Very Confusing

Groggy, with a sore throat, a bit of a headache, dead tired, and with the onset of a runny nose, I went up to Global in the morning. I was dressed in sweatpants with a jacket over my t-shirt. I would never go to class at Penn State dressed like that, but it’s what you do when you live and go to school on a ship. Everybody looks like they’re wearing their pajamas to class. Regardless of how we were dressed, I would say that Global was almost helpful. It was almost helpful because it was about Japan, instead of the port we just left, which is a problem that’s plagued Global for a few ports every now and then. The information about Japan was next to useless but some of it stuck in my head.

There was an interesting piece of news that emerged today. Apparently some professors (and I don’t have any of them) have an attitude of superiority over, at the very least, some of the students. And essentially they treat the students as if they were “rich white kids that like to get drunk.” But let’s be clear, there are “rich white kids that like to get drunk” and then there’s the other ~95% of students. To address the issue, a letter was drafted challenging the claim and put in the Deans’ mailboxes. So at the end of global, Dean Mike came out and gave the effect that he’s really taking the letter to heart that we as a shipboard community need to come together better and make sure that we know we’re all in it together. It may have been legitimate. It may have been an act. It may have been a bit of both. But this letter was much of the talk on the ship. I didn’t really care.

At this point in the voyage, there’s a couple chances left to have pictures and items signed by Desmond Tutu. He’s only done one other date and that was somewhere back near day eight. That’s the day I took advantage of when there was no line. Everybody said ‘oh, I’ll just go on one of the next days he does it.’ Well from day eight back in the Caribbean to today in the East China Sea, he hasn’t done another day of “appearances.” That’s why there’s a line that extends halfway down the ship.

I kept walking by the line and shaking my head at both the length of it, and the speed that it was moving. People had friends hold their spot on line, went to class, and still made it back on line with a great deal of time to spare. So much so that when Desi called it a day because he was tired, there were still a lot of people on line. Supposedly this was supposed to be the last day of autographs and pictures, but they gave chits (which are apparently slips of paper, although I’d never heard the word before) that stated their position on line for the next “appearance.” Again, I’m just thrilled that I got on line in the Caribbean when there were only about five or six people ahead of me.

I had a plan to start studying for my art history quiz today, and I did do that later in the morning. Then I went to lunch but went back to the room to make sure that I got in as much studying as I could. Studying, for your reference, is a relative term on this ship. There’s something about being on an ocean-faring vessel that just makes studying that much trickier. Then I went to class and a very typical Semester at Sea thing happened – and nobody was unhappy about it. The quiz had to be moved because it was clear neither Dr. O’Brian nor the students were really prepared for it. Now it’s after Japan because that’s the next time class will meet.

After art history, I was back to folding more origami flowers for the Ambassador’s Ball. It’s drawing ever closer and the goal of 750 flowers is so out of reach that I’m blind to the fact that we won’t come close. I’m still going to go strong with it though because I’m bound to think of something to do with them by the time of the Ball.

The closer we get to Japan, the more I realize that Japan will be very different from any other port that we’ve visited. For one, it’s the most western port we’ll visit (which at first sounds odd because it’s location is in the Far East), as it’s the only country that can’t at least be partially classified as a developing country. It’s developed, and as I learned this afternoon, at least one-step ahead of even the United States.

Before we are allowed to enter the country, we have to have our temperature taken. Japan will not let you in if you are possibly ill with something that might be considered something highly communicable. It’s a portion of their anti-bird flu effort. It’s quite impressive that a country can institute and enforce this, so I do have to give them some credit for that. I’m mildly concerned because I’m not feeling very well and clearly have something in me. It’s still a couple days until we’re in port, though.

What was arranged was that we were called up the faculty room by sea and had to stand in line to get our temperature taken with one of those ear thermometers. Then we had to walk to the other side of the room and tell someone what the temperature was. But somehow, it did not turn out that simple for me.

So I go up to the faculty room when the Red Sea is called and get in line. They’ve got the same silly lines on the floor so we know which line we go in for our last name. If you don’t know at this point, I don’t know what to tell you. I get to the front of the line, and because the reading is for Japan the numbers are metric, so my temperature is 37.5 degrees Celsius. Between the fifteen feet where my temperature was taken and where I have to give it, I could not remember if my temperature was 35.7 or 35.7. And they kept telling us over and over again not to forget our temperature because it would slow us down. And I would keep saying to myself ‘Yeah, sure, come on, let’s get the line moving here.’ There were one or two people in front of me at the table, and in the short time that I was on line, I did some quick logic and while I know only a bit about the Celsius scale, I listened to the temperature in front of me from the seemingly healthy person (which was in the 38s) and figured that the 35.7 option was too low, so I gave the 37.5. Or at least that’s how I think I remembered I did it.

After dinner (and at this point, the food doesn’t even register on my radar), Katie and I finally finalized the Ball seating, with the intent to not make another change. If your name was not on the list, you were not getting in. I’ve had enough with this seating chart. Yet every time we go through the list, my ear seems to catch a name that I haven’t heard before. Go figure.

I didn’t have the energy to stay up too late, so I did not. Plus, we lost an hour of sleep, too. Those hours just do not stop going away. It is one of that last things I need right now.

Woke up at 7, very tired, the day before Japan, with what I would classify as a good, old-fashioned cold. After breakfast, I went to my history class and Global, which I don’t think that I was too awake for. Which is odd because I sit about four to five feet away from the history professor. She had to have seen that I was fighting consciousness. But if I were her, I would have let it go, too. Semester at Sea is a marathon. Especially after nights where we lose an hour.

After partially sleeping through both of my morning classes (I couldn’t even tell you what Global was about, but I’m pretty sure that I didn’t miss anything), I had to be awake to run our Ambassador’s Ball meeting in the morning. This one wasn’t about decorations so it went really well. We had to hash out the timeline of the ball. We had to know when both seatings would start and end, when dessert would begin, when the music would be playing in the piano lounge, when the dance would start in the Union, and stuff like that. It went well. It lasted a while because we had a lot to figure out and I’m easily distracted at times like this. But we were all happy with what we came up with.

After lunch I went to my cinema class. I thought we would be watching decent foreign films. I guess we’ll call whatever we saw today as cultural exposure. I might have nodded off in that class, too. And then after class, for the first time on the entire voyage, no matter what illness I was afflicted with, this was the first time I ever did bed rest. I had my Whose Line? DVDs and I laid in bed, watched those, and rested. I needed to. I really did. If we still had an extra day or two before port, I would not have needed to, but we don’t have the luxury of a day.

Before dinner I was able to get a letter or two done for the Ambassador’s Ball. Any time we have to contact someone on the staff of the ship, we have to draft a nice, well-written letter asking for something. Speaking of letters, the letter from yesterday morning about the students has had ripple effects. The rumors are flying left and right. There’s a consensus about which professors were intended to be the focus of the letter, but a handful of the professors that weren’t the problem are acting like they were. In other words, the wrong people are taking steps to make the ship better. Now, they’re just annoying people. And the targeted professors don’t seem to have done a thing. It’ now the running gag that if somebody has something to say that they’re going to write it in a letter to the Deans. I think we’re all a bit delusional to see that there are some better things to do with our time.

After dinner I had another pre-trip meeting – and it was with Arnie again! I cannot lose this guy! Out of all people, the septuagenarian ship psychologist continues to be near me. This trip however is only two of the five days that I plan to spend in Japan. This trip in particular goes to Kyoto and Nara has a few features that I would not otherwise be able to organize. Where I’ll be the other three days is another story entirely, and I’ll tell that when I get there.

As for the trip, it seems to be a pretty decent group of people, with a number of students that I can associate with for the trip. I’m looking forward to it greatly. I hope I feel better by the time the trip rolls around…

The 5 o’clock announcements (that came on closer to 6) teased the ship that tonight’s preport would be the most exciting preport ever! And then the announcements that told us to get our rear in gear over to preport said it again. The Deans don’t know that when you build something up this spectacularly, you need to be able to back it up. If you said that it was going to be the most mediocre preport ever, then we might be pleasantly surprised.

