Typhoon!

We were originally scheduled to land in Qindao (pronounced Ching-dow) China yesterday, but a big typhoon between Japan and China rerouted us straight to Hong Kong. Apparently there are 38 foot seas, which means that from bottom to top the swells are over 75 feet. Holy guacamole! We were going full speed south the last two days to avoid the storm, and we caught a bit of rough water during the nights. I had to get up a few times to close drawers and doors that were slamming back and forth. Lots of barfing commenced among those with weak stomachs. I stayed strong. The trip to Beijing is still on, we’ll just be getting flights out of Hong Kong tomorrow.

Observations on Japanese Society and Culture

The Japanese are very non-confrontational. If you find yourself making eye contact with somebody, they will look down quickly. Street crime is almost non-existent in Japan, and I never felt anything less than completely safe. People don’t talk that much, and everybody is extremely respectful. The submissive culture is very interesting to observe, and right away we felt like we could just completely be ourselves. Even if we were dancing in the train station or doing something else really obnoxious, nobody would even look at us. The Japanese will not stare at all. I’m sure that this will contrast greatly with places like India.

The submission and respect put us at ease right away, but if I were to live here I think it might feel a little different. Everybody is so concerned with not being rude, and staying out of everyone else’s way, that it feels very isolating. I feel like there is an underlying theme of separation and loneliness. I can see why gift giving is so important in Japan, as it helps to close these gaps.

Japan was very clean and modern. There wasn’t any trash lying around, and I saw only a handful of homeless people the whole time. Everybody was wearing nice clothes, especially in the train stations where the thousands of the business men were dressed very stylish. The lack of violence and crime, and the quality of life in Japan is truly remarkable. MacArthur’s social engineering after the war was a huge success. This is an incredibly safe society with a huge middle class that lives very well. This seems to be an example of the perfect society that communism strives for but can never achieve.

The transportation system worked very well. Most signs were in English, and everything ran right on time. We certainly got our moneys worth out of our rail passes. We did get lost a lot, but that is mostly because we were unfamiliar with the area. If the signs at the train stations were not in English, it would have been almost impossible for us to travel.

The language barrier was very shocking as soon as we got off the ship. At first we were like a deer in the headlights, but we learned really quickly about how to communicate. We used lots of hand motions, drew pictures, pointed to maps a lot, and learned a few key words to say to people. Everyone was so helpful, that most of the time we were able to find out what we needed to. In Kyoto most of the people we talked to knew some English, but everywhere else it was a struggle. In all my stories when I say that I talked to somebody, got some food, or got directions, this consisted of a five minute game of pictionary and some acting and pointing to the dictionary. After a while this just became second nature and was not a big deal.

Japanese pop-culture is very puzzling to me. Their comic books and anime shows are extremely violent. They seem to be able to channel all of their violent tendencies into their entertainment. There is a definite dichotomy between Japanese entertainment and how the Japanese actually live. It is really a queer thing to be in such a peaceful society and then see the disgusting violence portrayed in their leisure reading.

People do not talk on their phones in public; instead they are constantly text messaging on their cell phones. On one bus, almost every single person was furiously typing texts in the complete silence. I believe this falls back into the will to not disturb anybody else.

On one of the bullet trains, there were a group of extremely drunk fishermen. On most of the train rides, everybody is either sleeping, or text messaging in silence. This group of drunken guys was being extremely loud and crazy. What I noticed is that all of the people around were looking, and then smiling to each other. Nobody got angry at the disturbance. They weren’t tolerating it in an attempt not to be rude, instead they seemed to be really entertained and happy. They were curious and interested to see somebody acting out of the ordinary. If there were some drunken idiots disturbing my sleep at home I would be pissed. But in an odd sort of way, they enjoyed it. I think that everyone is so subdued that it was a nice break for them. The subdued nature of their culture felt sort of depressing to me. It kind of reminded me of seeing a dog that has been beaten a lot and slinks along hanging his head really low. There seems to be a kind of cultural shame that everyone grows up with. I was only in Japan for five days, but I observed people as best as I could, and correct or incorrect, these were the impressions that I was left with.

