Japan

Ohio Gozaimasu!
It started with backpacks, a little money, knowing only where we wanted to go, no plans, and the spirit of adventure. We were finally in Japan. I have been so excited for this port since the beginning of the voyage and even though it pretty much signified the coming of the end of the voyage, I was still looking forward to it and was happy the minute we stepped off the ship.

I was concentrating my time in Kansai, the region in southern Japan. This is the heart of the Japanese culture and history, scattered with castles and pavilions and the occasional Geisha if you’re lucky enough to spot them. We arrived in the very middle of cherry blossom season, which was amazing considering the cherry blossom season only lasts for two weeks. Everywhere we walked, the beautiful pink and white blossoms guided us like signs and when the wind would blow, the blossoms would dance around in the air, surrounding you in a flurry of polka dots. It was some of the prettiest scenery I’ve ever seen. Japanese people are some of the nicest we’ve ever encountered too. They were so helpful and kind and they were really impressed with my poor and out of practice Japanese and that I took the time to use their language instead of just finding someone who spoke English. The only bad part about Japan was how expensive it is. We found pretty inexpensive lodging and our train tickets weren’t that much but it was the food that really got me. The food was delicious, although I was already Japan’s biggest food fan before even getting there.
So to begin this adventure, Sean and I took off for Nara as soon as the ship was cleared and we made it through customs, which actually took the better part of the day unfortunately. But we eventually hopped on our first train (after spending quite a bit of time figuring out the train station and the systems and the tickets) and sped towards Nara, which boasts 8 UNESCO World Heritage sites and is home to the famous deer park. We arrived in the late afternoon and went straight for the deer park where hundreds of wild deer roam and come up to you and let you pet them, all granting you feed them of course. I brought a mini-box of cereal for them and they loved it. I had a crowd of like 7 deer around me who bit at my hips whenever my hand wasn’t feeding them. It was funny actually because whenever I walked up to the deer they would let me pet them until they figured out I had no more food and then they’d walk away but they wouldn’t even let Sean get near them. We walked through the park a bit under the Sakura (cherry blossoms), enjoying the beauty and people. We walked next to Todaiji Temple, the biggest wooden building in the world. It is home to the famous daibutsu (Giant Buddha), one of the largest bronze figures in the world. It was really cool to see and incredible when you think of how large it was and how much bronze it took to make and how long ago it was done. At the back of the hall there is a wooden column with a hole at the bottom that is exactly the size of one of the Buddha’s nostrils. It is believed that whoever can fit through the hole is ensured of enlightenment. Let me tell you something, that hole is tiny. I didn’t think it was possible for any adult to actually fit through when I saw little kids fitting through with no extra room to spare. But Sean made it through somehow so I was determined. Ladies with hips: I don’t recommend it. I’ll admit that I got stuck in the middle when the lower half of my body tried to get through. But somehow, someway, I managed to wriggle myself through and I crawled out the other side to a crowd of people clapping and cheering. I am currently awaiting enlightenment.
We walked through the forest surrounding the park and Todaiji, which was breath-taking in the setting sun. Sakura still surrounded us and hundreds of lanterns line the path through shrines and statues and deer, over bridges and up ancient stairs. It was really something to experience. We came to Kasuga-Taishi, the most important shrine in Nara tucked way back into the forest. They have lantern festivals there twice a year and to see them all would be spectacular. We walked across the city to take a train to Osaka, found a hotel and went to eat on the busy, lit streets that apparently are Blade Runner atmospheric (I’ve never seen it so I can’t give a personal account).

The next morning we woke up to take a train to Kyoto and find our ryokan that we had booked for the night. This was our splurge, to stay in a traditional ryokan with tatami mats and futons on the floor. It was worth it too, this was the coolest place I’ve ever stayed! It was such a beautiful room with paper-walls covered in paintings and the boys had a connecting room with sliding doors to separate from my room. There were little features everywhere that made it so cool. So we dropped off our bags and walked back to the station to catch a train to this little mountain town Kurama. This turned out to be both of our favorite parts of the trip. This town was wonderful. It was situated around a beautiful river running through the center of town. It was all so peaceful and so un-touristy. The houses and architecture and gardens and Sakura enclosed by the hills and dark green trees of the mountains. It was perfect. We just walked through the town soaking up everything about it. I went for an Onsen, a traditional Japanese outdoor bath, which was an amazing experience. It was a beautiful, stone bath like the size of seven or eight hot tubs (and the temperature of them too) but only two feet deep with wood around the outside. To sit there, naked in the open looking out at the mountainside under the cherry blossoms that would float down into the bath was indescribable. It was heaven on earth and the most peaceful I have ever been. It was incredible, I want to be back there right now. After I was done soaking up the serenity, Sean and I went for an amazing bowl of kitsune soba and o-cha at a little shop on the corner of town. It was delicious! We hopped the train back to Kyoto and walked back to our ryokan for a nap. Jordan met us there that night and we went out to explore Kyoto by night. The central Kyoto area is so much fun at night. There is so much going on, so many good things to eat and great people watching. We went to an arcade, which is a big form of entertainment in Japan so this arcade was crazy! They also have the fun photo booths everywhere so we had fun with those too. Our ryokan had an 11pm curfew so we grabbed a few snacks and drinks and stayed up late talking and reveling in Japan.

