Yet another post about Japan

(I originally started writing this on September 20th).

Michael and I are waiting until 12:45 when we disembark the ship and travel to Beijing with our group. In the meantime I thought I would share some pictures of our trip to Nara and Kyoto and answer some of the questions my Dad asked in his comments to my previous post. You can find some Nara/Kyoto pictures here.

Did you drink any sake? Was it good if you did?

We had sake a few times. The best sake I tried was some pear sake at a bar. In each case though the sake was excellent and I sort of prefer it to most other alcoholic drinks. It’s a shame it’s not really available in the U.S.

How about tea? Did you drink any and how was it?

The green tea that they served was either sencha, most of which was on the bitter side, or Houjicha which is roasted green tea. I tend to like the sweeter kind of sencha but that is usually only available in the early spring when the green tea is first harvested. The Houjicha was excellent though, and in the summer they serve it both chilled and warm. It has a sweet woody taste and is a yellowish/brown color. When we were in Kyoto and I was purchasing tea I turned around to find Michael and John, who is filming video footage for the Fall 2007 DVD, drinking small cups of tea that were being handed out. They told me to try some with the warning that it was salty. I took a big sip and almost gagged, it was like drinking salt water. I don’t know if that was a special local variety of tea or if they have a custom of adding salt to their green tea, but it was terrible. Thankfully none of the green tea I bought is salty.

Did you like the sushi? Did you have any sashimi?

There were a few firsts for me on this trip. I ate some sort of sushi that looked like an omelette and tasted a lot like eggs. I also had shrimp, both as sushi and tempura style. It was pretty good but I don’t think I could eat it again. We also ate what was essentially Japanese caviar which was just as salty as the tea and the little eggs were oddly crunchy like Rice Krispies. I also tried eel which was really soft and had a weird texture. We did not try any sashimi though.

How was the bullet train ride? How fast did the train go? What were the seats like? Was the train crowded?

The bullet train was really neat. I don’t know how fast it went but it took us about two hours to get to Kobe, the normal train service or a car would have taken about 10 hours. The seats were pretty comfortable and there was a surprising amount of leg room. The train was not crowded at first but after we got to Shin-Osaka station tons of people got on. For the rest of the ride people stood in the aisle. On the bullet train to Kyoto one of the girls in our group of five and I were looking for seats on the crowded train and a Japanese man who noticed we couldn’t find two seats together got up and offered his seat and the empty one next to his. We didn’t say a word to him; he just smiled and motioned to his seat. It was this sort of unspoken kindness that I really liked about Japan.

Nara & Kyoto - Seeing historical Japan

(This post continues where I left off in my Planet Tokyo post and takes place from September 15-16. I originally began writing it on September 17^th).

Back on the ship in the morning we quickly packed some new clothes and waited until someone made an announcement about our trip to Nara & Kyoto which was supposed to leave at 8:30 A.M. The departure time passed and we got a bit worried so we headed to the Field Office desk to see what was going on. We met up with 5 other students and found out that the tour bus had left without us. We quickly decided to head out on our own, intent on getting to Nara before the bus. After much confusion we took a number of trains (including the shinkansen again) and a taxi to the second temple on our itinerary and waited for the group to arrive. Unfortunately we had missed out on lunch and the first temple, Horyu-Ji, which was built in 607 C.E and is the oldest temple in Japan. The temple that we met the group at, Todai-Ji, is supposedly the largest wooden building in the world and it houses a 52 ft. tall Buddha statue each of whose fingers are over 6 feet long. Tons of deer, regarded as messengers of the gods in the Shinto religion, roamed the extensive temple grounds. Vendors sold biscuits that you could feed to the deer though they tended to follow you around after the feeding. One deer walked up behind me and drooled on my book bag when I wasn’t looking.