Kobe Beef

Aaron and I bailed Kyoto early to get back to Kobe in time to have a meal before on-ship time.

Kobe is known for having the finest beef in the world. Kobe cows are fed beer and hand massaged every day. My justification was that since we had spent a night on the street and saved money on a hotel, I was going to splurge big time on this meal.

This was the most amazing meal I have ever had. The only word that does the steak justice is orgasmic. Straight up, it was better than the steak at the Arroyo Chop House (and more expensive too). This was a wonderful way to finish off our experience in Japan.

Kyoto

Our last stop was in Kyoto, a very beautiful city where we stayed in a Japanese Ryokan run by a very wonderful old lady. A Ryokan is a traditional boarding house, where we slept on mats on a Tatami floor. The bathrooms were communal, and we were given slippers and robes to wear. We were all exhausted from hard charging it the last few days and lounged in the room for most of the night, drinking cup after cup of tea. The place was so relaxing, just filled with tranquil energy. This was the perfect place to recharge the batteries for the night, and was a definite highlight of our trip.

The next day we checked out a Samurai castle that is right in the middle of town. It had lots of lovely gardens and 500 year old buildings and paintings. The craftsmanship is amazing, even more so because it was all built by hand.

Don’t ask me why, but Aaron was determined to eat an egg-burger from McDonald’s before we left. It had a patty, fried egg, some sort of disgusting strips of animal fat, and was slathered in pink mayonnaise. Never under any circumstances would I put that thing in my mouth. He munched it down with a smile.

One Judge-Ito Burrito Please

After Sumo, the plan was to climb Mt. Fuji and get to the top for the sunrise. We bumped into a few SAS girls in Tokyo station who had just attempted it and gotten stuck in a huge storm. They strongly recommended that we don’t do it, so with out any plans we pulled out a map. We found a small village called Ito on the Izu peninsula and decided to go there. We got off the train around midnight, and the train station closed up behind us. There was a very warm tropical breeze, and the town was completely dark and dead silent. We walked down the beach looking for a place to sleep, but every hotel told us they were full. The language barrier was more like a concrete wall. Nobody spoke a single word of English. After wandering around for a while with no luck, we found a guy and a girl on the street, and they motioned for us to follow them. The walked us all over town, to all the hotels that had already rejected us, and then finally found one that had vacancy. The hotel would be about 210 bucks, and between the six of us we only had about 150. That was pretty lame of us to have no money, but the ATM’s would not take our cards. We admitted defeat, and tried to explain to our new friends that we were done looking. They had walked with us for over an hour, and they really wanted to help us. It made us feel really bad, nobody in the states would ever in a million years go out of their way for us, let alone a group of foreigners. We were all really touched by how kind they were. I still had the bottle of gin in my backpack, so as a thank you, I gave it to them as a present. I could tell it meant a lot to them. It was a pretty heart-wrenching situation, since we couldn’t communicate, and things didn’t work out.

We started wandering back up the beach. We found a dirty little hole in the wall place that was open, and we went in. The three chefs got a real kick out of us. The big menu on the wall was all in Japanese, so we pointed to a few random dishes, and they went to work. We ate like there was no tomorrow.

Back on the street, it was almost 2, and I needed some rest. The others said they were going to keep wandering, so I told them I was going to sleep on the beach, and for them to come get me in the morning. The wind was ripping pretty hard, so I tucked in between two beached rowboats and slowly fell to sleep. I woke up completely startled to the loud crack of a tarp in the wind. I didn’t know were I was for a second and it was really scary. The wind was really ripping now, and I was so freaked that I just got up and started walking. It was well past three. I came up to a telephone booth and tried fruitlessly to call home a few times, and idiotically I managed to get the Ito police on the phone somehow.