The next morning, breakfast was served to us in the ryokan and we ate in the common room with all the other travelers. It was really nice to meet them all and talk to them about their experiences and trade tips. After getting all ready then, we packed up our stuff and stocked up on picnic food at the grocery store. We went to Heian-jinga for cherry blossom viewing. It’s a beautiful garden to walk through and we found a seat by the lake and ate our picnic under the Sakura. After that we went back to pick up our stuff at the Three Sister’s Inn (highly recommended by the way) and head to the other side of town to find a guesthouse. Took a while to get there and get situated. But we were ready for another night exploration of Kyoto. This time we went by the guidebook’s recommended walking tours to see parts of the city we otherwise wouldn’t have. It was really fun and we ended up in Pontocho, a really fun street off the Kamo-gawa, the canal that runs through town. Walking through Kyoto at night is a really neat experience and you must do so if you’re in Japan. We found another really good restaurant and ate for a while, had some heated discussions and headed out to karaoke, also a must-do in Japan. We got back to our guesthouse late that night and had a good long sleep.

We left the next morning with all our gear on our backs again and headed out for a full day of sight-seeing. We first stopped at Nijo-jo, a ninja castle with nightingale floors that squeek when walked upon as a means of defense against intruders. It was surrounded by beautiful gardens holding tea ceremonies that all the women came out dressed in their kimonos for. It was a really beautiful sight and really fun to walk through the castle, built in the 15th century.  Next we headed to Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion. This was incredible! It literally was a floating golden pavilion on a lake surrounded again by beautiful gardens. There is a walk through the grounds and at the end you come to this little street lined with vendors selling mochi and sweets and tea. It was so much fun! We got green tea and Sakura flavored ice-cream which was delicious! I was in heaven. Until we tried to go to the famous zen garden, Ryoan-ji, and it was closed. That just means I’ll have to go back to Japan in the near future! We headed out to Kiyomizu-dera, a huge temple with sacred springs and a love shrine. We got there as the sun was setting and it’s at the top of this huge hill looking out over all of Kyoto so the views were magnificent. Not to mention the incredible display of Sakura they have. It’s a beautiful walk through the temple and we drank from a sacred spring that has flown for thousands of years and is believed to improve test scores. It was really funny to watch all these moms drag their kids up there and practically throw the water down their throats. I have my fingers crossed they’re right. The love shrine was already closed when we got there though which I was really bummed about. Just another reason to head back there soon. We walked back through Kyoto at dusk for another great meal and a shinkansen, bullet train, to Tokyo. My ears were popping it went so fast but it was dark out so we didn’t get to see the country whizzing by. We got there around midnight and out grand plan was to find a place to sleep and walk around to experience Tokyo night-life. But we were so exhausted that we just walked around for about an hour and hopped a train back to Yokohama to sleep on the ship. I have never been so tired in my life.

The next day I explored Yokohama by myself, just walking around taking it all in. I loved all of Japan. And I really can’t wait to go back there soon. It was more than I thought it could be and I fell in love with all of it. Its really hard to imagine that I’m already done with this trip pretty much. It has been a long time and I’m exhausted and I can’t wait to get back home but at the same time I can’t imagine not living on a ship and circling the world. It is going to be very weird. Well I’m on the ship now for 8 more days before Hawaii and I’m so excited! That sounds so funny to be so excited for Hawaii when I’ve just been to all these exotic locations but my boyfriend is coming to meet me there and I can’t wait! A little taste of home is going to be much appreciated now.

Sayonara!

China

Nee-how!

