Qingdao

Slate gray, rainy skies greeted us upon arrival in Qingdao, China, thanks to the typhoons that had recently vacated the area. The port we docked in was much more industrial than any of the ports we had been to previously. In getting through the port we dodged big, heavy-duty trucks carrying massive of steel and lumber; this was certainly not a Carnival Cruise Lines stop. Our group’s first order of business was to find money, which was a lot harder to do than in Japan. We headed out into the soggy streets, attempting to use ATMs at bank after bank, but we were unlucky in finding machines that would accept our foreign cards. Our group of ten or so finally made it to one bank which was already crowded with Semester at Sea students as this was a bank that allowed us to do a U.S. cash exchange. Unfortunately, most of us were not traveling with a passport, which was required to do the cash exchange, so my poor friend, Lara, got stuck exchanging stacks of money for at least five different people. The bank was very cautious in handing over their currency and several U.S. bills were rejected because they were deemed too wrinkly or too old or even too new. Money safely in hand, though, our group of seven headed to a Chinese hot pot restaurant for lunch. At the restaurant we ordered a bunch of different foods that we cooked in a pot of boiling water in front of us—think the fondue restaurant, The Melting Pot, but much faster and cheaper. The seven of us ate lunch for what amounted to a total of $5 in U.S. bills. The whole experience was enhanced by Jessica, one of the ship’s resident directors, who grew up speaking Chinese and, thus, ordered everything for us.

Next stop for us was the Tsingtao Brewery and Beer Museum, which was actually quite interesting even for someone like me, who doesn’t care for beer. The museum was really visually stimulating with video displays in each showroom detailing the history and timeline of beer production in Tsingtao, which all began with the German occupation of Tsingtao over a century ago. Through the windows, we could see the many people who were hard at work bottling beer and packing it for shipment. The trip to the brewery was also cheap, about $7, which was considerably less than the Semester at Sea sponsored trip to the same spot. The special bonus was that the beer was really, really good; who knew? Glasses emptied, (Tim, you’d be proud) we could think of no better way to cap off our afternoon of drinking than with a trip to St. Michael’s Catholic Church. Built by the German architect Pipieruch in a Gothic and Roman style, the church could have been located in any European town so white were the Baby Jesus and Virgin Mother! If Some Chinese characters inside the church, were the only indication of the church’s Asian heritage.

While the monsooning weather kept us on the ship that evening, we were unwilling to let the rainy winds keep us inside the next day. Our group diminished to five, we hailed a cab and made it to a Japanese mall, conveniently located right next to, you guessed it…Wal-mart. Now, this is not your Dover, Delaware, Wal-Mart! There was fresh seafood as far as the eye could see, both your eye and the eyes of all of the huge fish packed on ice there. Going to Wal-Mart was such a sensory overload experience, with tons of smells and brightly packaged everythings.

We had a good time combing the aisles to see what brands were recognizable simply by their labels (Coke, Lays potato chips, Sunmaid raisins to name a few) and then headed out for our true sensory experience of the day—lunch. Since Jess speaks Chinese, but doesn’t read it, she asked our waitress to order for us their most well-known dishes. Since one dish was a fish dish, the waitress returned to our table with a fish, alive and flapping in its net, to get our approval. Not long after we met our fish, we proceeded to eat it and another huge soupy, spicy dish of prawns and rice. At the advice of the ship’s doctor, we popped Pepto pills, put on the gloves, and went to work at the food and the beer! The food was so incredibly tasty, but extremely messy. Exhibit A is below:



Needing to be wheelbarrowed out of the restaurant, so bloated were we from our feast, we were greeted by warm sunshine, which was such a nice change from all the rain. After several more hours of walking and shopping, the group that was now three, headed to Qingdao’s famous pagoda, beautiful in its color and architecture. Also from the Pagoda we could see a huge, red mushroom structure on the mountainside, a post of sorts built by the Germans to signal to ships coming into the port.