I hung up and kept walking, and I came around a corner to see my friends all sprawled out sleeping on the sidewalk just as a cop car rolls up, probably responding to my call. I completely froze, thinking we were going be arrested, and then my next reaction was to snap a picture of the scene. The cops seemed confused and after a few seconds, they just kept rolling. The picture didn’t come out.

We got up and walked back up to the train station to get some shelter from the wind. We slept outside on the concrete and the few benches we could find. There were a few homeless people around. The guy directly across the lockers from me was in a squatting position, with his face in his hands, not moving at all. He may have been coming down off of some drugs, but I could feel his pain. You don’t sleep on the street; you can only quiet yourself and wait for the sun to come up. Even though I had to go all the way to Japan to experience life as a homeless, it was an interesting experience.

Feeling pretty crappy around five, we headed back down to the beach. The sunrise was quite beautiful. On the top floor of a hotel across the street we noticed a completely naked man standing in the window. He was smashing his dead rat against the glass and I’m certain he was thinking something to the effect of “Ito, you are my bitch.” We found a park that had nice grass and all sorts of interesting sculptures. After some amateur sumo wrestling, we all sprawled out on the grass and passed out until nine.

We went to a bank to exchange some currency, brushed our teeth and shaved in the bathroom, and got some lunch. Ito was super low-key, and much quieter than what we were used to in Tokyo. After food and some Tums, we hopped on the train and B-lined it out of there.

Clash of the Fat Boys

Waking up around 9, we hopped on the very confusing Tokyo subway system and made our way across town to the Sports Complex. Japan has three big Sumo wrestling tournaments each year, and we were fortunate enough to be in town at the right time. We arrived around noon and stayed until the end of the tournament at six.

These guys are big! One guy was measured at over 200 kilos, which is about 450 pounds. The sport is very religious in nature. They have chants between each match, and the fighters stomp and throw salt in the ring to kill bad spirits. Everything is very ceremonial. The cheap seats are actually right next to the platform, as a couple people in the front row got landed on.

Tokyo Nightlife

The place we stayed was in the Shinjuku district, which is Tokyo’s version of sin city. All of the respect and tranquility of traditional Japan gets pretty frayed in this part of town. There are tons of people, and blindingly bright lights covering the whole area. We started off the night by buying beer from the vending machine in our hotel (awesome), and drinking it while we walked on the street to the clubs (also awesome).

Tyler and Aaron are really into jazz music so we found a smoky fourth floor jazz bar with live piano. The place was dark and small, it only had eight tables. It had a really upper-class feel, and the three bar tenders were extremely skilled at making drinks. I had a glass of their most expensive tequila. I have never honestly enjoyed sipping tequila before, but I thoroughly enjoyed this drink. Around midnight we got up to leave. When I was waiting by the elevator, one of the bar tenders told me he wanted to give me a gift, and presented me with a nice bottle of gin. I can’t tell you how happy this made me. I never really understood why Japan is such a huge gift giving culture, but I felt so appreciated and happy that I can see why they like gifts so much.

Down on the street, we found our way into a club owned by a guy from Nigeria. It was an odd group of people in the club, but I enjoy more of an international scene anyways. We drank and danced until early in the morning.

Tokyo-Wako

7 a.m. came to quick for me. The plan was to go to Tokyo that morning, and we had another friend Aaron traveling with us. I felt not so great, so I told everyone I would meet them in Tokyo later that evening, and to email me the name of the hotel they found. This was a pretty stupid idea.

I went back to sleep and woke around 11. Feeling good I hopped on the railcar, and then took the subway to the train station. After a transfer in Osaka, I arrived in Tokyo via the bullet train around 4. As soon as I got into the train station it was complete pandemonium. Thousands of men in suits were walking in every direction, and I had no idea where to go. I found a computer at a FedEx shop in the station. I opened up my email, and my heart sank when it was empty. What to do now? I was alone in Tokyo with no plans or direction. I decided to kill a few hours, and headed out into the rain.