And what was it that made it (not) the most exciting preport ever? Well, it took most of preport to find out, but some of the deans, RAs, and the ship doc came out dressed like geishas. (You’ll hear more about geishas later.) The ship doc was the only one that cross-dressed though, and I do have to give him some credit for that because I did have to do a double take to see who it was. But here was their problem – they didn’t think it out beyond the costumes. (And I have no idea where those came from because we’re not in Japan yet.) They had no bit to go with the costumes. It did hold some promise upon their entrance, but the balloon deflated a bit quicker than they would have liked. Here’s how the doc looked:












It’s amazing how I still get a case of the preport jitters this late in the voyage, but it’s a new port, a new country, and it’s still exciting. I went to the other end of the ship for preport snack and hung around a little too long in the day because I did not get to bed when I wanted to. At least we didn’t lose an hour.

Kobe, Japan

I got out of bed, begrudgingly, at 7. We still weren’t in port yet, but we were in the port area – I could see land. And it was cloudy, gloomy, and rainy, so there was no sunrise to be missed. We were supposed to be getting into port about now, but who knows when it will be happening now. Since I was up already I wanted breakfast, and even when we come into port, that’s over before it begins, so I didn’t want to miss a free meal. My breakfasts have boiled down to one thing now. Either they have the chocolate filled croissants or they don’t. It’s either a good breakfast, or there are no chocolate croissants. There’s no gray area in between. No croissants this morning. *sigh* In the later weeks of the voyage in my usual solitary breakfasts before my 8 o’clock history class (because there’s only one or two other people in the dining room these days), I took to sitting towards the back and watching the fantail behind the ship with my breakfast and a cup of coffee. The coffee is never very good. No matter how much sugar or cream I put in, it just doesn’t cut it, nor does it keep me awake. I’m not sure why I do it, but it’s the thing that I do in breakfast. It was a little more crowded this morning so I didn’t tap into the coffee reserves.

I went up to the deck and took a picture of myself coming into port. You can tell that there’s not much going on behind me as that was the most scenic vista around. I can also tell, by looking at my face, that I’ve had better mornings. I really don’t feel well. But as I’ve learned on Semester at Sea, I have to suppress my illnesses when I’m in port because I don’t want to miss out on anything because of a cold. I don’t see myself as having much of a choice. But as you can see in the picture below, I’m clearly tired.














Needless to say, I went back to bed. There was nothing going on, and there was sleep to be had. As is usual on a port day, the announcements do a very good job preventing sleep as much as possible. But I did get some rest and felt a bit better when the announcement came on that I would not be able to sleep through. In addition to having our temperatures taken, as if that was not enough, the Japanese want us to pass a thermoscan. What’s a thermoscan you ask? Well, a thermoscan is a device that tells the Japanese immigration officials if you are too ill to enter into their country. That was al I knew about it at the time. I didn’t know if it was a booth that I had to stand in, or whatever it might have been. It was cloaked in mystery.

When I went up to Deck 6, the line was already well out of the Union. I followed it all the way into the dining hall on the other end of the ship. That’s a line stretching most of the length of the ship, and I couldn’t tell how fast it was moving. Sensing an opportunity to increase my chances of appearing less ill, I stood outside in the cool air to lower the temperature on the surface of my skin. My logic was that a person with a fever would have a higher body temperature and a less likely chance to be let into the country. I’m still thinking that I have a cold, but it may be early to tell. So I was going to do everything I could.

Then I get in line and finds that it’s moving rather quick. It only takes a few minutes to reach the Union. We have to sign in at a table, and then we’re told to walk toward the thermoscan. This is when I see the thermoscan – it’s an infrared camera. That’s it. Awful fancy name for something not so fancy. In my final efforts to avoid tripping an alarm that there’s probably no way to trip, I devised a plan. They let us walk toward the camera, but not one at a time. I walked behind the guy in front of me and blocked the camera’s view. At the end he turned, and I hoped that the second that I would be viewable wouldn’t be enough to get a good look. As soon as I walked out of view of the camera, I went into a super-quick walk straight out of the Union, hoping that if there was an issue they wouldn’t be able to figure out which one I was. There are a number of holes in my logic (including the fact that I had a cold, not a fever), but let’s not forget that I was not well at the time and the intelligence may not have been firing correctly.

After the thermoscan, there was nothing else happening again, so I went back to bed. I just want to make sure you understand the magnitude of my cold. This is the worst one I’ve had all trip – and that’s saying a lot. So lay off!

I decided to remain in bed for the required diplomatic briefing, as we haven’t had one since South Africa, I think. They can’t be that important. Especially since the diplomatic briefing in Salvador scared half the ship into not wanting to set foot in the country. I’ll take my chances. What was nice was that during diplo (as we call it) there were no announcements. After diplo was another story. Lots and lots of announcements.

At this point it’s a little after 10 in the morning. Usually we’re already off the ship by this point, but immigration was, what I’ll call, thorough. So we’re all getting a little antsy seeing Japan and not being able to get off the ship yet. I couldn’t take the announcements anymore and decided to get up for good for the day. After the diplo there was to be a performance by a Japanese drum group. It’s those kind of drums that are about two or three feet across. I’m not sure why there was this performance, but I was up for it. I found my group that I usually sit with in the Union and asked how diplo was. They said that I didn’t miss anything.

I was really hoping that the drum performance would be like taking a cold shower and really wake me up. If you have ever seen a Taiko drum performance, you know what I’m talking about when I say that I could feel my eardrums vibrate in my head while not being able to hear myself think. The volume in the Union was extraordinary, and they were very good. I’m very glad that I went to the drum performance and not the diplo briefing. Something else to mention is that as much as it’s a drum performance, the drummers themselves like to get in on it and yell while drumming. It all adds to the experience.

After the drum performance, we still weren’t done with the day’s activities yet. And we still weren’t able to leave the ship yet. I think they knew that it would take this long and never told us just how long it would take. They were very vague with their description that it may take a few hours into the morning to get the ship cleared, but this was longer than I expected.

Anyway, the next activity was the group photo. The group photo needs to include everyone on board. That’s professors, staff, and students. That’s over 800 people in one photo. The only place that could happen is the back decks. They said a professional photographer (again with the vagueness) would be taking the picture from land. The goal I had was to be able to find myself in the photo. I had one thing going for me in that I was wearing my bright red hoodie you saw in the picture above. At the very least, the color of me should make me easier to find.

It’s a very easy photo to take. You send everyone to the back of the ship and tell them to smile when it’s time to take the picture. The problem was that one of the RDs had found himself a megaphone and, worse, he decided to use it. Whereas a person in their right mind would have used it to tell the students what the picture would include, so they know they’ll be in it, the RD decided to yell at people for no reason and told people to stand three to four deep in the crowd so that there was no way they could be seen. Initially, it was only supposed to be two decks, and if anyone were on any of the other decks, you would think he was going to have them keelhauled. Then we all couldn’t fit on two decks, so the other two opened up. He really was a pill.

Then we started taking pictures. I thrust my arms out in an uncomfortable position to make sure my red arms would at least appear in the picture. We took a few pictures and then it was over. It took considerably longer than it ever should have – no thanks to the megaphone.

Because my planned trip was on days two and three, I would have days one, four, and five to travel independently, something that I haven’t done a large amount of in the voyage. Japan just makes it easier to make it happen. And when I say independently, I don’t mean along. Independent trips on Semester at Sea just mean trips that are not organized by the ship. My friend LeeAnne and I had schedules that matched up on our free days, so we decided to partner up and see what we could do.

We had been told over and over again that if we were doing overnight independent trips that we would need to bring our passports with us. During lunch, the ship was cleared to let us off, but the passports were not ready yet. LeeAnne and I decided that we were going to be coming back to the ship tonight anyway, so there was no reason to keep waiting for our passports. Instead we grabbed our backpacks for the day trip and finally departed the ship.

Upon departing the ship I was confused. In nearly every other port, once you get off the ship you’re somewhere. There’s either a busy street in front of you, or just something. We had a building to navigate. From here, we were looking to get to the bullet train in Kobe. We weren’t exactly sure how to get there, but we knew we needed to take some kind of rail transport to get there. The line that we were looking for now was the Port Liner. It was called the Port Liner because it was the line that ran through the port. Duh.

The problem was that we couldn’t find the station for it. Compounding the confusion was that there were a few other students wandering around looking for the same thing. We went through the building and out the other side. Nothing there but a small parking lot. And no signs anywhere. It was very odd and confusing. And only just the beginning of that feeling.