We then visited the Kasuga shrine, a Shinto temple, which was originally built in 768 C.E. On the grounds there were hundreds of stone lanterns that are lit with candles twice a year, and of course, more deer. Afterwards, we drove to Kyoto and checked into a ryokan which is a traditional Japanese inn. Once there we took off our shoes and were given slippers. We were shown to our room which consisted of a single square room with tatami mats, small cushions as chairs (called zabuton), and a small squat table. Michael and I shared our room with two other guys. We were served tea and then quickly showered and changed into a type of cotton kimono called a yukata. Dinner was served in a banquet hall where we all sat cross-legged and ate suki yaki which consisted of cooking our own beef, noodles, and vegetables in front of us using portable woks. After dinner we sat around drinking beer out of the vending machines (yes they have beer vending machines in Japan) and finally got up enough courage to go into the communal baths. The idea of sharing a hot bath with several other naked guys was not appealing, but it ended up being really relaxing though the water was boiling hot.

After a relaxing sleep on futons we ate a quasi-western-style breakfast and piled back into the bus for another day of aggressive temple site-seeing. Our first stop was to see Kinkaku-Ji, the famous Golden Pavilion that is covered in 22 karat gold. The original structure of the Golden Pavilion was unfortunately burnt down by a mentally ill monk in 1950 who claimed he was jealous of the temple’s beauty and could stand it no longer. We then toured Nijo castle, once the residence of the Tokugawa shoguns in the 17^th century. Our second to last stop was Kiyomizu temple which is partly suspended over a gorge. Amazingly none of the support beams holding it over the gorge have nails in them, they were carefully interlocked and somehow hold the hordes of tourists that visit the temple daily. We then spent some time visiting the hundreds of shops around the temple that sell tea, ceramic-ware, swords, and all sorts of food and candy made out of tofu (tofu is a staple of the Buddhist monk diet in Japan). This finally gave me a chance to buy some gifts and some green tea for myself. Our final stop, Sanjusangen-do was incredibly impressive. The hall contains 1001 brass statues of a Buddhist deity called the Thousand Armed Kannon that surround a huge version of the same thousand-armed and multi-headed deity.

Sadly it was time to go. We rode back to the port in Kobe and boarded the ship; all of us were sad to leave Japan. I miss Japan and we haven’t even left yet. I’m sitting on one of the back decks watching Kobe recede as the ship pulls out of the port. People at the port terminal are lined up and waving at us as the ship departs. I was constantly impressed by the politeness of the Japanese I interacted with on this trip. Everything that anyone did was done with care and respect, and a sense that it really did matter how other people would feel about another person’s actions. I think it is precisely this mindset that is lacking in the U.S. that makes me dislike our culture sometimes.

There were a few interesting things about Japan that I haven’t mentioned yet, such as how there are vending machines everywhere that sell all sorts of drinks including beer. (The Sao Ri iced green tea that can be found in most of the vending machines in Japan is one of the best teas I’ve ever had.) The really strange thing about that is that there are very few trash cans anywhere. People obviously use the vending machines, otherwise they wouldn’t be everywhere. Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nara were spotlessly clean. So where do they put all of the trash? I assume most people do what I did and carry the bottles with them. I also noticed something else interesting, there were almost no public benches in Tokyo, and I rarely saw anyone eating in the streets. Apparently it is frowned upon in Japan if you eat while walking, and with the lack of public benches, that doesn’t leave any opportunity to litter. That still doesn’t explain where they put all of those empty plastic bottles though.

The last thing I wanted to mention was that our tour guide for the Nara & Kyoto trip, Harumi, was amazing. She was informative, funny, and extremely kind. It was sad when it was time for the group to part ways with her, I think we all really liked her. There is more I had wanted to say about Japan but now I’ve forgotten. Rushing around from place to place in each port city, and then only having a few days in between each port, gives me little time to process everything I’ve experienced. From time to time I reflect on it and think of things I want to share with others but then I forget about it. It will all come back to me eventually, probably as I’m comparing and contrasting Japan with the other countries I will have visited. It’s all happening so quickly, but I’m having a great time.

Planet Tokyo

I had intended to wake up at 5 A.M. to see us pull into the Yokohama Port but Mike and I stayed up late watching Boogie Nights. I finally woke up around 7:30 A.M. and looked out the window to see fog, rain, and the port. Mike and I ran up to get breakfast and then packed for our 3 days in Tokyo. We then sat around until lunch bored out of our minds. At lunch we looked out the window of the ship and saw Sean and his wife Yusan waiting in the passenger terminal for us. We went out to the back deck to wave and attempt to signal to them that we might be a while. A Japanese customs official was on board reviewing and stamping the passports of all 700+ people on the ship. We had been told the night before that at best we would not be able to disembark until 11 A.M. At this point it was now 12:30, and Sean and Yusan had been waiting for an hour and a half.