The area around the train station reminded me a lot of New York City with less people. Huge bank buildings, nice granite and marble planters, big sidewalks, etc. The first thing I noticed was all of the bicycle messengers. They were zooming around all over the place, except in Japan they ride on the sidewalks instead of the street. It looked like fun, but was pretty gnarly to be walking around on the sidewalks. The messengers were sporting the same fixed gear bikes, and the same bags, caps, and everything else like in America. It was pretty cool to check out the messenger scene in Tokyo.

I wandered through a party of town called Jim-bo-cho, which had hundreds of little book stores crammed into very skinny buildings. After a while all of the lights and corners started looking the same and I was lost and disoriented. I found my way to and internet café, which was on the seventh floor of a building. They also sold comics, porno, and had a massage parlor. Super-sketch. I had to become a member of the club before I could use the computers, but I managed to get on the internet and get hotel directions.

I proceeded to the subway, and got lost even more. After a while I went back up to the street and found a cab. It turns out I was 8 miles away from my destination. I chilled out in the hotel lobby for an hour before my friends turned up, and it was a very happy reunion. They thought for sure that they weren’t going to see me again in Japan. Traveling alone without any communication was pretty hairball, but I definitely got the crash course in Japanese transportation that served me well the rest of the week.

Hiroshima

Our first day in Japan, we headed straight from the ship to Hiroshima. The group was me and my friends Darcy, Tyler, Jody, and Ashley. After getting our rail passes figured out we hopped on the bullet train and got there right before dark.

Hiroshima is a bustling city, and if you didn’t know any better you wouldn’t be able to tell that it was completely destroyed 60 years ago. The peace museum has some very powerful artifacts from the explosion, including a slab of the sidewalk with a black stain that was all that remained of a man sitting there. What really got to me was a little boy’s tricycle and helmet that was found after the blast. We saw large images of the city completely leveled in every direction as far as the eye could see. It is really hard to appreciate the magnitude of the destruction. You can feel the pain of a single person that tragically dies, but a whole city being devastated is hard to get your mind around.

Near the center of the blast there is a building referred to as the A-bomb dome that was one of the few that did not collapse. After the blast it was fenced off and has not been touched since then. It is an amazing artifact, and really helps you to place yourself back to 60 years ago.

The experience of seeing Hiroshima is hard to describe in writing, and I am definitely not a good enough writer to properly express it.

After wandering around in the rain for a while we found a very good sushi place in an alley across from the A-bomb dome. Tyler and I ordered some abalone towards the end, and before we ate it one of the girls noticed it was moving. Sure enough those suckers were alive and squirming around on the rice. I’ve never murdered an animal by chewing it to death, and thankfully it didn’t scream at all. There was lots of crunching that felt like cartilage. We also had some crab brain and sea bream, which I don’t know what it is, but it was pretty intense. After finding our way back to the train, we decided to sleep back on the ship that night. We arrived back in Kobe around 1.

The Seventh Deck

The Seventh Deck is the coolest part of the ship. There is a pool and a huge sunbathing deck covered in lounge chairs. From 10:30 in the morning until dinner time it is a huge pool party out here. The big mistake is trying to bring school work out to the deck. Yesterday, in the four hours that I was out on the deck, I got a total of 25 pages read. I did get nice and sunburned though.

The seventh deck also has the big bar where we have pub nights. In international waters the drinking age is 18. It kind of reminds me of a bunch of excited freshman during the first week of the fall at UCSB. They do have a six drink limit per day which keeps people from getting drunk, but is just enough for people to start making some bad decisions. So far, Dan has kept on schedule every day and hasn’t missed a single one of his daily six.

Hawaii Sunset

For dinner we ate at a really good(expensive) sushi place and drank our fair share of Sake to get psyched up for Japan. We had a beautiful sunset from dinner and then it started to rain as we got back on the ship.