Next we tried the escalators because there was nothing else to try anymore. Up on the second level we could find the station. But it was almost like you had to know it was there to find it. But finding the Port Liner stop wasn’t necessarily the hard part. Now we had to buy tickets. There were automated machines that I had no idea how to work. We wanted to go towards the bullet train, and that was about all we knew. If I had been feeling better, not the President of the Ball, wide awake, and not taking classes, I would have taken the time to research the ins and outs of travel in Japan. I didn’t and I am flying nearly blindly.

Thankfully, another one of the students who somehow knew what they were doing told us the right buttons to hit, when to pay and how to get our tickets. That was a bit of a lifesaver. The Japanese language isn’t exactly what I’d call easy to decipher. It’s not like Italian where I can apply a bit of my Spanish to help out. But the fun didn’t stop there.

I’m used to using a Metrocard in New York City, where it had a bard code that swipes through a reader. Here, there was a spot to place the ticket, and it sucked it right up. I panicked for a second because I didn’t get the ticket back and had no idea what happened to it. It reappeared at the other end of the console, and apparently I was supposed to grab it as I was going through the gates. It was very confusing.

So we take the escalator up to the top of the building where the Port Liner runs. It’s important to note that this is neither the subway nor a train. I’m not exactly sure what that leaves, but it sure felt like a subway, except that we were stories above street level. Does that make it an elevated tramway?

The stop we were at was P03, also known as the Port Terminal. How do they come up with these names? Assuming we were moving in the right direction, the next stop was the Boeki Center (P02), followed by Sannomiya Station (P01), the end of the line.

Unfortunately, this is not the bullet train station. We’ve got to take another train to get there. As we wandered around Sannomiya, the main railway terminal of Kobe, hoping to be struck with some kind of enlightenment about how to get tickets for this train now, we saw more Semester at Sea people doing something very similar. The mini-goal right now was that we were trying to get to the bullet train, and we learned that we would have to take the subway to get there. That means buying more tickets. We found the place to buy tickets at the automated station. Although this one worked nearly completely differently than the last one we looked at. It was still confusing trying to buy tickets, and we were lucky enough to be helped out again. Now we just had to find the train.

The track, as we would find it, was located on the second basement level. Not the third because that goes somewhere else. The Kobe Municipal Subway (Seishin-Yamate Line) would take us from Sannomiya (which was now switched to be called S03) to the bullet train station, more commonly known as Shin-Kobe (S03). It was called Shin-Kobe because the bullet train is actually called the Shinkansen, and they just shortened that and hyphenated Kobe on the end of it. I’ll try to call it the Shinkansen from here on.

So we take the subway over one stop to Shin-Kobe. I know what you’re thinking – if it was just one stop why didn’t you walk it? Well, if I knew where the station was I would have done that. I have no idea where I am. These trains have spun me around so much that I don’t even know which way the ship is. I’m assuming it’s somewhere downhill.

I don’t know how long I’ve made it seem like it took us to get to the Shin-Kobe station, but it wasn’t an overtly long amount of time. We did not spend a lot of time standing around with our mouths agape with a doofy look on our faces. We made semi-decent time.

Now we had to buy tickets on the Shin-Kobe to our destination of the day: Hiroshima. This time however, there was no automated kiosk – instead we had to wait on line at the ticket counter. There are both pros and cons to having to do this. First, we don’t have to figure out how to work the kiosk. But the major problem, as we learned when we got to the counter, was the language barrier. This day was getting more interesting by the second, and it was only somewhere around one in the afternoon.

We get up to the counter and the woman spoke some English. I did not know at the time how much of a rarity that would be at the time. We tell her that we want round-trip tickets to Hiroshima. She gets to work on that. We see on the schedule screen behind us that there’s a train departing for Hiroshima shortly. Then she asks for our credit cards. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. I’ve never waited so long for two credit cards to process. It was almost like when she went in the back to do the transaction she just left for the day. We were starting to get concerned that we weren’t going to make the next train, which would have been terribly inconvenient.

After forever and a day, and enough time for the line to grow considerably behind us (including some students with their passports, which means we missed that by not long), she came back with our tickets and receipts for us. These tickets could not have been more confusing. Especially mine – she forgot to print mine in English. I didn’t know which way was up on it. At least we had our tickets.

We went up to the track and waited for the train to come. The day was not stressful per se, but let’s say I was happy to have made it to the Shinkansen track. At least, I think we were at the right track. There were people on the other side of the tracks, too. I was hoping that we were on the right side. The signage wasn’t exactly clear. I was looking for other Semester at Sea people to ask, but we didn’t see anyone. There was one girl we thought was, but we couldn’t figure out if she actually was or not. She only looked vaguely familiar, so we didn’t bother. Not long later, a train came. We got on it.

Well, getting on the Shinkansen isn’t exactly as simple as ‘we got on it.’ Our tickets gave us our assigned seats. We had to find those seats. Let’s not forget that my ticket was in Japanese. The train was mostly empty, but we think we found them. Nobody told us to get up and move anyway.

The Shinkansen operates at about 300 km/hr. That’s quite fast. The speed it moves at, the turns have to be banked, quite heavily sometimes. And there’s not much change in elevation either. If there’s a mountain or hill in the way, we’re going through it. And my ears were popping nearly the entire time. I’m still trying to figure out the science behind it, but I’m thinking it has to do with the difference in pressure between the inside and outside due to the speed we’re traveling at. It’s physics, so I’m not entirely sure on any of my logic. But the only thing I’m sure about is that my ears popped the entire hour there.

Hiroshima is located on the western portion of Japan. Hiroshima was also the first city that the atomic bomb was dropped on in 1945. (Don’t worry – it’s safe to be there now.) We exited the train station and went out to hail a cab. While a cab is not the most cost-effective way to travel, we (again) had no idea where we were going, so we figured if we wanted to get anywhere this would be how.

We hail a cab in no time once we find our way outside of the station, which was not as difficult as I thought it would be, and tell the driver that we want to go to the Peace Park. He nods as if he knows what we’re talking about and starts to drive off. I don’t think Japan is a ‘save-face’ country, so if they don’t know where they’re going, I don’t think they go. But we’ll test that idea right now.

About five minutes later, we arrive at what we hope is the Peace Park. He pulled over to the side and stopped – that’s usually a sign. We paid 1000 yen for the ride (there’s roughly 120 yen to the dollar, so you can do the math on that one). On exiting the cab, I sure hoped we were at the peace park, because I didn’t want to know where we were otherwise.

One of, if not the prominent structure at the Peace Park is the Atomic Bomb Dome, or A-Dome as it’s more commonly called. This is the building that was directly underneath the bomb when it detonated. Remarkably, portions of the shell of the structure survived the blast, but nearly every other building in the vicinity was annihilated. When we started planning this trip in Japan over a month ago, I didn’t really feel like I wanted to go to Hiroshima. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but in my mind I only associate it with the bomb, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to see first-hand what happened there. There was some atrocious stuff around from the war in Vietnam, and I was hesitant to see what the scars of war left in Hiroshima. I am very glad I came, but I’ll get into some more detail later.

I was hit with a dilemma at the A-Dome. Throughout my voyage, I have taken a picture of myself in front of places. I think the A-Dome is something to take a picture in front of. But what expression do I have on my face? I’m at a site that remembers the murder of innocent people. But I’m at the park that was built as a symbol and show of peace to the world. There’s two facets. There’s the tragedy and the hope. Here’s what I came up with:














What there is of that building today is what was left after the bomb detonated then. It absolutely takes your breath away to think that everything that I could see – no matter how far into the distance – was absolutely destroyed. About sixty years ago, right where I’m standing, where I’ve traveled through, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. There were no people, there were no buildings, there was no transportation, finance, industry – there was nothing. To think that in that time this city has recovered and become what it is today is absolutely amazing. It truly makes you feel something inside and makes you think.

What’s become nice today is that the gloomy day that started coming into port isn’t here in Hiroshima. It is an absolutely beautiful spring day. There’s not a cloud in the sky, I’m comfortable in a t-shirt and a hoodie (even though I’m really used to t-shirts in nearly every other country), and it’s just nice out.

