Wednesday, April 16th
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4/16/03 (Wed)
Today we headed off to Shin-Yokohama station to once again meet with my Japanese teacher's cousin,
Fusako. She first took us to a ramen museum that's there in Yokohama. It certainly wasn't what
I had expected. I figured it'd just be a typical "museum" (types of ramen, history of how it got
started etc). But, it turns out that the 2 basement floors of the museum were decorated to look
like 1960's Japan. Very neat. And there were a bunch of really small shops there that sold the
different types of ramen. We stopped at one of the shops and grabbed some lunch (I had the miso
ramen. Very tasty). We even got to play a small old carnival-style game while we were there.
Overall, it was a very cool place to check out. After looking around at the different ramen shops
and the gift shop, we headed on. The next stop was at a Book-off (used Manga, CDs, DVDs etc). This
one was a lot bigger than the one I saw in Hiroshima, so I was able to find a LOT more stuff. I
think I spent more time there than Fusako was wanting too. ^_^ But, I was able to find the
Tokyo Love Story manga, and a stack of DVDs and CDs for cheap, so I was really happy. After that,
we headed off to meet Fusako's daughter, who is a kindergarten teacher. We met at a closeby mall/
shopping area. In order to "capture the moment", Fusako's daughter wanted to get some pictures
together, but not just any picture... we did purikura (Print Club) at one of the arcades there.
That was actually kind of fun. But, man some of those teenage girls that were standing there were
certainly giving me some strange looks. heh heh. That was certainly a different experience. ^_^
We then found a small coffee shop and were able to sit down and talk to her daughter for a little
while. After doing that for a while, we headed off to the place I was really looking forward to
seeing. Fusako teaches English at a smallschool near where she lives (mainly younger kids in the
8-10 year old range). So, we went to the school as guests. It was really neat seeing these
young kids learning English. But, you could tell these kids were REALLY nervous with us there.
There weren't very talkative, very shy to respond and one of em kept sneaking peeks at Ted and I.
heh heh. But that certainly was fun. After that, Fusako took us to a roten-zushi place (rotary
sushi). It was HUGE! A lot bigger than most of the places I'd seen. And the food was really
tasty too. I think I'm starting to like basic sushi a lot more. And finally, we stopped by a
small soba place where her son worked and had some soba and Tako-yaki. Today was a really, REALLY
fun day. Fusako really went out of her way to show us around on this trip. I'm very glad we
were able to meet. She made the days we met a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll be able to meet again
someday. After a long day, we headed off to bed. Tomorrow we head to Kamakura.