Positioned discretely in the coastal skyline of the city, the pagoda would have been a relaxing, contemplative spot if it weren’t for the mob of Chinese people that followed us while on the pier. The Chinese locals could care less about Jess, who, with her Chinese speaking skills was hands down the most valuable person in our threesome. Almost everyone on the pier seemed fascinated by Akirah and me, the Black woman and the chemically-enhanced blonde woman, some taking firm holds of our arms and dragging us into pictures. At first it was kind of amusing, but as people grew increasingly firm in their hold on us and their insistence that we pose, the situation grew more uncomfortable. We’d pose for one photo, but tons of cell phone cameras would go off as people rushed to get pictures of us. All the while, we were sporting the “dirty, drowned rat” look, which, although popular in some parts of the world, is far from my best look and will, of course, prove to be quite scary later when the photos are passed around to friends. After the pagoda, we made is safely back to the ship for a quiet sail to Hong Kong—so many students meeting us there since they chose to fly to Beijing to visit the Great Wall. I swear I can feel the extra buoyancy as we near Hong Kong. I appreciate all the letters I have to read on my way!

Kyoto

After an emotionally exhausting day in Hiroshima and my walking marathons in Tokyo, it would have been all-too-easy to relax a little during our last day in Japan. Given the fact that a Japanese marching band had made the effort to greet us upon arrival in Kobe with songs like Under the Sea and 76 Trombones, I felt like the least I could do would be to make an effort to live it up during my last day in port.


I am the type of traveler that is willing to be adventurous—and only need a push from someone to take the plunge in traveling that hasn’t involved pre-planning or color-coding. Two students I knew from the Hiroshima trip had talked about going to Kyoto, independent of a Semester at Sea organized trip, and that sounded good to me. In another display of her wonderfulness, our Hiroshima tour guide, Rumi, provided us with directions to Kyoto, leaving us without an excuse not to go. We met at 6 AM Sunday morning and after an hour-long train ride, we arrived in Kyoto. The former capital city of Japan for more than a thousand years, Kyoto is also known as the cultural center of Japan. The city is filled with Buddhist temples too numerous to count (we later found out that someone did count; there are over 1600 temples). We hit the Nishi-Honganji Temple, the Higashi-Honganji temple, the Shosei-en Garden, the Nijo Castle, and the Kyoto Imperial Palace—it was a hot, humid, muggy day, but the scenery, the time with the students who I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten to know, and the chance to participate in a religious ceremony in a foreign tongue is something I will not forget any time soon. Japan will be missed!

Hiroshima

One of the trips I have been most looking forward to prior to coming on this voyage was a day trip to Hiroshima. While I feel odd saying that I was looking forward to going to a memorial for the 140,000 Hiroshima lives lost (a best estimate for the number of deaths through the end of 1945 and not including the unknown numbers of related radiation deaths) I was eager to hear the Japanese presentation of the Hiroshima bombing and its preceding events. Would the presentation of the events be entirely anti-American? How could such a memorial not be entirely depressing? What good would I take away from the experience? Buoyed by my belief that if society doesn’t learn from the mistakes of her past she is doomed to repeat them, as well as my desire to simply bear witness to Hiroshima’s history—to say, I came, I saw, and now I can never forget or deny my own responsibility in preventing such a similar tragedy no matter how uncomfortable or upsetting. At the same time I understand that with knowledge comes responsibility to act and perhaps part of that action is simply writing this blog to share with you.
Yesterday two coach buses of Semester at Sea students made their ways to Hiroshima and the Peace Memorial Museum. Upon arrival we saw the remains of what was once called the Industrial Promotion Hall, built by a Czech architect in 1915. It was one of the few buildings that retained some structural definition after the atomic blast annihilated this city at 8:15AM on August 6, 1945. There was a movement to completely demolish the building after the war, given the painful memories the building invoked for so many, but a schoolgirl persuaded the town to preserve the building. Today the building is known simply as the A-bomb Dome and is on the National Historic Registry. Not far from the building is a clock tower that always chimes at 8:15 in the morning in remembrance of those who lost their lives in the bombing.

The Children’s Peace Monument was the next part of our tour of the park. The stone monument is essentially a statue of a young girl holding a giant origami crane—which is the Japanese symbol of health and longevity. The base of the monument is encircled with garlands of hundreds of thousands of paper origami cranes in all different colors. These cranes are made by children from all over the world and until recently they were in the open air. However, they are now encased in glass because a Japanese college student burned all of the crane strings several years ago. In Japan elders worry that the younger generations don’t respect their country’s history, just like the reminders offered to America’s youngest generations by "those who have gone before."