The Peace Park is in an odd shape and isn’t that big. There’s a museum on one end and we were planning to do that last. The rest of the park had a number of what I’ll call ‘spots’ to visit. One of them was the Peace Bell. It was a gift from the Greek embassy, as a fun fact. Here I am ringing the Peace Bell:














There are a number of other small spots that we went by, but there was one in particular that really struck a chord with me. The Children’s Peace Monument is dedicated to the children that died during the bombing. The monument has a statue of a girl atop, and is based on the story of a girl dying from radiation poisoning. She believed that if she could fold 1000 paper cranes that she would be cured. She died before she could fold enough cranes. As a tribute, children fold 1000 cranes and leave them at the monument. The kids on the ship have been doing that all voyage and hit their goal of 1000 not long ago. They’re going to drop them off later in the week.

As we walked by now, we had to stop because there was a group of Japanese school children all gathered around the monument singing. I had to stop and watch and listen. It was – without a doubt – the most peaceful thing I have ever seen in my entire life. It was absolutely beautiful. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. It really, really made you feel good inside in ways that I still can’t describe. Here’s what the scene looked like:


















At the other end of the park is the museum. A bit hesitant about going into the museum, but probably would have regretted not going. There are two sections to the museum. One part has an area dedicated to showing Hiroshima before and asking for not using nuclear weapons so we can all live in peace. And the other part shows what happened because of the bomb. There are pieces of stuff all over that just boggles your mind. There’s rock that looks unlike any rock I’ve ever seen. There are clocks that are all stopped at the same time. There’s a model that shows that when the bomb detonated it had the same energy as a small, red star. It was just more sensory overload, and such a departure from the stuff that I’m used to seeing over the past months.

After we left the museum, we figured it might be time to start looking for some place to eat. We could have tried to explore the city more, but we hit the major part and I also had absolutely no idea what else there was in the city, so that was part of the decision as well. There was a building across the street from the museum that had a few levels on it and we had thought that we saw there was a restaurant or someplace to eat somewhere inside of it.

Our trouble was finding it, then getting in. We nearly walked the whole way around the place, and didn’t see anything. So we went in, down to the lower level, and still didn’t see anything. Decent amount of people moving about in this odd building that I think was the Hiroshima Conference Center, but I could be mistaken on that.

Anyway, we never found a place to eat, so we walked back by the museum, and then further into what looked like the city part of town. Our goal here, and it was our sole goal, was to find a place to eat. As I’ve said before, there’s almost a stigma against eating in a place that does not specialize in local food. Here’s the problem: I don’t know enough about the local food (again with the lack of research) to be able to first tell what really is local stuff, and then which of the local stuff I should be having. If you’re going to have the local stuff, it’s all going to be in Japanese, so you’ve really got to know what you’re doing. I do have to say that in most preports there is a short segment about foods that we should definitely try, but they go through five to ten dishes in about two or three minutes. That’s not long enough to take notes on if I wanted to. There’s no way I’m going to remember that stuff – there’s no way anybody is going to remember that stuff.














Needless to say, we were looking for anyplace that looked passable. A few things to notice about the photo above. First, I’ve got a map. This was our way of making sure that we were, in fact, getting somewhere. I don’t remember where the map came from, but it did prove to be helpful. Also, the signs in the background are not remotely in English. That makes finding a place to eat a little trickier. It all adds to the experience and the challenge. And as you could tell, it doesn’t look like there’s a restaurant around, but there’s a chance that we’re in the neighborhood of one.

We had actually found one that was more of a café than a place to grab dinner, so we decided to bypass it hoping to find a meal. Little did we know that nearly every eating establishment we would pass in the next few minutes would be a café. Who knew that Hiroshima had so many cafés, and a lack of restaurants? I didn’t, because I didn’t do any research.

We kept passing more and more cafés and becoming slightly (albeit foolishly) concerned that we weren’t going to find some place to eat. Only slightly though. Eventually we stumbled upon what looked like a covered marketplace-type kind of thing that I later learned was called Hondori. It’s basically a shopping arcade that had places to eat in it.


















I’m not sure exactly how we found it, but we kept walking through it hoping to find some place to eat. Down towards the end on the right hand side, we found a place to eat that we were both happy with. I’d hesitate to call it an Italian place, but rather more of a Western pasta eatery. You know you’re in a good place when the only other people in it are locals. And we were clearly the only foreigners around… It was actually a nice dinner. Again, the ship food is really becoming repetitive, so this break of pace, albeit non-local food, was very nice and welcome.

From here, we figured that we might as well start to get our way back to the ship. See if you can keep track of how many different modes of transportation and transfers that we had to make to get from Hondori in Hiroshima back to my cabin for the evening.

The taxicab ride we took to the Peace Park cost about what a taxicab ride would cost, so we were looking for some other methods of transportation to get around. Luckily, the map indicated that there were streetcars buzzing around town. I can’t say that I’ve ever ridden a streetcar before. I don’t know where I would have had the opportunity before, but it was here now and the streetcar would take us directly back to the Shinkansen train station, so it was perfect and inexpensive.

What’s important to note is that we had what I would call a good idea what we were doing here, but that’s hardly a sure thing that we’re going to get where we want to. Don’t forget that nothing is in English over here. Just like nothing is written or spoken in Japanese in the United States, it’s the same thing over there.

The streetcars are actually very cool, in my opinion. There is one trick to them though. You have to put money into a thing when you go into the streetcar, and as we saw as people were leaving, you have to enter money to exit as well. These Japanese are fascinated with not wanting you to just be able to leave with no strings attached. They really do want to get you coming and going.

As we were on the streetcar, it really did seem like an efficient way to travel. The tracks were between either side of the lanes of traffic and it’s similar to a subway without all the fuss of going underground and all.














I was enjoying myself so much that I posed for a photo in the pose that I’m always in when I ride streetcars. Also, it was very quiet on the streetcar. LeeAnne and I found ourselves to be the loudest people on the streetcar talking in a tone that was just loud enough to hear ourselves over the sounds of the streetcar.

After managing to get off the streetcar (I make it sound tough, but the train station was the last stop of the line) we went inside to see when we could catch a train back to Kobe. It was just under an hour away, so we decided to do two things: sit and relax, and then figure out the rest of our tickets for the remainder of Japan. We sat in a café and the closest thing they had to an iced latte was an iced coffee. And when I say that this iced coffee was strong – my eyes were tearing it was so strong. I did not know the Japanese like their coffee so strong. That was news to me. It seems like there’s lots that I don’t know about Japan. And I’m sure that this was only the beginning.

After enjoying our beverage with some fellow Semester at Sea travelers that looked vaguely familiar (I may have seen them on the ship) we went to the ticket counter to purchase our tickets for the third evening and last morning in Japan. We asked what the deal was with my ticket in Japanese and they tried to explain it to me, but that did not go well. I’m still not really sure what to do with the ticket. And buying tickets here went light years faster than it did in the Kobe station. It was so much faster and so much easier.

With all our tickets in hand, we went up to the track to try to find which track we should be on, and when the train would be coming. This is the first sign we found:














That wasn’t all that helpful. But we then found another sign that I hoped would be more useful and informative. Well, I’m sure it was informative:














It just wasn’t informative in any language I can figure out. We made our best guess as to the track the train would come and hoped for the best. We were pretty sure we were looking for a train going the opposite direction from which we came, and that the train should be arriving around the time that it said on our ticket. Then a train came, we went on, sat down, and went away with it.

By now it was dark, so the views out of the window weren’t exactly available, so I closed my eyes and tried to get some rest amidst the incessant ear popping. All in all, I’m very glad and happy that I went to Hiroshima, especially because that wasn’t always the plan. It was very different from what I expected it to be, but I was pleasantly surprised at the resolve and fortitude of the people there. It really is required visiting if you go to Japan.

After getting back to the Shin-Kobe station, it would have been really nice to just get right back to the ship quickly. But we had to prove our mastery of the Kobe transportation system, in reverse this time. To show my joy of riding again, I posed on the subway to the Sannomiya Station.














Remembering how we transferred earlier in the day, we went from the JR to the Port Liner and hopped aboard for the last transit back to the ship. We almost made it back without making a boo-boo. The Port Liner’s claim to fame is that it takes you to the airport via the port. That’s pretty much why anyone would use it. It’s not a huge line; there’s no way there would be an express train… Apparently the express train doesn’t stop at the port. That’s something else I learned about Japan today. We watched the ship go by in the window and hoped we wouldn’t travel too far past it. The Port Liner stopped at the next stop, and we waited for a local to take us back to the ship. The wait was only a few minutes. And from now on, I have to make sure that I check what train I get on.