We started off our whirlwind adventure in Hong Kong for a day and what a way to start a trip. Hong Kong blew my mind. I had no idea what it was like to start with but whatever I had imagined was nothing close to what the HK experience was. It was incredible. I’m seriously still in awe of that place. The Harbor is beautiful itself and coming into the city hit you like a ton of bricks. I saw Starbucks for the first time in months and almost cried. The Rugby Sevens was going on right when we were there which is a huge rugby tournament with teams from all over the world. I’m a big fan now by the way after being in South Africa. Let me just tell you that my fist sight after exiting the mall you have to walk through to get off the ship (yes mom, they forced me to walk through the mall several times to get on and off the ship. So really it wasn’t my fault;) were some players from the New Zealand All Blacks. I almost screamed, I think I let out a little squeak actually. We knew it was going to be a good trip. We took the Star Ferry across the pretty harbor lined with yachts and vessels to the main part of the island and drove across to the other side of the island. The drive was so beautiful through hills, next to the water. It reminded me of driving through the pretty streets of San Francisco in the really wealthy parts. We headed first to Stanley Market, which is a fun little windy market packed with good things to buy along the waterfront. We wandered through there for a while and then found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant for our first authentic Chinese meal. Delicious! And not as different from Chinese food at home as I thought it would be. So we ate there for a while, watching rugby on the television and enjoying our super-yummy food. We headed back to the mainland to explore the heart of Hong Kong. Tall buildings and flashing lights lined the streets and I was blown away by the sheer intensity of the atmosphere. It was awesome! We walked through super-modern architecture and malls and streets, got some traditional Chinese foot massages that put me in a good Zen for the rest of the day. After as much as we could take of this bustling center of the world (or so it seemed) we headed back to the ship for to pack up for our big trips the next day and grab some free food off the ship. At 8pm every night, Hong Kong puts on a lightshow in the harbor that you can watch from the ship. It was really neat, all the buildings have lights and screens and the harbor goes crazy. There’s music playing and lights going crazy in all these cool patterns. It was really cool that they do that. That night we headed out for a crazy Hong Kong night out on the town. The rugby teams were all out, there were tons of SASers, and lots of good times being had; a night to remember for sure.

The next morning we headed out bright and early for our big Tsinghua University visit to Beijing. We were really excited for this because a lot of SAS alum had rated this their favorite experience and I was really looking forward to everything on the itinerary. I was also with Michelle, Erin and Megan so we knew it was going to be a blast. The first day was spent mainly traveling. Our flight to Beijing was awesome though, a full meal plus a mini-container of Haagen-Dazs per person, doesn’t get better than that. We got into Beijing late in the afternoon and passed by the Bird’s Nest from the Olympics this summer. Very cool. We then headed to a restaurant for Peking duck (delicious) and went to our hotel. We were supposed to stay at the University but apparently their guesthouses were full so they put us up in this other hotel in the middle of nowhere, I mean in the absolute middle of nowhere. There was nothing to do anywhere and no one spoke English at the hotel and our guide peaced out as soon as we were checked in so we just kind of walked around stupidly looking for anything we could find, which was nothing. So that night ended with us watching Wild Hog in Chinese on our little TV that took us an hour to figure out how to work. O well, Erin was my roomie so I was happy. It’s a good thing we got sleep that night too cause we were going to need it the next day.

We woke up and headed out to the Great Wall. We were all so excited! I have definitely been looking forward to climbing it for a long time. So we started the climb. It shouldn’t be called the Great Wall, it should be called the Great Staircase. It was rough! Old Chinese people were passing us on all sides, they weren’t even out of breath while we were panting and huffing like mad. The funniest thing though were the old men who were passing us with cigarettes in their mouths, just smoking away. We kept going though, despite the humiliation that 80-year olds were showing us, taking photo shoot and dancing breaks every now and then and telling ourselves the view that made it worth it was just up around the next tower. However, once we actually got to the top, there was no wall. You know how when you see pictures of the Great Wall it’s winding through the mountains of Beijing and you can see it go on for what seems like forever? Well there was no wall. It just went back down the other side from where we were. We were heated! We had climbed all that way to see nothing basically! So we angrily huffed down the wall (we actually ran for most of it which seems absurd but made sense when we were doing it) and found our tour guide to ask her what that was that we just did. She said that it was the newly restored portion of the wall and that it was the closest to where we were coming from and she didn’t understand why we wanted to see what we were describing. It was incredibly frustrating. They took us to lunch afterwards inside a shopping center (which usually happens on guided tours: they take you somewhere you can spend your money and there’s usually commission for them involved) and plotted how we were going to remedy this situation. We went next to the Summer Palace to wander around the beautiful gardens and buildings. We walked through the Long Corridor and climbed the Tower of Buddhist Incense. It was really beautiful. Oh, let me explain something. Everywhere we went, people would come up and take pictures of us. There is no way I can explain this situation. It was mayhem. We were celebrities. If we just stopped somewhere, out of the way to sit and rest or something, entire tour groups would come and take pictures with us. I mean they would surround us with their cameras and then take turns jumping in with us. By the end of the trip we were running from them when they came at us with their cameras. As for me, a 6-foot tall white girl walking around China is quite a rare thing apparently. Wherever I went, people would stop and point and smile. It was very creepy. I’m definitely looking forward to returning to the states and not being able to see over the heads of the general population. So after our Summer Palace experience, we were to have our first University exposure. Our whole trip was entitled Beijing: Tsinghua University, and we were supposed to be spending most of our time with the students. We got to Tsinghua University, the most prestigious university in China I heard, and got matched up with some students. They thought there were only going to be 25 of us, but there were over a hundred so about ten of us went with each Chinese student. They gave us a tour of their campus (it was funny to feel like I was in high school again touring college campuses) and then we ate with them in one of the dining areas. And that was it. That was our entire University trip. We went back to our hotel that night and fell asleep fast.

