So now we get to the actual fun part.
Standing alone in the station, all i wanted to do was to call Lizzy, but i had no change, so i bought a ridiculous JR board book for my dad at a newsstand. and then i went through, found my platform...it’s AMAZING. there are a million trains, a million platforms, a million people, and everything - even the location of each individual car - is well marked. a friendly fellow assured me that i was in the right place, and then pointed me to the wrong seat (i was in car 1, seat 1D. i guess i was the last person to whom they sold a ticket on that train!). i was sitting next to a nice, quiet guy from Tokyo going to Sendai on business.
OH MY GOD. Japan is just functional rail system HEAVEN (discount the horrible website - though to be fair, it may well be better in Japanese than it is in English). Lookie here, US - you have things to learn. you can just get on a train that will leave on time and take you less time than it does to make a quiche to get to the other side of the country. it’s unbelievable. what’s also unbelievable is how long it takes to get out of Tokyo, and then greater Tokyo, and then greater greater Tokyo, and then suburban greater greater Tokyo - but after Sendai, it gets a bit more rural. everything went perfectly smoothly - except i got of the train, and there was no one there! i waited and waited, scared that the stationmaster guy was gonna call the police, this random Western girl loitering in a train station in the Japanese boonies at 9:30 at night - but then Lizzy finally came!!! (she got a little lost! it was ok.) it was SO good to see her. we drove and wound all around back to her town of Karumai. Karumai is totally in the middle of nowhere, but what’s really interesting about it is that, once you’re “downtown”, it feels like a Japanese city - it’s really built up, things are close together, and there are all kinds of random shops - and then as soon as you get out of town, you’re in mountains, or rice patties, or both. it’s amazing. Lizzy lives in a cute little duplex, traditional two-story apartment with tatami mats and paper-pane windows and with the whole bathroom being the shower with the tub just for rinsing, and all of that separate from the toilet. it’s really interesting. we fell asleep on our futon with Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell me in the background :-)
in Karumai, they made town announcements - first there’s a little musical jingle at 6 AM, and then a “good morning! today is...etc. etc., drive safely!” (there’s a shitton more in there cause they say a lot, but i had no idea what it was) at 7:30. what a country. i spent most of friday trying to make myself sleep in, and then spent a LOOONG time abusing Lizzy’s free internet. i called my parents and read and responded to loads of emails, and really honestly didn’t do much else till Lizzy came home and took a nap, and then after that we drove to Achinohe! it was such a nice drive - SOOOO green and forested, with rice patties and other little farms tucked on hillsides. not so quaint is the driving-a-million-miles on the windy (other side!) of the roads. there are those funny little Asian trucks that look like the pugs of the truck world from the farm that you have to be careful of because only little old people drive them. also we passed a sculpture of a spirit revered for his giant magical testicles.
our first adventure involved a complicated parking lot and a lot of very heated Japanese. we went to the train station to purchase my return tickets, which ended up being significantly easier than i thought it would be, which was incredibly exciting. then we journeyed from what seemed like the major part of town where the train station was through a weird industrial area to another very main part of town, where there was a main street and a big department store and even an odd fancy hotel with a flashy glass elevator. we were going to eat in the department store thing, but it turned out there wasn’t food there (except for the third-floor movie theater’s popcorn and an italian restaurant) but there WAS a whole darn FLOOR of those famous Japanese photo booths, so of course we had to do one. you pick a theme, and then pick your backgrounds, take the pictures, decorate them, and decide a layout for them - all with a time limit and Japanese being squeaked at you. it was fabulous.
for dinner i FINALLY got my udon! it made my whole trip to Japan worth it - it came with a big raw egg cracked in the middle, and you stir it really fast and the hot noodles cook the egg. brilliant. then we went to the hundred-yen store (shinkansen chopsticks! YES!) and last but not least to the Lizzy’s natural habitat - a coffee shop :-) i had a rice-flour cake and DELICIOUS hot chocolate, and we had coffee-shop conversation. (poor Lizzy, i hadn’t talked to non-ship people for so long that i all i could do was regurgitate ship experiences.) and then we went home and ate rice crackers and Lizzy introduced me to West Wing (i finally understand it! Yay!). and then we went to bed. or, futon.