Back on the ship, which was its usual extreme quietness, I went back to the room and packed for the overnight trip I was departing for in the morning. As soon as my backpack was set to go, I went straight to bed, really hoping that I would start feeling better in the morning.

Fish Food

We had a special treat this morning as we only had to wake up at 8:30. In the whole scope of Semester at Sea, that is a late morning. Still in the same hotel that we were in the night before meant that we would be having breakfast in the same horrible little attached eatery. And they still tried to provide what they called a ‘western breakfast’ and still managed to fail miserably. It’s the same way that if we tried to cater to a Chinese crowd with an eastern breakfast we would fail in a similarly spectacular way. I did find some banana bread somewhere, so I had a breakfast that consisted of banana bread and banana bread.

In the morning we were given an option. We could have the morning to ourselves to shop, go back to bed, or do as we please, or we could go to a local university for a calligraphy lesson. After the near-miss calligraphy lesson we had the day before, I was hankering for a good ol’ fashioned calligraphy lesson, so of course I was going to that. And oddly enough, only about half the trip wanted to, most of which were people from my bus – not so oddly enough.

So we take the trip somewhere in Xi’an to a university that I cannot identify. The university is completely deserted. When I say that there is nobody around, I mean that there is not a soul on campus. And we go into one of the buildings on campus, which is also completely deserted. This is a picture of the hallway that the classroom we went into is located. Keep in mind that the flash from my camera is the light that you see on the walls.


















We walk down that spooky hallway waiting for an axe murderer to kill us all, but we make it into a classroom and all sit down at our own desk. The desks have a thin piece of paper sitting on top of a piece of cloth, an ink well to share with the desk astride, and a large brush. This brush has bristles much larger than anything I’ve ever used before, and I’m expected to make precise characters with this behemoth.

And as we all sat like good little students in our desks, this environment was the most familiar educational experience I’ve had all semester. Going to school on a ship is never normal. It wasn’t at the beginning of the trip, and as we’re nearing the end, it still remains abnormal.














So a teacher walks in the room, and I’m not sure that she didn’t magically appear from thin air right outside the classroom door, because I have no idea where she could have come from, and our incredibly chatty guide designates herself as the translator, as the teacher does not speak English. I had a bad feeling that we were not going to get a straight translation. The guide was going to put her own interjections in, because who else would know?

Very quickly we learn that if we want to draw a horizontal line, that’s called, rather pronounced, ‘hung,’ and a vertical line is pronounced ‘shoe.’ The teacher is then at the front of the room hunging and shoeing through the history of Chinese characters, which you can see a bit of in the photo above. The language dates back 5000 years, then about 2200 years ago, the characters had changed somewhat, then 2000 years ago they had evolved again, and somewhere between there and today, we have the characters that are in use now. They were much easier 5000 years ago. The Moon looked like a crescent of the Moon. Now you can’t make heads or tails of the character.

Once we had the truncated history of Chinese characters (and by the way, you’re only considered fluent in the language when you’re fluent with at least knowledge of 6,000 characters, and if you want to get anywhere in life, you’ve got to have a 10,000 character knowledge base), we were taught how to make some of the most basic characters. We folded our paper into twelve sections then taught how to make each of the characters. And it’s not always what the finished product looks like as much as it is how the character is made, as in what brush strokes you make to create the character. They don’t have an alphabet, so the characters themselves take on a newer and greater meaning.

I was looking around the room as we were making the characters; and while I wasn’t the best, I certainly was one of the best. You can tell how pleased I am with my efforts:














Now that’s a smile!

We all quite enjoyed the lesson and it wasn’t anywhere as painful as our Global Studies class. Very glad I did this instead of taking the morning off. The next stop in the morning was at the Museum of the Forest of Stele. You’ve got to be saying ‘No way! The Forest of the Stele!’ Yes, way. This place doesn’t have an air of importance, and doesn’t pretend to be important, but it is actually remarkably important. 1000 years old type of importance. For example, throughout the Forbidden City were placards of information about the significant spots that we were visiting, and referenced something that happened there, or quoted some Confucian principle. Then at the bottom there was a reference number. And those reference numbers refer to the stone stele that we were at now. The stone steles are essentially the ancient calligraphy, historical records, literature and philosophy, and ancient pictorial carvings. These stone tablets are what the country references. It’s somewhat similar to our Library of Congress – except different. There’s ancient carvings of Confucius next to the stuff he said, for example. Here’s an example of a portion of a stele:














I’m not sure what happened to my group here. I got separated and kept running into the same few people that I really didn’t care to be spending much time around. It felt a bit like we were spending more time than was necessary here. It’s e decently big place, but it’s a bit repetitive, if you know what I mean. (Read: boring)

A group of us found a guy making a rubbing of one of the stele. The stele are black because of all the years of people putting ink on them and rubbing rice paper against it. I guess when the ancient texts are stone; you can do that and not worry about damaging them. Or having them in some kind of protective, roped-off area. I’m guessing that if you try to tamper with the carvings that you will be found and also tampered with.

That was interesting for a few minutes. It’s only so entertaining to watch someone make markings on a piece of paper from carvings on stone. It’s not like he was getting instructions to find the arc of the covenant – although I can’t be sure about that.

On my way back out to the entrance, I had some extra time, so I played around with my camera again to get it to take a picture of me using the timer. The gardens towards the front of the place are quite nice. There are small pagoda-like structures dotted throughout, and it makes for a lovely, peaceful environment. Here’s how the picture turned out.














I’m still trying to figure out crossing my arms. What would I do with them otherwise? Put them on my hips? In my pockets? Anyway, we met out in front shortly after and walked back to the bus. On the walk, we passed a few small shops that displayed what have to be the largest brushes I’ve certainly ever seen. These brushes were two feet long and you’d need two hands to use them. I’m not sure what I would do with something like that unless I were an expert calligrapher, of which I am not.

All that and now it was only lunchtime, but there was a twist with lunch. We were eating at the Orient Hotel, which is known for having a top-floor rotating restaurant, with excellent views of the city. It’s one of those deals where you come for the meal, but stay for the rotation. Our bus arrives at the hotel and stops in front of the doors. This is great for now, but when we come back out after eating, that bus is going to be parked somewhere in Xi’an. Judging by the lack of spaces for bus in front of the hotel, we should have ample opportunity to walk off our lunch.

We were given no direction how to get to the restaurant. At the time we didn’t know that this was a top-floor restaurant. All we knew was that it rotates. This group of the blind leading the blind found an elevator and went to the top and made it to the restaurant. But before I continue, I want you to think to yourself. I want you to remember some of the moments that have happened to me since the voyage started. And I want you to take those into account and divine what I’m about to say about the restaurant.

The rotating restaurant was not rotating. To say that I was shocked would be totally false. That fact was one of the most unsurprising moments of the voyage. I was so prepared to dine at the non-rotating rotating restaurant that there wasn’t even a second thought.

The views from the top were very nice. Unfortunately, the 8 million residents of this largely industrial city don’t exactly live in a beautiful city. Low and gray are two adjectives that you don’t want to have to use to describe a city, but they’re applicable here. It would have been better if the smog didn’t lower the visibility so much, but beggars can’t be choosers. The view is what I found to be typical of my time in Xi’an. As far as I’m concerned, this is the norm there. And that’s not healthy for anybody or anything. But I’m sure I’ll be fine…














Lunch was surprisingly good. It seems the extra effort exerted in rotating the restaurant (however they do it) was instead but into the cuisine, which may have been the best stuff I’ve had in the country so far. The food was served buffet-style in a ring. The tables were lined against the windows, and the food was along with circular inner wall. I made sure to eat as much as I could because there’s no guarantee where the next one’s going to be. And given that tonight it our flight to the ship in Qingdao, I’ve got a bad premonition about dinner.

After absolutely stuffing myself, we took the elevator down and had no idea where the bus was. We looked up and down the street and saw a congregation of buses way down the block. Not really having another option, we headed down. Amidst the sea of buses, we found ours. As soon as the group mingled its way down, we drove off again.

They gave us another option at this stop. We could go shopping, pay extra and visit the drum tower, or walk down the block to the bell tower, which is free of charge. I nixed shopping right away, and seeing no real difference between bells and drums other than cost, I headed down to the bell tower with a group of about ten. I’m not sure what happened to everyone else.