Aloha

Apparently our ship cannot carry enough fuel to get from Ensenada to Japan. The one convenient gas station we had on the map was Hawaii. I hate to stopping for gas when I’m driving, but I was definitely not bummed out about stopping in Honolulu for a day.

Within 30 minutes of stepping off the ship, I started to feel barfy. I guess when you are used to living on a rocking ship, solid land makes you sick. I didn’t believe it at first, but when I felt it for myself I sure did. It only lasted a little while, and after a big meal and jumping in the water I felt like a million bucks.

After picking up a Japan Rail passes at a travel agency, we spent the rest of the day surfing, getting more sunburned, and eating like kings. The waves were going off in Waikiki and Dan, Tyler, and I were shredding the 30 inchers like pros. I can’t think of any better place to stop for a day than in Hawaii.

Triple Threat

My roommate’s name is Dan. He grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, and he holds dual Panamanian-Colombian citizenship. He is studying at University of San Francisco. He’s a very carefree and easy to get along with guy. According to him, being left handed, Colombian, and Jewish, he has been dubbed “triple threat” when coming through American customs. I started cracking up when I walked into our room for the first time and he blurted out “Thank God you’re not a weirdo.” He’s pretty well traveled and the best thing about him is that he can walk up to any random person and lay on his Colombian charm and get the info that we need. My first instinct if we got lost would be to look at the map, where as he would ask the nearest stranger he sees. This will definitely be a good thing in some of our upcoming trips.

The Students

I have to lodge a quick complaint about New Yorkers. Every single one I have talked to has said the exact same thing. When I tell them I’m from So Cal, they always snap back an “Oh… you are one of thooose people” while they role their eyes. And then the rest of conversation is filled with annoying quips about how New York is way better than California. Look people, we both know that California is the best place to live. We have the beaches, mountains, Mexican food, and the best weather in the world. I know you are jealous, I would be too. Just stop being so bitter.

New Yorkers aside, this is a really great group of kids on this trip. Everyone is super excited and there are a lot of really interesting and well traveled people. I think you have to be pretty cool to come on a trip like this in the first place. It is like freshman year all over again trying to meet 600 people in one week. And check this out, the girl to guy ratio on the ship is 6 to 4. And the girls are really cute! I want to go find whoever is in charge of admissions and give them a big hug.

Everybody agrees that hands down, we are the most fortunate group of college students in America right now. There is no comparison for the opportunities that we are getting. In the middle of a conversations people randomly blurt out stuff like “Holy shit, we are on a ship going around the world!” or “Dude, I’m going to be in Japan in four days!” It’s like a constant high and we haven’t even gone anywhere yet!

Life at Sea

The first few days were pretty nauseating. The rocking of the ship left me pretty tired most of the day. It was really funny to walk down the hall behind somebody and watch them bounce off the walls like a pinball. I personally saw three girls barf in the first two days from sea sickness, and I’m sure there were plenty more. So far I’ve managed to keep the chunks down.

It’s pretty crazy to be in the middle of the ocean and not see land for days. Every morning, during class, meals, sunbathing, or any other time I look out, the only thing in every direction is water. Today we were 600 miles from the closest land, and the ocean was over three miles deep below us. That is some crazy stuff, who knows what is down there. The ocean is a really beautiful deep blue, and today it was so calm that it would be good for wakeboarding. The water was also 80 degrees; I was looking over the railing from the seventh deck just wishing I could jump off.

The time changes have to be the coolest thing about being at sea. Almost every night that we are at sea, we get to change our clocks back an hour. I can not even tell you how awesome it is to have 25 hour days. Every time the lady comes on the PA and tells us to “retard our clocks tonight” I get an ear to ear grin. We lost a day when crossing the International Date Line, and it happened to be one kids 21st birthday. We went to bed on a Wednesday and woke up on a Friday, and the poor kid’s birthday ceased to exist.

