Japan was very very nice. It felt like the future. When we got off the ship, our main form of transportation was a small train that ran about 100 yen (One dollar), to take. The train itself stopped at five different points, and you could just get off and walk from there. Perhaps the coolest part was that the train itself was powered primarily by the vibrations in the floor of people walking on and off. It was a great energy saver, and it really felt like the future.
I went to a baseball game in Osaka for one evening, hence the pictures to the left. We ran across a man and his son who were huge Seattle fans, and the ships doctor had a bunch of hats and other souveneirs to give away to them. As a thank you, that man then left, bought a bunch of stuff from the team we were cheering on and gave it to us. Very giving society.
I also went on to a bird museum, where they had various forms of owls, exotic birds and penguins. I was there for a day with Joel and Jen, and it was a very nice place where the birds were out in the open. It was a breath of fresh air from the enclosed spaces that they generally keep animals in the zoos of the US.
Country - Japan
Mayor - Tatsuo Yada
Size - 213.4 square miles
Population - 1,530,295