Unfortunately there was nothing we could do. Time crawled and finally around 2:30 P.M. they announced that we could disembark. Michael and I grabbed our bags and went to find our friend Hua who would be accompanying us to Tokyo. We met up with Sean and Yusan in the port terminal, exchanged gifts, and then found a currency exchange counter. Sean and Yusan recommended that we walk around Chinatown in Yokohama and go to a restaurant. Having your first meal in Japan at a Chinese restaurant might sound strange but it was delicious. I struggled with the chopsticks and no one could show me how to hold them properly since I am left-handed. Finally Yusan asked for a fork for me and I feasted.

Following lunch we made our way to Yokohama station where Hua had to pick up a Railpass so he could save money when traveling to Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Kobe, which he was going to do after our stay in Tokyo. The station was confusing and very crowded. Any hopes I had about getting to our hotel on our own quickly vanished. Sean and Yusan were very helpful however. They rode with us to the next station where we would have to change trains, and then helped us figure out what trains we needed to take to get to the hotel. After saying our goodbyes we set out on our own, nervous but a little less so thanks to Sean and Yusan.

We finally made it to the hotel around 6 P.M., settled in, and planned how to best spend the remainder of our night. We decided to head to the nearby Mori tower where there was an art museum on the 52^nd floor. The elevator ride to the 52^nd floor was so smooth that you could barely tell you were moving, and it rose so quickly that I could feel the pressure building in my ears. They had an exhibit of the works of the French artist and architect Jean Le Corbusier, whom I had never heard of. He painted strange abstract modern art, designed furniture in the 1920s that looks contemporary to us today, and designed houses and large buildings that have been built all over the world. In one room there was a reproduction of an entire house he designed that we could walk through. After the museum we went to another section of the building where we could see all of Tokyo, from 52 stories up. The city lights and tall buildings stretched into the horizon in every direction. It’s hard to imagine the immensity of Tokyo; Philadelphia is like a small town in comparison.

We had no other plans after that so we wandered around Mori tower and found a cool Japanese garden with a pond. After walking around a bit more we decided to head towards the bars and restaurants to find a sushi place. The first thing Mike, Hua, and I all noticed about Roppongi was that there were black people. The next thing we noticed very quickly was that none of them were tourists. We quickly found out that most of them are from Africa and they work for the various clubs and bars in the Roppongi Hills district. They stand on every corner and accost any and every foreigner they see, trying to convince them to come to their club. It got annoying very quickly. All we wanted was some sushi!

We wandered around looking for a sushi restaurant that was recommended in the Tokyo guidebook, it had a conveyor belt. After getting sick of walking around and being bothered by the Africans we decided to stop into a conveyor-less sushi place that we had seen earlier. Mike and I let Hua order for us since he had eaten sushi plenty of times before. Everything was going smoothly; we were enjoying our beers and the quiet of the sushi establishment when all of a sudden we heard very loud voices speaking English. We all turned to see a group of at least six college-aged kids walk into the restaurant. They were from Semester At Sea, and they were annoyingly loud; so much for the tranquility. I never realized how loud Americans are until I went to Japan. Actually that probably goes for most people. The Japanese have mastered the art of talking quietly and saying the most with the fewest words. That is something that I have come to appreciate immensely in the short time I was in Japan. After a day of traveling and walking around Roppongi Hills we were tired so we went back to the hotel and watched the weird Japanese TV shows and then went to sleep, looking forward to the day ahead.

The next morning we set out to do some shopping. First we needed to find food. We stopped into a little ramen noodle restaurant where we learned about yet another thing that makes Japan unique. We sat down on the stools at the counter and waited for someone to come over to us. A man finally did come over, and he motioned towards the wall near the door. We sat there baffled, we just wanted menus. He gestured towards the wall some more and finally we saw them: vending machines. We figured out very quickly how the process worked. You picked which bowl of ramen noodles you wanted based on the little pictures provided on each button, inserted the appropriate amount of money, and the machine spits a ticket out which you then give to the person working behind the counter. Less than 5 minutes went by and we were presented with the biggest bowls of ramen noodles I had ever seen. The chicken ramen bowl I ordered ended up being one of the best meals I had in Japan, and for 650 yen ($5.65) it was bargain.

