned us for contamination. It reminded me of the old James Bond movie where they had to de-contaminate to go into the bad guy's lair. No one was contaminated, but the process was kind of fun.
On our extra day in Japan, we stayed in a small town in the middle of the country. We wanted to see what normal Japan looked like. I chose a place where there was a famous garden to explore. I didn't expect it to be much more than a nice landscaping, but instead we were in for a great surprise! It was absolutely beautiful! This park was created 60 years ago, the water which ran through the ponds came from melted snow off of Mt. Fuji. There was a small zoo with a gibbon, wallabys, a very fat prairie dog, capybaras, and an extremely cute red panda. A nice gardener told us about some of the rare plants in the garden, but the greatest part was the trees! They were huge! Not compared to the virgin forest I grew up in, but in South Korea, there are no big trees. All the big ones were cut down during the occupation. There were informative English signs on some of the species to talk about where the Japanese common name came from. The weather was perfect and everywhere we looked was a scenic picture with the maples and moss. If you happen to be in Mishima, go to the garden and a hole in the wall Indian restaurant called Jeet.
In our travels we discovered some interesting things about Japan:
They put ginger in everything!
Fashion is strange here (I saw a lot of leopard print)
Everything is EXPENSIVE!!!!!!!
Trains can take you anywhere, if you can afford it.
Japanese people eat more noodles than Koreans
Sushi chefs don't like having their picture taken
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