Today I just walked around Shin-Yokohama and visited the Ramen Noodle museum. There wasn’t a whole lot to really see there. This picture is the rising sun from the 39th floor this morning in the land of the rising sun and the second picture is the hotel Prince, the tall round blue building that we are staying at.
I walked over to the museum and it wasn’t open yet, so I walk around and found the local park. There was a lot of day care groups of the cutest little ones. So in the park were the very young, the old, and me! I sat awhile and drew a few pictures of the stadium and the green area around the park. I then walked down to the Ramen Noodle museum.
The museum was really different. The museum part was the smallest part of the building.
The gift shop was three times larger than the information area.
All the pictures of the chiefs had the same look as the Iron Chief. I guess you have to look mean and intense to cook in Japan.
I then went down stairs and there was a large area of restaurants set up to look like a town in the 1930’s. Each restaurant had a different noodle type from the different regions of Japan. It was dark and a bit weird.
I learned two important things about the Japanese today. One is do not fool around with their food. They are very serious about eating. They spend a great deal of their time gathering food. You don’t see anyone walking and eating but a lot of shopping for food. At noon all these little stations on the side walk set up and they sell their lunch dishes. There are a lot of people buying from them. It is really a small cottage business type of business.
The other is that they love animated, bright colored, everything! What we would think is for children in U.S.A. is loved and used and on their clothing for everyone. Even the very old! Oh the other thing I keep noticing is that there are all kinds of things people use and wear with English sayings on them but most don’t make any sense. It makes me think that most of the Kanji stuff we have on our stuff probably doesn’t make sense either. I laugh thinking about all the tattoos people have on them that probably say silly things. We think it says “PEACE” but it really says “May the calmness of world live in places with trees forever!”
Just recieved this as an email but it just what i was talking about seeing all the time.
Will maybe I noticed a couple of other things: Everyone wears uniforms for everything. The kids are all in uniforms for their schools. All the business people wear dark suits with ties that are similar in style. Workers in labor jobs all have a uniform that tells you what they do.
The only group who has a variety of styles are older woman who are not working. There is a full range from very elegant to traditional kimonos. Young women who work are in black suits too some even wear ties.
Japanese people do everything with music. There is music for everything during the news on TV, on the streets, to queue you to cross the street, to make you aware you’re approaching something. The funniest was when I go shopping and the music is American from jazz to hip hop to the 40’s big band. There was one trendy shop playing hip hop and every other word was M ** or N word. No one there had any idea what they were listening to. Some of the older women there looked like they would have fainted if they did. It was so bad I could not stay I was so uncomfortable.
I walk around for a couple of hours and found a great book store. I got Alaina the “Hungry Caterpillar” in Kanji. It is really cute. It was fun looking at all the children books in Japanese that I know in English but they were read back to front in Kanji. They also had all the Harry Potter and Star Wars books. There was a small section of English books but they were not as interesting as the others. I was looking for a book of Kanji symbols to English dictionary so that I can use the knitting books I bought. I got a really nice book and two that teach you how to read Kanji. The characters are not individual sounds linked together but a concept that link together to tell a story. You do not read with phonics you read with comprehension of an idea link together. It is a whole different way of thinking. I wonder how a dyslectic reads I guess they have you going instead of coming back. Who knows?!
Tomorrow I am going back into Yokohama and visit the Silk Museum. I bet it will be very different from the Ramen Noodle factory museum!
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This is our last night in Japan. Tomorrow we take the shuttle bus to the airport and fly back to “yesterday”! If you look at our ticket you would think the flight was only one hour while in reality it is a 12 hour flight. 
Adventures of an Artisan 