After the amazing lunch we set out to find the famous electronics district in Akihabara. Michael wanted to buy a camera there since he could get it much cheaper than in Canada (which taxes imported electronics). We spent almost an hour walking around in frustration, unable to figure out the street maps (which were written in kanji and katakana, the logographic writing system and syllabary which are both used for writing Japanese). We finally found a store that sold a camera Michael wanted and he ended up saving a good amount. We then took the train to Harajuku, a street made famous as a place where some teenage Japanese dress up in elaborate costumes and pose for people (known as cosplay, short for costume play). We were supposed to meet Hua’s cousin and Aunt for dinner at 6 and we had no idea where the meeting place was. Given how long it took us to find the huge electronics district we thought it might be a good idea to look for the Snoopy which was the designated meeting place. Once we found the meeting place we headed back to the hotel to freshen up, though more importantly, to get the box of chocolates that Hua had intended to give to his Aunt and cousin but forgot to bring with him.

Dinner with Hua’s cousin and Aunt was interesting. His cousin Mumi was in her last year of high school in Japan and had spent a month or so in Wisconsin as part of an exchange program. She was actually half Japanese and half Columbian; it was interesting to meet someone who was trilingual. Her mother was very kind and insisted on paying for our dinner, which was extremely nice of her. She spoke almost entirely in Spanish which was okay because I remembered enough Spanish to understand almost everything she said. I found it really comforting to know someone in a foreign country, even if it was someone who I had just met an hour ago. We walked around Harajuku a bit after dinner looking for some stores that sold T-shirts and then said our goodbyes. We were planning on seeing a rock concert but after taking too long to find a specific bar we decided we were too tired (and it was too late) so we went back to the hotel.

The following morning Michael and I parted ways with Hua who was meeting up with our friend Katie, they were going to visit Hiroshima and then Kyoto. Michael and I had enough time to head over to Shinjuku, another famous shopping district in Tokyo, before catching the shinkansen (or bullet train) to Kobe. We took some pictures of the huge buildings and bright signs and then had another nice lunch at a random restaurant. The key to eating in Tokyo is to find a place that has pictures of all of the food along with prices in our familiar numeral system and luckily most places do. After lunch we made our way to the always-crowded Tokyo Station to buy tickets for the shinkansen (bullet train). The train ride to Kobe took about 2 hours. The vast cityscape of Tokyo gave way to farmland, lush green valleys, and fog-capped mountains. It was stunningly beautiful. We arrived in Kobe in the evening and then spent more time wandering around unable to find the hostel we had reserved a room in. We finally did find it, checked in, and then went out to find some food. We ate at a Japanese café that had food straight out of a seedy American café, though we had chopsticks and rice too. We then walked down to the harbor area of Kobe which was desolate, especially in comparison to the madness of Tokyo. We went back to the hostel early and after another long day of traveling we went to sleep alternatively looking forward to our Nara/Kyoto trip and dreading having to go back on the ship, if only for a little while.

My dad always talks about how New York is the “center of the universe”, and if so, then Tokyo is surely a planet all its own. Even though Tokyo is extremely crowded everything was very orderly. I noticed that in Tokyo everyone stayed to the left when ascending and descending stairs and escalators, but in Kobe people stayed to the right, though only on escalators. While there was a lot of traffic there were a lot of people on bikes. The one thing that really impressed me was that Tokyo is extremely clean. Another thing was that I felt very safe at all times, which is amazing since I often don’t feel safe in parts of Philadelphia. All in all I was very impressed with my stay in Tokyo, I had a lot of fun, and I would love to go back. We only have two short days in between Japan and China, so you will have to wait until I get back from my trip to Beijing and Xi’an to hear about my trip to Kyoto and Nara (along with pictures).