SATURDAY was AMAZING. we slept in, watched some more West Wing, ate some more rice crackers, and went for a walk around Karumai to see everybody getting ready for the festival! kids everywhere getting their faces painted for taiko, all manner of people in kimonos and happi-coats, and lanterns hanging everywhere. we went to the grocery store and bought lots of Japanese chocolates. there were lots of street vendors for the festival, but it’s also kind of incredibly how many little hole-in-the-wall stores there are in Karumai considering how small it is. we went into a little “diner” for lunch (miso ramen! what an experience). it was one of those great places that you can choose to sit on the floor if you want, and there was one family with two little kids who had sprawled out around and under the table - very homey.
then it was time for Lizzy to get ready for the parade - and i was in for a great surprise! they let me be in it!!!! Lizzy and i went across to the street to her friends’ really lovely traditional home and they got Lizzy all ready in her yukata (summer kimono) and got to wear a sort of Japanese overcoat that’s the neighborhood’s festival uniform. and then we walked down the street to the GIANT elaborate float with big spirits all over it, and there were all manner of kids and families getting ready, and we stood until we all took lots of pictures and then everybody grabbed the enormous ropes (lines, as we ship-people say, and they really were like lines) and we pulled this float. there were a bunch of kids at the front playing a taiko beat on little drums, and then two high-schoolers behind them on the big drums, with other high school boys and girls playing wooden flutes. there were younger kids at the front with sticks with bells on them that they banged on the ground. and Lizzy was up at the very front with the the neighborhood flag. we pulled the giant float up a hill, past the town Shinto shrine, parked it for a while, had some tea in a can, talked to a nice lady named Sako (maybe? or was he the guy in Yokohama?!) and then went back down the hill, following other floats. i walked up front with Lizzy as we wound into down, down the two main streets, and back out the other side in a very slow, very rhythmic progression, all with these giant and complex floats. some of her students recognized Lizzy and waved, and we politely bowed to all kinds of people, especially all the old people (there were LOTS of old people. and another, mysterious Westerner who sort of glared at us.) it seemed like the whole town was in the parade with their different neighborhood floats, so i couldn’t even imagine who’d watch it, but the crowd was HUGE! and there were microphones, and one of the older guys would yell, like PULL! and then everyone would yell back, especially the little kids, and so it went, all the way up another hill, past the Buddhist shrine and to the place where they offered us more tea in a can and also, beer. and then we went back the other way - and they let me carry the flag!!! how funny. we had a good conversation about how to say stop and slow down and wait in English and Japanese. going down, we saw a lion dance happening at the temple, little boys wearing plastic horses doing horse dancing, other very dressed-up kids with small taiko and flute choirs to match fan dancing and some other kind of rhythmic dancing (they had giant metallic hats and straw shing-guard-y things). it was unbelievable. by the time we’d parked the float, they were still playing on and we’d been our feet for almost 6 hours, Lizzy in very uncomfortable shoes. we had a nice conversation with an adult student of LIzzy’s who spoke great English, and then we went home, returned the clothes/were taught to refold yukata, were given lots of food, and then ventured back out to the (almost) store-front home of “the family who feeds me”, as Lizzy calls them. we walked around with this very sweet girl, Chika (one of Lizzy’s students) and an ambiguously-gendered young friend of hers. they took us to the little field where all sorts of vendors had set up shop, like at a fairground. you could fish for tiny pet turtles, play a weird game, buy pot-theme jewelry, or do what we did, which is to buy a chocolate-covered banana. we ran into lots of people Lizzy knew, including a boy who kept giving high-fives and a nice woman who had lived in Australia for awhile. and through all of this all the little kids were still running around all dressed up, and it was neat.
we joined Chika’s awesome mother and little old stooped grandma and her mom’s best friend’s son, Kai, around their family table (on the floor in the main room). there was SO much food - edamame, rice, rice wrapped in seaweed, tofu on a stick, sweet bread homamade by Chika’s friend’s mom, miso, weird Japanese milk (and she was worried that she hadn’t prepared for a vegetarian!!) and also they bought LIzzy sushi. phew. after the meal, and a really endearing tour of their little kitchen, filled with Chika’s old school things and drawings (there was a great, very neatly written letter that Chika had written to her grandma saying, “i hope you feel better grandma, i love you, and i hope that your pee and poop are normal.”) after that we played memory, which happens to be one of Kai’s favorite games and was perfect because we would say the English word and they would say the Japanese. we all got really involved, and it was such a blast.