Not far from this monument is the Flame of Peace, burning adjacent to a stone coffin bearing the names of all of the bomb’s victims—both direct and indirect victims. The flame will burn until the last nuclear weapon on earth is eradicated.

After snapping pictures of the oleanders in the trees, the first flowers to bloom in Hiroshima after the blast, we made our way to the museum. The museum entrance was backlogged with people; the entire building was crowded with people from all over the world, although the majority of the crowd was Japanese. The first half of the museum was a sterile look at the physics devoted behind atomic and hydrogen bombs, a chronological look at the significant economic, social, and political (ESP terms for you Mr. Riley graduates out there) events in Japan’s history. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, beginning of the “War in the Pacific” were also included, although the bombing of Pearl Harbor wasn’t discussed in proportion to its impact on the US. There were miniature models of the town prior and after the dropping of the bomb and mini-movies throughout the exhibits with news reel and cultural information about Japan prior to the bomb. They aftermath of the bomb was prevented in a straightforward way—the closest the exhibits came to an anti-American sentiment was stating that the Potsdam Declaration, which the US tried to get Japan to sign prior to the bombings, neither hinted at the possibility of America’s use of the bomb nor allowed for the continuation of an empire line in Japan, the latter a system of Japanese rule that had been instituted for centuries.
While the beginning of the museum wasn't particularly emotionally sirring for me, walking through the latter half was one of the most emotional experiences of my life. By far the most heart wrenching part of the tour were the rooms dedicated to accoutrements of the dead—melted watches, young children’s clothing, a lunch box, a water canteen, a tricycle, a shoe, even skin and nail clippings. Each display told the story of overwhelming grief and sorrow: the boy whose body was identified by his lunchbox containing food he told his mother that morning he couldn’t wait to eat, his body incinerated, his lunch turned to coal; the charred tricycle of a three-year old, who was buried with his beloved tricycle, only to have his body exhumed 12 years later for transportation to the family burial ground and his tricycle donated to the museum; the book of a child who never came home and whose body was never found, whose mother refused to let her stay home from work that morning when she complained of sickness, whose mother blamed herself until her death for her daughter’s passing; the left shoe of a child whose bones were never found, but whose shoes identified her to her parents given that she had sewn the sandals straps from an old kimono. Then there were the pictures of those who survived, but who bear horrible physical and emotional scars as a result. The entirety of these exhibits was just too emotionally intense for me to maintain my composure. City Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba called Hiroshima “a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead.” I handed my headset over, signed the visitors’ book, and quickly left the museum.

What I took away from my trip to the museum, which I did not initially anticipate was a hope for peace. The message of the entire museum is hope for world peace and the eradication of nuclear weapons; it is not a museum interested in casting blame. There’s a sense that the museum can’t afford to divert energy from its peace mission in throwing stones. Every time a nuclear weapon is tested, the mayor of Akiba travels to the United Nations to make an official protest. The mayors do this out of respect for the roughly 300,000 hibakusha (A-bomb survivors), 95,000, of whom still live in Hiroshima today; they do this so this history will not repeat itself.
Back on the ship, I talked with a faculty member’s husband who fought in the infantry in WWII. He was and didn’t want to have to go back to the infantry; he did not want to be sent to Japan. He recalled being relieved when the bomb was dropped knowing that his nineteen-year-old-self would no longer be in danger of heading to the front lives. Whose lives were more important? The lives of our service-men not sent to Asia because of the bomb? The lives of the Japanese civilians who perished because the US troops were not sent? What happens to peoples, civilizations, and nations when we make such a distinction—when we elevate certain lives above those of others? What does that say about our legacy for our children and our children’s children?

Thinking about this reminds me of one of my mother’s favorite movies, Scent of a Woman, starring Al Pacino and Chris O’Donnell. In the movie a blind war veteran, played by Pacino, recounts a story to O’Donnell where a friend said to him, “When I was your age, I...” Pacino responded with anger, “You were never my age.” The quote reminds me that in seeing Hiroshima and trying to make my own sense of it, I must acknowledge that the context surrounding the decision to drop the bomb is one I never experienced.