Postcards from Planet Tokyo

It's been a short few days in Tokyo. Michael and I are taking the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kobe tomorrow. While I have a decent internet connection (courtesy of the hotel in Tokyo) I thought I would share a few pictures. I'll be sure to tell you all about my time in Japan as soon as I have a chance to collect my thoughts and write something down. For now: My small Tokyo photo set. More to come later.

P.S. I'll summarize my stay in Tokyo with this.

I'm living in the future

We crossed the International Date Line two days ago and are now 14 hours ahead of the eastern U.S. In less than 48 hours we’ll be in Yokohama, Japan and I’m so excited. Michael and I do not have full plans on what we intend to do once we get there but we have a general idea. My friend Sean who lives close to Yokohama will be meeting Michael, our friend Andrew (who prefers to be called by his last name ‘Hua’), and I at the port. From there we will be taking a train to Tokyo where we will check in to the ‘b Roppongi’ hotel. After that, who knows? Tokyo is a ridiculously large city so we should have no problem finding something to do. We’ve talked about visiting a few strange stores, seeing a Japanese rock concert, and of eating plenty of food. After our 2 ½ days in Tokyo, Michael and I will be taking a train to Kobe to get back to the ship in time for the departure of our group trip to Kyoto & Nara. Things are moving quickly now. After many monotonous days at sea we’ll be traveling through Asia with only a few day of rest in between each country.

I am enjoying my classes. The two linguistics classes I am taking (Languages of the world and The history of the English language) are interesting though I find the latter more interesting because it has more depth. I was hoping we would look closely at the syntax and grammar of the various languages we’ll be encountering but so far the teacher has said very little about them. I’ve always been interested in the development of English and how it was influenced by events such as the Normal Conquest and the text book for the class details all of that magnificently. The Global studies class that the entire student body attends is also interesting. Every day two faculty members speak for 35 minutes each on various topics related to the countries we will be visiting. For instance, one day this past week we heard lectures on the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and the karaoke phenomena in Japan. At the end of the lectures two Japanese students who are traveling from Hawai’i to Japan with us spoke a little about their experiences during the Kobe earthquake.

The Philosophy class I am taking is probably my favorite though. The professor is excellent and the texts we are reading are interesting. We started with Pascal’s Pensees in which he argues that humanity is perpetually unhappy because we can neither find our place in nature nor avoid death. As a result we divert ourselves from these vexing questions with entertainment, customs, traditions, and other ultimately useless things. Pascal felt that reason and science could never help us answers the fundamental questions that make us unhappy and that the only way we could ever feel content is through the grace of God (such as a mystical experience). However, Pascal denied that religion could help us any more than science, so in effect we are doomed to a life of misery unless God decides to grace us with a mystical insight into the nature of the world. For Pascal then the best one can do is hope to be graced by God and in the mean time live a moral life. While his argument is essentially a defense of the fundamental ideas of Christianity (e.g. original sin, Jesus Christ as savior) our class is focusing on his ideas about the inadequacy of reason and the contradictions in human nature.

I certainly don’t agree with most of what Pascal wrote though I find it very intriguing that he went from being the greatest mathematical and scientific mind of his time (he discovered probability theory, binary computation, and invented the first automatic counting device - a precursor to the modern computer) to being a religious ascetic after a mystical experience that he called a ‘night of fire’. After that experience he ceased all work in mathematics and science and instead focused the remainder of his life on theological and philosophical issues. He felt that charity was extremely important and he died somewhat young as a result: After taking in poor people suffering from smallpox and tuberculosis he succumbed to the latter disease at the age of 39. We’ve begun reading Spinoza’s A Theologico-Political Treatise in which he discusses how theologians and politicians use religion and superstition to manipulate people and that religion, stripped to its bare essentials, consists of simple piety. Spinoza has always been one of my favorite philosophers, I consider his Ethics to be one of the greatest philosophical works of the western world. An excerpt from the text I am currently reading for class demonstrates his brilliance: […] faith has become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices which degrade man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the power of judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason! You can imagine the reception his work must have received when it was published in 1670. He too anticipated trouble so he had it published anonymously.