Woke up bright and early for a big day in Beijing. It is cold in China too! I forgot to mention that, but we were freezing the whole time. Everyone had their big coats and hats and gloves and you could always see your breath. We went first to Tiananmen Square; actually we were run through it by the lady who was leading us so we didn’t really have a chance to appreciate it. I mean really it’s just a big square but I would have like a little time to just take it in. We were then let loose in the Forbidden City. Literally, we were let loose. They showed us the gate and told us to meet at the other side in two hours, and we had to give ourselves a tour and educate ourselves on what we were seeing. This would have been a nice place to have a guided tour because we really didn’t know what we were seeing. But we still managed to find our way around and read any English sign we could find, which aren’t as abundant you’d think. We saw the halls and offices and bedrooms of the Ming Dynasty. We had tea in the teahouse. We walked through the gorgeous gardens with statues and temples and shrines. It was really beautiful. After meeting the group at the other side of the city, we all went to the Temple of Heaven. Again, we were let loose to explore on our own. We walked on the Emperor’s walk, stood on the Heavenly Center Stone, and saw inside the Imperial Vault of Heaven. Being done with this cultural site, we met our group at the East gate and walked out through the park outside the Temple. Walking through the park we started to hear music and saw a huge gathering of people ahead of us. The closer we got, we saw that they were dancing! Just people, of all ages, dancing to music in the park. It was really cool. Then they took us to the famous Pearl Market and let us loose for a few hours. It was really fun to look around at all the pearls. There was one store that had pictures all over the walls of famous people buying pearls from there including Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Bush, and tons of other prominent people. It was really cool and I got some good stuff. That night was another night of early sleeping cause with all our planning and scheming we had managed to get out tour guide to arrange a car at 5 am the next morning to take me, Michelle, Erin, and Megan back to another part of the Great Wall so that we could see what we wanted to see. This was our trip and we weren’t going to settle for anything less than what we deserved.

On the drive the next morning, we were tired and still sore from our first Great Wall climb but we were ready to get it done our way. We drove ten minutes past where we went the first day, which made us pretty frustrating. But we got out of the car, in the biting cold air and headed toward the wall entrance. We were the first people on the wall that day, right after sunrise. It was incredible. That was a magical morning. We climbed again to the top (a little longer of a hike), looking out at the snaking wall winding through the hills and mountains on the Chinese mountainside in the brisk morning dew. It really was amazing and now we're the only people from SAS to say that we climbed the Great Wall, twice! We saw a group of Chinese senior citizens coming up at the bottom though and knew we had to hurry. Sure enough, they were right on our tails about a half hour later. We still beat them to the top though because Megan and I broke out into a run as soon as they took over Erin and Michelle. The views were spectacular, totally worth all our planning and frustration and money we spent to get to this spot. In order to save time, we took a mini-car down the wall to the bottom. That whole morning was spectacular. We headed back in the car to meet the rest of our group at the Shanghai Zoo to see the giant pandas. They were super cute but all of them were passed out so I didn’t get to see any of them playing☹ Next we headed to the sight of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and got to go into the Birds Nest and the Water Cube. That was really cool to see. My friends and I had our own mini-Olympics on the field in the Birds Nest, super fun! We next went to the airport and caught our flight back to Shanghai.

Sleeping in the next morning was a must. It was a low-key day, we were incredibly tired and just spent the day walking around Shanghai, hitting up the markets and streets to explore. We took off from the port among the beautiful lights of the buildings on the shore. It was almost as cool as Hong Kong. So we had a really good time in China because we made it so but our trip was not what it was supposed to be. I don’t know if I’d head back to China, definitely not among one of my faves but still a good experience.

Peace and Love all,

al