First Step Abroad: Back Home in Japan

Welcome to my travel blog of 2013! My name is Miki, and I am a mechanical engineering student (or MechE) at Carnegie Mellon University. I love to travel so I took the awesome opportunity to study abroad in Hong Kong for the fall semester. Before my adventures in Hong Kong start, however, I have decided to take a few weeks to visit my family in Japan.


I'd like to say that my first week outside of the United States was full of adventures and new sights galore, but it was mostly spent fixing my jetlag and hanging out with my mom and sister. This included catching up on  a few of my favorite Japanese game shows, eating a ton of delicious food, and lazing around my hometown of Ebina.

The following weekend, however, we decided to take a small trip to Yokohama. Yokohama is the capital city of Kanagawa prefecture, and is about an hour south of Tokyo. I used to go to school there, and so have spent quite a lot of time wandering the port, shopping districts and Chinatown.

 Our purpose this time was to go see the well-preserved 39000 year old mammoth Yuka. I'd seen an article about it a month ago and knew I had to go see it. So I dragged my family along. I unfortunately don't have many photos, but I do have a badly-shot, and badly-edited video at the end of this post. (It's my first time making a video; I'll try and get better!)

The mammoth exhibit was very cool. It compared and contrasted the mammoths with the living elephants of today. It also explored the various relationships between the mammoths and the environment, humans, and other animals of its time. The mammoth itself was in surprisingly good condition. It still had its skin and fur, and most of its body was very well preserved from time, scavengers and the environment.

Once we had finished with the exhibit, we decided it would be a waste to just go back home...so we went to the Cup Noodle Museum. My sister and I had quite a bit of fun taking pictures...

The best thing about this museum was definitely making our own unique instant noodle cups (also shown in the video). We ate them the next day (Yum).

The day finished up with shopping for dinner, which was "make your own sushi rolls" dinner. (Again, yum).

Never Give Up!