Besides the four classes I am taking there is not much to do on the ship. We’ve entered slightly rougher waters today but it hasn’t made me feel seasick. In fact I was only slightly seasick for the first few days on board, but it was never more than a slight feeling of dizziness and queasiness. I’ve been watching a lot of movies and TV shows that Michael and I brought with us to help pass the time. We played a four hour long Monopoly game one night with friends that ended when I landed on the Free Parking and received $5,000 (we were playing with modified rules in which any money that normally goes to the bank instead goes to Free Parking and is awarded to the first person who lands on it). Last night at 10 P.M. Michael and I went up to the 7^th deck to look at the stars. The crew turned the lights off on the front of the ship and the sky was full of stars, it was impressive. That’s all I have to say for now. The hotel we’ll be staying at in Tokyo has free internet access so I will upload pictures and maybe a few videos since the internet connection on the ship is very slow. I’ll talk to you soon.

Aloha means goodbye and also hello

I’m sitting on the 6^th deck, aft, as we slowly pull out of the harbor in Honolulu. Michael is in our cabin asleep after a long day of swimming and walking. I’m still so excited about being to a place I’ve always wanted to visit that I’m still wide awake. My day started at 5:30 A.M. when I awoke to the persistent beeping of my alarm clock. I remembered setting it especially early with the intention of seeing the ship pull into Honolulu and I quickly regretted making that decision. Nonetheless I got up and peered out the porthole window. Lights! Land! It was an amazing sight. I cannot possibly imagine how wonderful it must have felt for sailors in earlier centuries to see land after sailing for months with nothing to look at but ocean but I felt quite happy.

I quickly showered and went up to the 6^th deck to watch as we were led into the port by the pilot boat. Land closed in on us from all sides and the buildings rose up like giants. Compared to what I’d seen out my cabin’s porthole window day after day, they were giants. After breakfast Michael and I waited impatiently for our turn to see the U.S. customs officials before leaving the ship. That time finally came, after which we set foot on dry ground and met up the rest of the group who were going snorkeling. The “snorkeling adventure” (as it was described) was not much of an adventure at all. We got on to an aging catamaran and rode out quite a distance from, but parallel to, Waikiki beach. We then donned flippers, goggles, and snorkels and jumped into the very warm ocean. The water temperature was nice but no one informed us that there was no coral to be found on the sea floor. Instead we were greeted with a barren sandy bottom except for a lone (but very big) sea turtle. Despite the lack of sea-life we all had fun splashing around for a bit, after which we had lunch on the boat and made our way back to the dock.

Michael and I met a few new people on the snorkeling trip, one of whom was Jesse who had been smart enough to bring a guitar with him on our journey. We both wanted to play a musical instrument so bad that we even discussed risking total embarrassment by playing the piano on board the ship even though neither of us really knew how to play. Jesse invited us to use his guitar whenever we wanted, and after talking some more he decided to accompany us to a few Ukulele stores that Michael wanted to see. We took a taxi down to the Waikiki beach area and after some confusion finally found one of the Ukulele stores. Michael was intent on buying a Ukulele; he’d been planning on it for some time. I on the other hand just tagged along; I’d look but I didn’t want to buy anything. However, after entering the store and playing a few Ukuleles I decided that I absolutely needed one, so I bought a wonderful Baritone Ukulele which sounds similar to an acoustic guitar since its four strings are tuned the same as the four higher strings on a guitar. Michael bought a nice black electric/acoustic Ukulele that I myself had been eyeing.

The beach had been calling us since we first set our eyes on it and finally we gave in and went for a swim. The beaches in Hawai’i are renowned for surfing but are unfortunately not very good for swimming. Sure, the water is a pleasant 82°F but you have to walk on sharp algae-slick rocks to get out to where the waves are. Despite the rocks Michael and I waded and swam around a bit and then decided to get going. There was no sign of Jesse so after waiting a bit we left. We walked the whole of Waikiki beach and found a nice park with strange trees. We sat underneath one with the intention of playing our ukuleles but quickly got up as ants began to swarm our legs. We found a Thai restaurant called Shingla which served pretty good food. While it was Americanized Thai cuisine it made me eager to try the real thing in Bangkok.