Now that we’re nearing the end of what has been both an epic and whirlwind tour of Beijing and Xi’an over the past five days, I’m finding myself looking back at it a bit on the walk over to the bell tower. Like a few of the other ports we visited, I could not have done what I’ve done in the recent past. South Africa was under great political and social upheaval. Vietnam has been warring for the past two thousand years. And China’s doors have been unequivocally shut. If there is one word to describe what I think of China, it’s gray.

The skies, as far as I’m concerned, are perpetually gray. The communist government, as restrictive as it is, tries to imbue a sense that it isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. But they do a very bad job managing that gray area. As much as they might make you think one way, no matter what you do or where you go, it is apparent that this is not a free country. There’s a difference between having military soldiers standing around in Grand Central Station in New York City, and the Chinese standing at stone-cold attention strategically placed throughout the country. And I still feel like there’s a very steely sense that I can’t get rid of. China feels different. There’s something else invading my senses here that I haven’t felt before.

Anyway, to get to the bell tower, we have to take the underground tunnel. There’s a traffic circle around the tower, so the only way for people to cross the street is to walk beneath it. That makes sense – you want to cut down on the number of people that get hit by cars. And you want to keep traffic moving, too. It’s a win-win. Here’s a look at the place:


















On the walk over I was talking to Simon, the professor on the ship from New Zealand, and he was telling me that shortly before the voyage began he and his wife were at Victoria Falls in Africa. This astonished me for some reason. It’s a destination that I’d love to go to and don’t get the chance to meet people that have been there. I quizzed him a bit about it and how to plan and watch out for stuff when you’re out there. Since he’s been there the political climate in the area has become somewhat dangerous and now isn’t the best time to go, but it will be again.

Simon and I walked around the Bell Tower a bit. If you wanted to pay a fee they would let you ring the bell! I took a pass. I really didn’t see a reason to ring the bell than to be able to say that I rang the bell at the Bell Tower in Xi’an. Because you know everybody that I tell that story to is going to know exactly what I’m talking about.

There are a few levels on the Bell Tower and the one at the top gives you the best view of the area. Even on our fifth and last day of the trip, the pollution is still amazing. It’s not so bad that you feel it with every breath. But you see it and know that it’s going in and out of you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Here’s a self-portrait to give you an idea:


















My bus is parked somewhere further back in the smog somewhere. I don’t see it, but I’m fairly certain that it hasn’t left me. Something else you can see in the photo is the traffic. That’s one of the four roads leading to the tower and it is a fast and busy stream that does not relent. Everybody really does have somewhere to go.

There’s nothing to do at the Bell Tower other than look around, so I headed back. I’m not sure where I lost Simon, but I did. As I neared where the bus dropped us off, I saw a group from my trip with an ice cream. But it wasn’t a Magnum Bar, it was a soft-serve ice cream dish and it looked delicious. I asked them where they got it and they pointed to a familiar looking building behind me. I didn’t know that they had ice cream there, but I don’t care.

So I walked into McDonald’s and stood on line to place my order. And it was here that it felt like I was doing the thing that most locals are familiar with – going to a McDonald’s. There was a slight moment of panic when I didn’t know if the attendant understood English. That would be an important moment, because then I would have to resort to the caveman-like grunts to get my point across, and while I’m sure that would have worked, I really didn’t want to do it in a McDonald’s.

The attendant knew English (well enough to get me a cup of ice cream) and I happily went outside with my ice cream. While it was no Magnum Bar, it was still good ice cream, that I think was more closely related to frozen yogurt. Anyway, I went back to where the group was congregating and other people asked me where I got my ice cream, and then off they went to McDonald’s to follow suit. It was one of the biggest hits of the trip. But could you imagine how much bigger of a hit it would have been if lunch were bad?

From there, we all finished our lovely ice cream and loaded back on the bus, leaving the city limits of Xi’an. But on our way back to the airport, we had one more stop to make. I still don’t know what to make of this stop. I can’t tell if this is something that in the future will be as big as the terra cotta warriors, or the Chinese just think that it will be as big as the warriors, but won’t be.

The place is another excavation site, but what makes it different is that everything being excavated is miniature. There are thousands of miniature people, all exaggeratingly thin and elongated laying in this excavation that appears to be very early in its excavation. They aren’t well arranged and they are scattered all over the place. But where the warrior site excelled in the awe of the site, the mini site makes up by appearance and presentation. We walked in glass-enclosed walkways above the pit in dark dimly lit corridors and rooms. We were at least fifteen feet underground in this immaculately clean space.

The corridor snaked its way around the perimeter of the area before descending to a lower portion. There was a pace the group was moving at with a guide, but we didn’t have to stay with the guide. I found the pace to be overly slow, so I ventured ahead a little bit expecting there to be more. After the downstairs section was the gift shop so I backtracked a bit and took some more time.

In addition to the people, most everything was miniature. There were small cattle, small fire pits, and pottery (much of it broken.) And they say that there’s much more to excavate, yet these hallways encased in glass seem a bit permanent for a greater excavation. Nonetheless, the Chinese say that as they keep digging at this site that it may be a greater find than the terra cotta warriors. I have to disagree because the warriors are also supposed to have a great more to excavate. The sheer number here would just have to be so much more, and that’s what time will tell.














After spending a little more time than was able to hold my attention (I was able to find a bench with a few other people to sit down on in the gift shop), we departed the site. Apparently we had to take a different route back to the bus and I had the opportunity to take this awkward-looking photo:














Not really sure what happened with that one. I’d like to be able to do that one again… Anyway, that was our last stop in central China before heading back to the Xi’an airport. And then my mind starts to think ahead of us. By the time we get to the airport, it will roughly be dinnertime. Will we be fed, will we be on our own, or what? There’s one option that I wouldn’t like – eating back at that horrid restaurant in the airport that we ate in on our arrival? I didn’t enjoy anything there, and really don’t want to go back in.

We arrive at the airport (without stopping to get something to eat along the way…) and our guide is just about to leave us when he says that dinner is in airport restaurant. Anything but the airport restaurant! And it’s not just me that thinks that, it’s pretty much unanimous. In fact, I’d say less than ten people went in. The rest of us spread out into the airport to either find something to eat, or check-in, which we couldn’t do yet. They took our passports again and we were told to meet back at a location at a certain time to pick our stuff up.

So I wandered off with a few people for a while, looking for a snack or something to occupy my time. The Xi’an Airport is really quite a boring place, not surprisingly. I found the Handleys (the doctors family) hanging around in a café upstairs. That became a nice place to sit.

When we picked up our passes downstairs there was a guy (best way to describe him) with scissors and a piece of cardstock cutting out profiles of people who will pay him – in a style popular in Victorian England. I didn’t see the need in having that, but other people sure did. Now they’ve got a profile of themselves that they can, I don’t know…put in their wallet?

Once we picked up our boarding passes and passports we went back up to the café before going through security. Out of all the airports I’ve been in, this one was the longest line to security I had seen. I’m not really sure why, but it was. Going through security there was a small sense of happiness that this flight would be the last flight of the voyage. After this flight, there’s only a flight home from San Diego, and that flight is still about three weeks away. It will be nice to not fly for three weeks.

After security I walked over to the gate and sat down with my Sudoku book I reserve for air travel. It has served me quite well since I purchased it in Manaus, Brazil. And after all the air travel I’ve done, I still haven’t put much of a dent into the book. And I’m quite sure that even after this flight in Qingdao (pronounced ching-dow) I still won’t have gotten very far into it.

Once on the flight I had a lovely seat – for a change. And I was sitting next to someone else from the trip, Kathryn (who happens to live just a few doors down on the ship,) which also has happened with a low frequency. And instead of doing my Sudoku book for the flight, Kathryn was chatty – and I didn’t mind at all. I was chatty back as it was something to do on the flight. The flight, roughly two hours, went by quite quickly and it was actually pleasant. I couldn’t have been happier.

And if we’ve done this once, we’ve done it a thousand times. There were many trips to Beijing this week. The ship only came into port this morning and it’s leaving tomorrow evening. All these trips have to come back some time. Our flight landed late in the evening, and the last thing we wanted to do was stand in an eternal line to board back onto the ship. That threat, along with the size of our trip’s two buses again brings along the dangerous proposition of racing buses back to the port. I understand why we need to race back to the port, and I want to get back to the port as soon as possible, but I’d also like to get there alive and in one piece. As I’ve seen in some past bus races (specifically the drag racing in India) these races can get borderline dangerous. Because for some reason, bus drivers love to be told to drive faster than another bus.

