Hello friends,
I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long to update my blog. China, Japan, a nasty Flu virus, and finals hit me at warp speed and now with just five days left in the voyage, I’ve finally found time to sort through the whole crazy mess.
China was absolutely epic. My roommate Amanda and I traveled on our own from Hong Kong, to Beijing, and then onto Shanghai where we were welcomed into the homes and private lives of two amazing Chinese families that work with my dad. Huanxin (Beijing) and Claudia (Shanghai) showed us this incredibly complex country through their hospitality and candor in a way not many of my peers probably were not able to experience. We did/saw/visited/discussed more in six days than I thought was humanly possible and by the end of it all as we were sleep deprived, overfed, and entirely overwhelmed. But… it was amazing. More stories to come with time, here are some of the highlights of the three diverse cities:
Hong Kong: crazy high-rise buildings, shopping mania, Star Ferry, Lan Tao Island, “Big” Buddha, ancient monasteries, incense parks, black sesame gelato, mochi balls, hairy crab bean curd, LFK nightlife, international hipsters, yuppies at dinner, overpriced airport eggs.
Beijing: screaming Scandinavian children, world’s largest airport, Olympic grounds, good Michael Phelps juju, traffic, silk-road markets, first home cooked meal in two months (!), Great Wall, Szechwan spicy animal organs, Tiananmen square, the (very forbidden) Forbidden city, ancient courtyards, frozen feet, traditional duck dinner (and survived, thank you), Peking Opera, ginger beer, rice pillows, Summer palace.
Shanghai: magnetic levitation train, spaceship buildings, semi-normal looking food, harbor walks, Chinese teenage social behavior, bean and oatmeal porridge, molded watermelon pork hash, brined duck eggs, stomach aches, laughing so hard we could cry, Starbucks (!), historical district, knock-off Christmas decorations, speed shopping (winter coat), manhunt for Japanese rail pass, foot reflexology (sexual assault), awkward dinner with dad’s colleagues (sorry Dad), clandestine manicures and kamikaze… you know, psycho drivers, five hundred pork dumplings for breakfast, faking sick (little effort required), first taste of Chinese communist inefficiency/evasion, illiterate taxi drivers, ship at last!
Phew.
With just two days to recollect our bearings, we arrived in Kobe and started again. I had purchased a rather expensive Japanese ‘tourist’ rail pass that I could use on any JR train and subway line throughout the entire country, and boy did I put it to use. I didn’t really end up spending much time in Kobe, as soon as we got through immigration we took one tram, two subways, one train, and one bullet train to Hiroshima. We walked the A-Bomb Dome and the memorial grounds where the epicenter of the bomb hit and just took it all in. The park was absolutely beautiful. The leaves were just on the tail end of their fall lifespan and were bursting with deep reds and oranges – colors that reminded me of and made me miss home big time. Throughout this trip I have visited more peace museums than should be in existence because of the actions and devastation caused by European and North American power. I sat on a bench near one of several monuments, closed my eyes, and breathed in the cold fresh air and just felt so disappointed. Hiroshima rebuilt and moved on, but there are other places on this planet that are still in ruin. There are families who are separated, displaced, and missing members as casualties of war. And for what? Really? Nothing.
After Hiroshima, a small group of friends and I took (guess what) more trains to Kyoto where we saw dozens of wannabe Geishas, visited the Nijo Castle, discovered the proliferation of 7Eleven mini-marts, fell asleep on buses, and stumbled into a Moon Festival where Japanese gathered from across the country to celebrate the traditional end of harvest. Because of this convergence on Kyoto, there was not one hotel available in the entire city. We made our way back to the maze of trains and enjoyed 3 hours of relative peace to Tokyo where four of us shared the world’s smallest, and coolest, hotel in the “entertainment” district. Amanda scared the pants off all of us as we were walking around that night by sharing that 1 in 3 Japanese men is involved in the Yakuza, the Japanese organized crime syndicate. Yikes! Can you imagine?
My dad had hooked us up big time for our next night in Tokyo by waving his special Intel status at the Imperial Hotel, one of the cities oldest and finest hotels that sits basically caddy-corner to the Imperial Palace – which by the way, has a land value higher than the entire state of California, wow.
It’s going to sound silly, but one of the more difficult parts about the whole Semester at Sea experience at large is that given the short amount of time we have in each port, we feel a need to cram as much into each day as we possibly can and become burned out very quickly. After checking into the room at the Imperial, I remember just laying face first on the bed for 15 minutes, trying to gather as much energy as I possibly could muster, to carry on another day.