After finding out from the waiter that the Ala Moana mall was a short walk from the restaurant we continued on, intent on finding a drug-store to get some supplies (particularly peanut butter and candy). The Ala Moana mall was interesting. Like much of Honolulu everything was in Japanese as well as English. This came as a shock to me since I’m not used to seeing Japanese anywhere. I had even seen a movie theater near Waikiki beach that had the film names displayed only in Japanese. It quickly became evident that Hawai’i must be a major tourist spot for vacationing Japanese and the state attempted to capitalize on it as much as possible by providing bilingual signage and tourist guides. The most interesting sight was in Long’s Drugstore where Michael and I found all sorts of food and medicine covered in the now familiar Japanese Hiragana syllabary. Michael even bought a Japanese anti-fungal solution for his feet since it was much cheaper than the American name-brand products.

After wandering the store some more we finally left and eventually found a taxi to get back to the port. Once there, we went through two security checkpoints, one run by the port authorities and another one by the ship’s crew. In the past there have been problems with students trying to smuggle alcohol on board the ship which is strictly forbidden. I overheard two port authority officers talking about a student who was found trying to sneak two water-bottles filled with alcohol onto the ship. Little did I know, that was only the beginning of re-boarding problems. In a few short hours I would see what happens when several hundred drunken college students all decide to return to the ship dangerously close to the mandatory boarding time.

Michael and I returned to our cabin eager to play our ukuleles. After doing that for a bit we heard the growing roar of lots of people talking at once. It was close to 8 P.M. The Dean had made it very clear that anyone who was not on the ship by 9 P.M. would suffer the consequences of losing several hours of their time at the next port. He recommended that everyone should start returning to the ship at 7 P.M. Michael and I were on board by about 7:15 P.M. We both looked out our porthole window to see several hundred students lined up waiting to get on board. It was at least half of the 700-strong student body. More than a few people were going to be in trouble.

We ran up to the 7^th deck to take pictures of the growing crowd of students. As we did so we chatted with other students and faculty who, like us, came up to take picture and stare incredulously at the crowd below. We heard how a number of students were caught trying to sneak alcohol on board, in shampoo bottles taped to thighs and in zip-lock bags hidden around waists. Apparently the health clinic had extra staff on duty to cope with the kids who decided to drink far too much. I took some video footage of the drunken crowd that now stretched the length of the ship. They yelled foul words at the staff and other students boarding the ship. When it was announced that the boarding was taking so long due to people sneaking alcohol on board we saw lots of people quickly get rid of bottles and bags. At any moment it looked like a crowd of drunken people were about to stampede onto the gangway and into the ship. The foul energy in the air seemed like the beginning of the running of the bulls in Seville. It was an ugly sight.

Before embarking on Semester At Sea, I had the apparently very misguided idea that most of the other students on board the ship would, like me, want to travel around the world, meet new people and explore alien cultures. Witnessing that mess only added to the disgust I felt when we were first served alcohol last week. Seeing hundreds of kids crammed onto the very small 7^th deck drinking their allotted four cans of beer or glasses of wine as fast as possible made me convinced that I was growing up with a generation of future alcoholics. Seeing girls getting very drunk and strangely intimate with people they didn’t even know was very strange to me. I realized this was standard practice at many colleges but I’d never really witnessed it firsthand. I don’t go to any parties or clubs back home so I’m not used to this behavior, and I’m all the more glad for it. One of the “lifelong learners” (retired people who take part in the Semester At Sea program to travel the world and sit in on our classes) told Michael and I how one student had said that he didn’t know how he could possibly go nine days (from Hawai’i to Japan) without drinking. Thankfully the people I’ve become friends with on the ship so far are more like me.

Hawai’i was fun and I’d love to go back. It was a great place to experience on our way to Japan. At the same time I’m a bit ambivalent. We left as quickly as we came, with only a small taste of Hawai’i and our last chance to experience our familiar American culture. From here on out we will be foreigners, gaijin in Japanese, at the mercy of cultures entirely unfamiliar to us. Just as aloha means ‘hello’ in Hawaiian it also means ‘goodbye’; goodbye to America, goodbye to American English, and goodbye to the conveniences of our familiar lives at home, at least for a few months. As Honolulu slowly recedes the lights of houses climb up the mountains and appear to be hovering in nothingness. It’s a wonderful sight and I’m going to miss it. Only 9 days to Japan. Dewa mata (see you later)!