Qingdao, China

We exit the airport and hurriedly rush over to the buses so that as soon as one is filled we can depart. And it’s not just the students that do this. One of the professors got on the bus just after me and was already telling the bus driver to go – and people were still getting on the bus.

So we’re racing through the streets of northeastern China in the dead of night. There are very few cars on the road, or signs of life for that matter. The other bus is behind us, then it’s ahead of us, which elicits cries of anxiety from my bus and the bus driver goes faster and overtakes the other bus again. And all the while I’m thinking that when buses heading down to Atlantic City crash and flip over they most certainly are not racing another bus there.

And as we drive I’m expecting to see some kind of city and an eventual sign of life. But as we keep driving, I’m not seeing anything resembling someplace where I want to be. I don’t want to make it sound like we were driving through shantytowns, but we were not in areas that scream ‘advanced civilization.’ As a matter of fact, I felt the need to rename Qingdao as Middle-of-Nowhere-China. Not sure how that translates in Chinese.

And out of the depressing sites we see out the window, all of a sudden the ship appears like a beacon. This is the longest that I’ve been away from the ship and it’s quite the sight for sore eyes, especially after the parts of Qingdao we just went through. My bus wins again, with the other bus in tow shortly behind. And thankfully there was no line to get on the ship. I’m really not sure when the other Beijing trips were due back but they all have to come back here sometime.

No sooner does the bus stop do people jump up and try to get off the bus as soon as possible, so that we can get on line to get back on the ship as soon as possible. I make it on line in the first ten people, which I see as a nice victory. Bedraggled, unshaven for five days, and wanting a nice shower, I head straight down to the room and when I go inside I’m delighted to see that my laundry is returned and sitting on my bed. Yes, that’s the laundry that I haven’t seen since the day we left Vietnam, also that last day that I saw Mom. It’s nice to have it back, to say the least.

As much as I wanted to get to bed, I had to unpack everything from the trip and then pick and choose what I needed to repack for my day trip tomorrow. It’s one of those things were the bed is looming but I just can’t get to it yet because I’ve too much to do. I did as little as I could, just preparing the items that I would need for our sixth and final day in China, and then passed out.

Just for your frame of reference, today, our last day in China, is day 78 of 101 for the voyage. 78 days never went by so fast. Anyway, I was up at 7 to make sure that I ate something for breakfast, then headed over to the Union for the trip departure. It wasn’t that big of a trip, but still decently sized. Probably somewhere around twenty of us, give or take a few.

We all head down to the mini-bus and climb aboard. Our guide is an odd guy that had a couple interesting stories to tell us. As we were driving through the “ghettos” of China (which may or may not have been ghettos, but they certainly could have passed for ghettos) our guide told us about the local transportation. Back in the not too distant past the Chinese rode bicycles and cars were just not driven to any extent. Then the car caught on as a status symbol and suddenly you weren’t anybody unless you had a car. And then that devolved into being considered a second-class citizen if you could not afford a car. That seems a bit extreme to me, but that’s where Qingdao is now. Our guide never told us what he drove.

But he did tell us about the trip he wanted to take to Japan. You need to have government permission to go out of the country. So he applied for a passport out of the country, and amongst the questions he was asked was how much money he has in his name. He told them. They said that he didn’t have enough money and they weren’t going to let him go. Seems like an odd thing to be the deal-breaker. Needless to say, that didn’t exactly raise the mood on the bus.

As we boarded the bus, we were told that the drive to our first stop would be about forty minutes. But before I go any further, let me tell you about what trip I was on. The trip was about religion in Qingdao and we were to visit a number of religious sites in and around Qingdao. Forty minutes sounds like it’s outside of Qingdao, so I’m not sure where we’re getting religion in Qingdao from.

And so we’re sitting on the bus and we’re going through the unscenic countryside of northeastern China. No rice patties or sprawling cities. Just some stuff here and some stuff there. It’s a very hilly, if not slightly mountainous area. Much of it is along a body of water. I’m not sure what sea it is, but it’s some sea that we’ll be sailing through tomorrow.














Our forty minute drive, not hampered by traffic, accidents, or anything, totaled about one-hundred minutes, give or take a minute. So the estimate was off by 150%. It was about to be that kind of day. The first stop is a Daoist temple. Or Taoist temple. The pronunciation doesn’t translate to our alphabet well. The sound is a combination of a hard ‘d’ and a hard ‘t’ and it’s said with a bit of force and gusto. I’ll go back and forth with the spellings.

Unlike the thousands of Buddhist sites I’ve visited, there is no singular house of worship here. Rather, a number of small structures are scattered about a tree-filled hill/mountain-side. And the best way to describe the Daoist temple is to call it repetitive. It’s pretty much that if you see five minutes of the place, there’s not going to be much of anything else that you won’t have already seen.

In case you’re wondering, Taoism is an odd religion that doesn’t behave like any other religion that I’m aware of. Its three tenets are compassion, moderation, and humility, and it’s been around influencing eastern Asia for over two thousand years, so it must do something for them.

The “stuff” that is on the grounds is…I’m not sure what that stuff is. But I made sure to take pictures of them. One of my personal favorites was the omnipresence of this symbol:














It must mean something about the peace and serenity of Taoism. If it doesn’t, then I have absolutely no idea what is. I also found a giant urn-like structure that was right in the middle of a tiny courtyard. It looked interesting, too.














I’m sure the Chinese beneath me says something to the extent that any person that leans on this will incur the wrath of some long-gone emperor. But that can’t be as bad as one of the other features of the temple area. There’s one sickly looking tree with an arm growing at an odd angle that you’re supposed to kiss for good luck. This seemed to be a must-see stop for the Chinese because nearly every Chinese person that came by kissed that tree. I was not going to go near that tree. Just like the Ganges in India, doing as the locals do may not be the best of ideas. Besides, my luck on this voyage was been pretty good and I don’t want to throw anything out of balance.












That photo above is of our tour guide, who has the very Chinese name of Frank by the way, lecturing to us. Something that you may notice in the picture is the temperature. Some people just look chilly in their heavy coats. I’m the flash of orange bundled up in the back. Others look downright frigid, clinging to every ounce of clothing on them. You can tell that most of us misjudged the temperature this morning. This morning actually bordered with one of the coldest mornings of the trip. The only competition would be early morning back on safari in South Africa.

Around about this point, the natives (meaning the college-aged students) were growing a little restless at being led about by our sufficient tour guide. In the interim, I sat and had a picture taken with two of my favorite non-student ship people. Below on the left is Brenda, the best nurse on the ship. You’ll remember Brenda from both my trips to Kuala Lumpur and India. (To refresh your memory: Brenda was the one on the flights in India where I watched what she ate, and ate whatever she ate and didn’t touch whatever she didn’t touch.) Brenda is still my gastroenterological barometer. And Erika is in the middle. You’ll remember Erika as an RD on the ship and the advisor to the Ambassador’s Ball. You’re going to hear a lot more about Erika in the coming weeks, so we’ll leave her be for now.














Either sensing the restless natives or just doing what he usually does, the guide gave us an option to wander about for a while or to go on a hike up the mountain. Even the non-hiking types in the group were intrigued by the idea of breaking up the morning with a hike. He said it was a bit strenuous so not all of us should do it. I’m thinking that this is going to be a good hike and I’m quite looking forward to it at this point, as are a number of us from the group. Plus, there’s supposed to be a shrine at the top, too.

So we set off on the hike. There’s some stairs right when we leave, then the paved path levels off a little bit. Then there’s a bit more of an incline in the paved path, but nothing remotely strenuous yet. And about two minutes later we arrive at a shrine. “That’s it?” I said. “Wow, that was disappointing.”

The view in the photo below is a bit deceiving as the start of the “hike” didn’t start at sea level, as we had been slowly increasing in altitude during the tour. And the view was really not all that impressive. Still can’t see the sky. If we could see the sky then there might be a view worth remembering, but no.














And there’s a small shrine/mini-temple at the top in addition to the mediocre-at-best view. So we stood around for a while until it was time to “hike” back down to meet back with the group. After braving the treacherous way down, we weaved our way back through the grounds to the bus. Much like the Confucian temple Mom and I visited in Hanoi, I’m still not quite sure what the religion is about. But I’ve been culturally enriched because of it!