Yokohama Mama

Today we are back on the ship after two wonderful days in Yokohama and Tokyo. My whirlwind two days were unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. We arrived in rainy Yokohama at 8 in the morning. In Japan, unlike Hawaii, the entire ship does not have to go through immigration before the ship is cleared. Instead, all of our passports are reviewed by the Japanese officials while we wait on the boat to hear that we’ve cleared. We were hoping the entire process would take only three hours, but it was more like four hours. The Japanese government also brings an official onboard to do a thermal screening.” They ask for anyone who has been suffering from a fever, diarrhea, sore throat, or an upper respiratory infection to report to them in the ship’s medical clinic. Our ship doctor made sure to brief us on this as the people who take the Japanese up on their offer for a thermal screen don’t usually ever leave the ship. Needless to say, nobody from our program volunteered for the screening.
Once our ship cleared at noon, we headed to the train so we could make it to the Yasukuni Shrine and Yushukan (Museum). We had a trip leader who had lived in Japan for three years, which came in handy as the Japanese train/subway system is extremely complex. After a train change and a stop at the ATM, our group of 20 or so made it to the shrine. The rain had stopped and the weather was the perfect temp for walking around the grounds. This shrine was founded in 1869 as a memorial to the 2.5 million Japanese who have died in military service to their country. A statue of Masujiro Omura, a Japanese commander who defended the imperial Meiji government scowled at us upon entry. The shrine has a history of political controversy since the Japanese constitution explicitly renounces state-sponsored religion and militarism, but is still a well-visited site with hundreds of thousands of Japanese paying their respects each year. One of the students on our trip is Japanese and she explained to our group that we should approach the shrine, bow twice and mediate on something important, make an offer of 100 yen (this is a dollar or so as the exchange rate was 113 yen to the dollar) clap twice to awake the spirits and bow once more. There was also a small box to place a donation of 100 yen. The donation allowed you to select a fortune, written on Japanese and in English on small sheets of paper. If you liked the fortune, you were permitted to keep it. If the fortune was a bad one, you could tie it to the branches of the trees near the shrine to release it.
Since we were pretty exhausted at this point, we got back on the train and headed to Asakusa, which is home to the largest tempura restaurant in Tokyo. Tempura is basically batter-fried veggies and seafood and it was delicious. At this point, Lara, who is a professor of music on the ship, and I decide it is time to find our hotel which had been described by our two guide books as an “upscale capsule hotel” (think The Killers’ music video, “Read My Mind”). The capsules were described as one meter by two meters, with nice sauna facilities. Some would say this is akin to a small coffin, others would say this is a chance to be adventurous. As most of you know, I love a good plan, so I was feeling pretty proud for suggesting the capsule hotel plan (not knowing if there would be good pillows or not). Thus, you can see how it was then EXTREMELY daring and adventurous of me to accept Lara’s decision to wait until the morning we arrived in Yokohama to make our reservation for the hotel. When the internet was not available that morning and we were, thus, unable to make the reservation, I told myself not to worry, that we’d be fine. When it was 11:15 PM at night and we were still wandering around the neighborhoods of Shibuya with our overnight bags, I was screaming in my head, “We should have made a plan. If only we had made a reservation and highlighted it in pink!” As Lara is a new friend, I thought it was perhaps best to save any rantings about a plan for our second outing together in a foreign land...too much drama for the first.
Luckily for us, there were nice people everywhere who tried to help us. I was repeatedly touched by the number of people who came to our aid throughout the entire trip in Tokyo. Even more significantly for us was the fact that people helped us in English--as Americans so far from home we marveled at how spoiled we were and how unable we'd be able to return the favor should any of our Japanese friends travel to Virginia. At least four different people tried to point us in the direction of the hotel, but when we finally got to the alleged hotel area, we found a man who said the words the rest had been too kind to say, "closed." EEEEKKK! So, we backtracked our circuitous loop and found an inn to stay in--the beds were made of brick, the pillows of beans, the shower spickets faucets did double duty as the bathroom sink faucets, but we were safe AND we had robes & slippers to change into for the evening. AND we were in Tokyo!!! Life was good.
The following day, blonde heads bent over our Lonely Planet guides to Tokyo, staring up at the Japanese writing on the walls of the train station and back at our guidebooks, we encountered more kindness of strangers. A business man took the time out of his midmorning commute to approach us and walk us to the correct train. He told us he'd never been to the States, but he had been to Honolulu. Later that day we stopped for the Japanese delicacy of ramen noodles after a failed attempt to eat them at lunch (we ended up in a spaghetti restaurant as the numerous bowls of plastic noodles in the front of the restaurant looked like ramen to us. There we successfully ordered a meal where nobody spoke English and there were no pictures on the menu for us to "cheat" with. We had to order your dinner from a machine on the wall where you inserted money and were printed a ticket to hand to the host. The host gave us one tip by pointing to three different buttons and stating, "small, medium, and large." Apparently supersize me hasn't taken off in Japan because all three sizes cost the same. We paid our money and took the bibs he offered us, pretending not to notice that none of the other Japanese in the small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant were wearing bibs. We think ours said "dumbass American" on the front, but, again, since we can't read the language we may never know. The dinner was delicious (this is not the Ramen of your college days--or Andres sisters of your usual snacks)and since tipping is not done in Japan, we thanked our host by giving him a small bow and comforted ourselves knowing the joy we must have brought him while trying to make sense of the menu!
Our visit ended with a visit to the Imperial Palace East Garden, the only part of the Palace open to the public, where we were meeting our friend Kathy, the ship’s librarian. Perhaps because she was celebrating her birthday, she had made sure to confirm her hotel reservation the previous night, so we regaled her with tales of our 2984376529384765 mile hike around the city the previous evening.
We set sail last night at midnight. Today’s been a great ship day—only 80 of the college students are sailing with us to Kobe as many of them bought rail passes and are traveling independently between the two ports. The faculty and staff took over the pool in the afternoon where we lounged in the sun and then tonight we get a special five course dinner. Internet was blacked out in Yokohoma and is extremely slow today—so slow I can’t even read all of the emails much less respond to all of you who have sent me lovely notes. Speaking of lovely notes, Pauletta, Connie, and Sarah Campbell, thank you for yours. Real mail, especially when the internet is so spotty and the credit card companies can’t find you, is something truly special and much appreciated. Arigato, friends!
Finally, please know that in addition to "mastering" the Tokyo subway system (see attached map picture) I have mastered the scantron machine and have finished grading the 632 global studies exams which is one of the less glamorous aspects of my job. The students will have those grades to look forward to after Kobe. We arrive there at 8 AM tomorrow. Love to you all!