Embarkation

I started packing the night before we left, but it went pretty smoothly. I had to send my mom out to Sport Chalet at 9 that night to get a duffel bag, but that was the only hiccup. I had a good amount of space left in my second bag, so indulged with my speakers and sub-woofer. After all, they say that music soothes even the savage beast.

I watched Kevin’s football scrimmage Saturday morning, in which he completely obliterated anyone that dared to stand in his way. He is going to be extremely scary when he is a senior. After that we drove down to San Diego, where my parents got to check out the ship for a couple of hours.

When I woke up Sunday morning it really hit for the first time that I was leaving the country for a long time. I remember looking out the balcony thinking “I really like this place.” I don’t have any idea of Asia or the Middle East is like. For all I know those places might not even exist. It is amazing to think that I am getting on a ship and going straight out into the ocean, and in a couple weeks will land in a place completely foreign to me. It is still hard to get a grip on what I am doing, and I don’t think I will really understand it all until long after I return. Completely awesome.

So after my last breakfast with my family for a while, we went down to the parking lot and I hopped on the shuttle down to Ensenada. It wasn’t the sob-fest I imagined it would be. There is something a little bit anti-climactic about getting on a bus instead of waving goodbye from a ship setting sail. Missing Kev’s football season really does bum me out though.

The drive down to Ensenada was pretty uneventful. We had a few hours in port before we set sail, so I headed to MK Taco for some fine dining. I was super stoked on my tacos and apple soda lunch, but my stomach was not so stoked. I felt pretty gross when I got back to the ship and then passed out. When I woke up we were out in the ocean with no land in sight. I guess they had some bag-pipes playing when the ship set sail and a couple random people were on the dock waving goodbye, but it doesn’t sound like I missed much.

The ship is pretty amazing. Not a bad place to spend the next three months. I’ll post some pictures a little later.

How I Got Here

I actually didn’t know that I was going on this trip until about three months ago. The engineering department at UCSB very strongly encourages their students to follow the four year schedule they have laid out, and being the good student that I am, I was right on track. As of June, I had resigned to the fact that my remaining year of college would be another blur of equations, computers, and sleep deprivation, and then I would be spit out the other end and grow up. Then one morning in the CAD Lab as I was getting my exercise walking from my computer to the printer, I overheard a guy named Eric telling somebody that he was going to abroad in the fall. I stopped to talk to him for a minute, and from there my life took a big change. I went online, and Semester at Sea still had space, which is pretty rare that late in the year. My application was in the mail that afternoon. After that, everything just fell into place like it was meant to happen. So Eric, I don’t really know you, but thanks a lot man.

I had known about Semester at Sea for a while, but I never thought I would be able to go. Classes in engineering are sequenced and only offered once a year, so missing this one quarter sets me back a whole year. Thank God! Now I get to spend the fall traveling the world, and then spread out 3 quarters of work over 5 quarters when I get back. My professors are always telling me to think outside of the box. I finally get it! I just had to make my own bigger five-year box. Go travel, slow things down, and stay an extra year; what a wonderful solution to my rapidly diminishing enthusiasm for academics

Semester at Sea is a program through UVA that takes about 600 college students on a ship, and circumnavigates the globe over 100 days, and stops in about 10 ten different countries. Classes are taking on the ship while out at sea, and when in port we get to travel unrestricted. About half the days are spent traveling, with the other half out at sea. My particular voyage sets sail in Ensenada, stops in ports all over Asia, transmits the Suez Canal while we are in Egypt, and then stops in a few countries in the Mediterranean before we cross the Atlantic and end in Florida. This really is the trip of a lifetime.

I spent the summer working at a bike shop, and didn’t spend too much time preparing for the trip. I figured that things would work themselves out. How do you prepare yourself for life in ten foreign countries anyway? I don’t think you really can. I know very little about most of these cultures, and I think its best to just show up without any pre-conceptions. My plan is to pack light, stay flexible, keep an open mind, and see where I end up. The stage has already been set, and I will let life unfold however it will.

I have about two weeks until we land in Japan and my world gets a whole lot bigger.