So… we ventured out to the infamous Harajuku and Shinjuku shopping districts of Tokyo to find some of the most impeccable, and bold fashonistas on the planet. There were people everywhere. Despite the masses, everyone flowed in and out of stores, restaurants, and train stations like the professionals that they are. Standing in the middle of it all, looking rather dowdy in my jeans and sneakers, I literally felt like I was in some kind of utopian dream world. I had been exposed to Japan in school, but primarily through pop-culture, and never could have put the pieces together to create the picture we were now standing in.
Overall fatigue, the bright lights, big buildings, and overall dream-world nature of Tokyo set me in a daze for the rest of my time in Japan. Riding the train back to the Imperial, I couldn’t believe that for the first time on this trip I was actually counting down the days until we got back to the ship. But boy did I rally those last two days. In fact, I didn’t even sleep that night because I was so determined to experience the world famous Tsukiji Fish Market that opens at 5 am and requires visitors to stand in line for starting at 3 am. I fell asleep on the floor of the market’s waiting room (gross) and eventually did get to see the live auction and the meticulous arbitration of the giant Tuna. It was so cool, but again, more out-of-body-is-this-for-real feelings ensued. I slept for all of three hours before hyping up on coffee and walking around the stunning Imperial Palace Park.
At this point you’re probably thinking… get this girl some sleep! But sometime earlier in the voyage, probably in October, I had signed up to do a home stay with the family of a college student from Yokohama City University on the final night in Japan. I did a quick change on the ship after making my way from Tokyo, got to call my parents (yay!) and then headed out the door to meet Natsuko, a beautiful and intelligent freshman studying gender policy at YCU. We made a two-hour commute to her hometown, Odawara, that she takes every single day to and from school. When we finally arrived around 10 pm, I shared stories with her family about my trip while sitting on seat cushions around a low table in the family room and ate persimmons and sweet potato candies. I slept in Natsuko’s room, on the floor, and arose early again the next day for a trip to a massive working monastery and temple hidden in covered forests Odawara. The Japanese maples there were absolutely stunning, I kept thinking about the few we have in our backyard in Loomis – my parents would have loved the huge ones I stood among there. After a quick Sushi lunch and more incredible conversation, Natsuko and I got back on the train and
headed home for the ship.
Ship. At last. I loved Japan, but was ready to say sayonara. I will definitely need to return with a less crowded brain, on more sleep, and with more time to just wander. I’m sorry if that whole Japan narrative seemed like one giant run-on sentence, but in all honesty, that’s pretty much what it felt like.
Departing Japan was the ready… set… go signal for “the crossing” which Amanda and I have been lamenting over since the day we got our schedules. Ten days at sea. Ten. And that was just to Hawaii. The majority of the ship had managed to procrastinate all of our hardest assignments until this ten-day block and, of course, this only added to the misery. The day immediately following Japan, Amanda and I literally slept the whole thing through. We got up to go to the gym, eat, and use the restroom but that was about it. One day down, nine more to go. Next day: Thanksgiving, epic disappointment. Thanksgiving initiated the dire emergency that was our homecoming… or as Amanda posits so eloquently “it highlighted the urgency with which we needed to go home.” Any way you cut it, the death march that is this study abroad experience moved onward.
Day three hit me like a freight train and I can’t tell you much about the five days following because I spent them in bed, trying to sleep off the worst flu bug I’ve ever come down with. The swells were rolling in at about 5 meters with crazy wind that only accentuated my delusional feverish state. I didn’t actually start feeling like a human being again until about the night before we reached Hawaii. At that point I was seriously like, okay, let’s skip Hawaii and just book it to San Diego, but the four days in the sun and salt water was about the most healing thing I could have done for myself.
Here I am, now, with one final and four days left standing between the beautiful San Diego harbor and me. Almost home. The waters have been relatively calm (knock on wood) and the weight of all that I’ve seen/heard/felt is starting to make me a little loony. I’ve already emphasized my eagerness to be home with my family, but I also have formed an amazing family on this ship too that I will miss more than I can possibly understand at this point. It’s all very bittersweet. Packing, final meetings, and final goodbyes are going to be here sooner than I know it and in a week from today I’ll be sitting on the back porch of my house in Loomis with my Mom wondering what in the heck just happened to the time.
I’ll try to update again before we arrive on Monday, but I suspect that the next time you hear from me it will probably be in person over tea, or through a blog post that is much more articulate and poised about the nature of this experience than I’m feeling right now.