A Captain's Life for Me

Last night I had the privilege to once again enjoy fine food and drink aboard the MV Explorer. The administrative team for the voyage (the executive dean, the academic dean, the field office manager, the director of student life, the assistant executive dean, and yours truly) as well as several faculty members were in for a delicious treat with the ship's officers. Our evening started with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. The dinner was arranged so there were four tables with an officer at each table. I got to hear all about life at sea and earning one's captain's license. I sat at Staff Captain Kostas's table where we were served a five course meal with copious amounts of Chilean wine--red and white. Delicious. Captain Kostas is is second in command should anything happen to the ship's captain.
After a leisurely dinner in the dining hall that is seriously one of the best meals I've ever had (this is nothing like the dining hall at the Naval Academy Ring Dance--date from hell--you know who you are) we headed back to the faculty staff lounge where the Aegean Sea was having their sea social. The Aegean Sea is the name for one of the decks on the ship where students live; the Yellow, Mediterreanean, Caribbean, Baltic, Adriatic, Bering, and Red Seas are other decks that will also get the chance to have a social in the faculty/staff lounge which is usually off-limits to students. We had a dance party where everyone including the ship's officers got onto the floor and danced. We are dancing our way into Yokahama. Only two more days!

Tomorrow Has Been Canceled

Life on the ship continues to move forward. So much so that tomorrow is canceled. Indefinitely. For those of you who are not crossing the International Date Line on Friday and will wake up on Friday instead of Saturday, please write and let me hear tales of your tomorrows. You see! This is the fine print that they don’t tell you about when you agree to sail around the world. I was planning to finish my dissertation tomorrow, too. Connie, since tomorrow is your birthday and tomorrow is canceled, be glad you are in C’ville instead of the Pacific Ocean.