But now it’s lunch time already. (All that driving and hiking really ate up the time.) I can only imagine where we’re going to be eating, but I can sure bet that there’s going to be a lazy susan on the table. That much I know for sure.

We leave the Daoist temple from what I believe is Laoshan, and drive for who knows how long to lunch. Here’s a picture of the establishment. I will not forget what this place looked like for a very long time.













Walking in we passed a bunch of fish tanks on the first floor and we all got excited that we were going to have a nice lunch of fresh seafood. There were tanks and tanks and it all looked pleasingly clean. Upstairs on the second floor is the big room with the tables and chairs. There are four tables set, so we take a seat at the tables and each table has one to three empty seats, which I don’t see as a problem. The wait staff however, does see that as a severe problem and they’re going to limit us to three tables. This is where all the problems begin.

The three tables do not have enough seats, let alone room to pull up chairs, for all of us to fit at. Nonetheless, we’re playing Table Survivor and one of the tables has to go. Wouldn’t you know it was my table. I liked the people at my table, and now we were being split up amongst the other tables. So we’re all now awkwardly pulling chairs through the dining area and trying to find two people that will let us squeeze between them. Once we all get a seat, and get cozy, we can start eating.

The first stuff that comes out (and gets set down on the lazy susan) is the standard sticky white rice. We’re all figuring fish is following so we’re passing the bowl and taking a lean amount. We’re also taking a lean amount because that bowl is not big enough for the few extra people that have pulled chairs up, so we’re all going to be having a lighter than average lunch because of that.

What I didn’t know at the time was how much lighter lunch would actually be for me. A few minutes later, the cavalcade of dishes began and were placed on the lazy susan. Few were touching anything for a few reasons. First, we didn’t recognize what came out. Second, we were waiting for fish-like foods. And third, I was trying to figure out exactly what was brought out. Some stuff looked like bread, but it was stark white, like they forgot to bake it. I’m assuming that that was not bread after all. Some items looked like stringy brain-like things that I wanted no part of. As time went on, and the food stopped coming, it became clear that we weren’t going to be getting any fish. Apparently, this was one of those wacky vegetarian meals. Every table got the same items, though. Looking back on past meals, I’m very glad I never went to go sit with the sequestered vegetarians at their own table. It’s evident that I wouldn’t have much cared for anything at all.

It was here, with a few grains of rice left on my plate that I proclaimed this lunch meal the absolute worst meal of the entire voyage – hands down. The elephant ear fish in the Mekong Delta does not compare. It’s eons worse than that bowl of brown muck I got for dinner in Mauritius. And it was well below anything I came across in India. Congratulations, China! You have the title of the worst food in the world.

I dived back into the rice because I felt that I needed some kind of sustenance before we arrived back at the ship. I knew it wouldn’t be much of anything, but it was better than nothing. Later, we all decided that instead of being served the fish, we were served the food that they feed the fish. I hope to never eat fish food ever again.

Once we were all “finished” with our lunches, we headed back downstairs to depart and mouthwateringly gazed at the fish in the tanks on the way out. At this point, as if I weren’t impressed with Qingdao (and its surrounding areas, wherever we were), I certainly did not know what was in store for us in the afternoon hours. Let’s not forget that this is a religion in Qingdao tour, and I think I’ve seen quite enough of religion at this point in the voyage. So in case you’re wondering why I’m on this trip at all, what else could I possibly be doing in Qingdao otherwise?

Believe it or not, the next stop was a Buddhist temple and shrine. I know! I never would have guessed that there could possibly be any more Buddha! It was a pagoda called the Qingdao Zhanshan Temple that was built back in 1934. Here’s a picture of the place:


















The excitement captured in that photo is the exact excitement that existed at the time the photo was taken. Both in myself and the group. Let’s not forget how we’ve gotten where we are today. Five days in India, three days off, four days in Malaysia, three days off, five days in Vietnam, three days off, and now we’re on our sixth and final day in China. We’re spent. And on top of it all, we have two days at sea before five days in Japan. This is where the rubber is meeting the road in the voyage, and some people in the group here at the Buddhist temple were hoping that the rubber on the bus was going to be hitting the road sooner rather than later. We’re up at the top of the hill with the pagoda, and we slowly walk down and pass around and through smaller Buddhist shrines, where we can go in but can’t take pictures of.

Along the way down, I learned something very interesting about China. Our guide was standing next to a sign written in Chinese and someone asked what it said. He looked at the characters and said what the characters mean, then tried to make a cohesive thought about what they meant in that order with one another. He gave an answer that made no sense whatsoever. Here I determined that Chinese is a written language that is open to some interpretation and much less people are really fluent in it that we might have come to expect.

To say that the group was losing interest as we walked around the incense and Buddhas was an understatement. They were done. I was still looking at it all as something to do.

We arrive at the bottom where the bus is waiting and that’s where the mutiny begins. Half of the group wants to go back to the ship, as they’ve had enough, and the other group wants to go to the last stop of the day which, as luck would have it, is the Roman Catholic church in town. I think that would be the second or third on the trip for me. I decided to be in the group to stick around for the church, primarily because I could hear my grandmother telling me to go there.

So half the trip took the other mini bus back to the ship and whatever was left of the diminished group went to the church. I wasn’t really sure what to expect of a Catholic church in China, as I didn’t know that practicing that religion was allowed. I still don’t think it’s allowed, but it’s not something that’s enforced – if you know what I mean. We go into St. Michael’s Cathedral, and it is quite lovely inside. It was built back in 1934, then shut down for the Cultural Revolution and wasn’t reopened until 1981. Here’s some of the inside:















And here’s the outside:


















Inside there, you would never be able to tell where on Earth you were, aside from the Chinese characters that were randomly about the place. And for that fact it was quite odd that this was my last stop and memory of China – something completely different from everything else I saw in China.

There was a couple outside taking photos for the wedding. She was in a white flowing gown and he was in a black tux. It looked rather normal. I couldn’t figure it out, until I found that there really was nothing to figure.

Some people wanted to hang around the area instead of going back to the ship now. It was about mid-afternoon and while the neighborhood looked safe, it also didn’t look like there was anything to see or do. Plus, I was beat and rundown, and starving.

Back at the ship and off Chinese land, I threw my stuff in the room and went upstairs to get a grilled cheese sandwich. While still theoretically vegetarian, I don’t know what a fish would do with a grilled cheese sandwich, so I’m not going to call it fish food for my own sanity. And boy, was that sandwich tasty. I felt much better after it, although I did feel a bit odd. Hoping that it wasn’t the onset of a cold.

I took the rest of the day very easily. I got to unpacking my laundry that I haven’t seen in what feels like weeks. It was good to have clean clothes again. But at this point, I’ve almost got enough for another load to send out.

Slowly people made their way back on the ship, and as the sun set on China, so did my time there. There’s no view from the port of Qingdao, so as far as I was concerned we were out of China. But we weren’t out of phone range, so I found a quiet spot in the back of the ship and called home. I’m not completely sure of the time, but it’s late Sunday April 22nd here, so it has to be early Monday with the twelve hour time difference. It’s always nice to call home. It’s nice to know that the other side of the Earth is still there. And it wasn’t long after that call that I went to bed.

Leg 10: Qingdao, China to Kobe, Japan

Awoke at 9 to a lovely thought that I’ve had before: I have another cold. And this one might be a doozy. I’ve lost track of how many colds I’ve had since February. I think this is three, but maybe four. Some may have overlapped. I’m taking medicine for it and hoping that it gets knocked out early. I can’t be down and out when we pull into Japan. Japan is stacking up to be the busiest time I’ll have in port – out of all the ports. Japan is where I make my stand to prove what I’ve learned and become since the start of the voyage. The challenges that Japan throws at me will test my mettle and I will determine, once and for all, what I’m made of, what kind of traveler I am, and hopefully learn a bit more about myself in the process. But all that is hanging in the balance with the onset of this cold. And let’s not forget that the Ambassador’s Ball is about two weeks away – and I’m still the President of that. There’s a lot stacking up in front of me and there’s a lot to happen. But one thing that is certain – there are 22 days to San Diego. And this thing is far from being anticlimactic and uninteresting. You haven’t seen anything yet.