Since add/drop has ended I have been able to get into more of a routine. I get up and go to breakfast before the dining hall closes at 8:30 AM, hit the gym, take a shower, and head to the office. I have had three successful treadmill runs on one of two treadmills on the ship. Running while the boat is moving is a little more difficult than I thought, but I feel like I am getting a really good work-out since I have to focus so much on staying on and upright. I am not nearly as bored as I usually am on the treadmill.

Tonight is our first official faculty meeting, where there will be hors d’oeuvres and an open bar. The dean says that this is a good way to ensure faculty compliance.

Speaking of open bars, there was an open bar reception held last evening for faculty, staff, and the ship’s officers. I got to spend some time with ship’s captain who married his third wife 3 ½ weeks ago after dating online for 20 months. She has only been on the ship once and according to the captain, never found her sea legs. The captain is a kick—a very dry sense of humor and an English accent. He loves to remind students that they are the ones with accents—NOT him.

Another highlight of yesterday was my selection for random drug testing. When the Queen of Popularity falls from grace, she falls hard. Apparently, they were unable to detect the unusually high levels of sugar in my blood due to my now almost dwindling candy supply, but I might not be so lucky next time. I have sworn off dessert at least until chocolate croissants at breakfast tomorrow morning. Since tomorrow is canceled, I should be in the clear.

Dinner last night was capped off by a beautiful rainbow—the first of what I hope will be many on the voyage.

Go Hoos! Beat Duke. Here’s hoping that we don’t have to wish for an International Date Line in C’ville on Saturday.

Muhalo

Yesterday morning we were up at 5 AM to watch the ship come into Honolulu. It was beautiful to watch the sun come up and see the city. Then the entire ship had to then go through immigration (about 800 people since some crew members were disembarking). The US immigration officials come on board and then people are called up in groups to show their passports. Unfortunately, many of the foreign students were delayed in immigration and nobody is allowed to exit the ship until the whole ship has been cleared. Luckily we disembarked only one hour later than we thought we would into the beautiful, warm Hawaii day. Many of us headed to Pearl Harbor to the USS Arizona Memorial. It was a really beautiful, powerful memorial. We watched a movie about WWII at the museum and then we took a boat to the actual memorial. Everyone was just really quiet and you could still see oil rising to the top of the water from the depths below. The memorial placards listed the names of Pearl Harbor’s dead as on “eternal watch.”

After we got back to the ship from the memorial, we headed to Waikiki Beach—so beautiful. The beach was so warm. Justin, Megan (a Resident Director), and I hit the water. I was chastised repeatedly for talking on the phone, but I was trying to get in touch with as many of you as I could. I was so grateful to talk with those of you I did reach and I am so sorry for the ones I missed or who were “busy checking their messages” (you know who you are)—unfortunately I hadn’t charged my phone so my phone died a tragic death not long into the phone calling process. As Derick Dean Diver once said, “Overuse will kill anything.”

Honolulu was only a brief port stop for us and we were scheduled to depart at 11 PM. Everyone always has to be back on the ship two hours before, which is tricky since you don’t want to have to come back very early, but you don’t want to risk getting caught in a long security line going back onto the ship. If you aren’t back onto the ship by the designated time you get “dock time” in your next port, meaning you have to stay on the ship while others leave. Last night the line was sooooo long because some many students were caught sneaking alcohol on the ship. The two students in front of me had a case of Perrier. Ship security opened the case only to find that the water been dumped from the individual bottles and replaced water with vodka. Other students put alcohol in their shampoo bottles, in Febreeze bottles, in laundry detergent bottles. Several students had taped alcohol to themselves. One student was ordered to remove the alcohol he had duct taped to his groin—how security spotted this, I’ll never know. Unfortunately, when he pulled the tape back he received an added bonus of a duct tape waxing treatment. Ewwww, grooosss—right, Sarah, Abby, and Jen?

We are at the beginning of the nine day leg of our trip to get to I gain another hour of sleep tonight (we had three days in a row last week where we gained one hour each night). It’s a great system. We should try this more often in Charlottesville.

Lots of love to all of you and thank you to Pauletta and Sarah Campbell—who sent mail. I was so grateful to come to my cabin today and see some special notes from you. You made my day (hint, hint; nudge, nudge). Special snaps to Ish and E Bass who ran your respective races this weekend with panache—way to go ladies. I miss you all. Thinking of you!