Then we really had to go home (considering it takes half an hour to leave a Japanese household because you have to do so much thanking, and you have to put your shoes back on). we of course watched more West Wing, and pigged out on all our chocolates and sweet rice crackers - the perfect thing after our ginourmous dinner. it was really comfortable and lovely, and just SO good to spend time with Lizzy.
the next morning heavy rains along with the usual announcements woke me up, and then what had to be like the town’s typhoon warning or something went off, immediately proceeded by ambulances shrieking around town, and i was like “ahhh! Lizzy! wake up!! we’re all going to die!” and LIzzy was like, “no, no, Fumiko warned me about this, it’s just for the festival; go back to sleep!” wailing ambulances around town for 20 minutes on a sunday sure seems weird to me, but hey, trump it up to cultural differences. then i heard a marching band. i guess that’s not so much cultural differences.
and then i had to go :-( the drive to Ninohe was wet but beautiful, and LIzzy didn’t even get lost one little bit, and i got on the train just fine. (hehe on my first train i was in car 3, seat 7A, and on the second train i was in car 7, seat 3A!) it was cool to see everything in daylight - it actually seemed less built-up than it had at night. the mountains were SOO pretty, and so funny shaped! coming out of Tokyo we were along the water for a little while, and i was like “damn ocean, i ALMOST forgot about you...” there were a bunch of dinosaur sculptures, and also pretty red torii gates in the water in same places. it’s remarkable how similar Japanese towns seem to be, even when they’re far apart, but all of the cities we went through seemed really different - Yokohama, Kyoto, Osaka, and a bunch of little ones that no one’s ever heard of. the ride was FAST and really great (although no one wanted to sit next to me. hmm), and of course i didn’t want to get off in shin-Kobe! but i did. and then i got lost, and i was too scared to ask for directions, so i ended up walking, in the rain, in what seemed to be the general direction of the port. so i got to see downtown Kobe, and the beautiful Rokko Mountains behind it, but i got very wet. and there was a stupid freeway in my way. but some intelligent person had built this great network of sidewalks, and then the Explorer appeared. it was hard to get back on, i can’t lie (though logistically much easier! no alcoholic crazies or long lines. and it really was good to see everybody. i missed people on my trip, i really did. hardest was saying goodbye to Aki and Megumi, our Japanese inter-port students. they waved and waved, and we set off for China.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Japan Part I: Tokyo Rising
Seeing as i never wrote about what happened AFTER they actually cleared the ship in Japan, i thought i should do that.
But then i realized some of the stories i never told.
the really special one was about how i got two birthdays - i wrote about birthday number 1, the GIANT ice cream cake from Mike, Lindsay, Benjamin, Deeanna, Carrie, Josh (JOSH?! he’s the yearbook guy, and i still can’t believe he was in on it. he loves to make fun of me) etc. But then the NEXT day Nancy and Jim, who are pretty much my parents by now, got me a cake that was supposed to be for our special lunch, but they accidently ordered for dinner, and they gave me a fantastic birthday present - not only was it wrapped in a beautifully folded and stitched map, but it had two things - one for buoyancy and one for well-being. the buoyancy one was an SAS rubber duckie, and the well-being one was a bunch of saltines. it was awesome. and then Kristin and Nikki and Brian and company dragged me along on their bridge tour, which was SO fun. we got to try on the captain’s hat and use the binoculars and everything and we saw DOLPHINS! and got to go out on the flying bridge, but my favorite part was learning about all our flags - i think i talked about that already. anyway, our tour guide was the great Bulgarian second-in-command. i couldn’t really understand him, but he was sure exciting.
anyway, after lots of not-so-secretive secretiveness, THEY got me a cake too. so we ate that, and then i went and fetched the Frankel children (Jake, 7 (i think), Sarah, 4, and Ellie, 2) and they helped me finish off Nancy and Jim’s cake (plus there was chocolate mousse for dessert - let’s not even GO there). for awhile after that Ellie just called me Cake. really, i think that’s why she likes me. i like her because she actually is one of the most adorable things that happened to the world.
ANYWAY - i’m trying to think of other misc. things that i may not have mentioned from the long Hawaii-Japan crossing - Doc Nancy gave a GREAT talk about her hard-core work for the National Park Service. i also think that i forgot to mention the fantastically bumpy night we had two nights before port. nobody died.
BUT THEN WE GOT TO JAPAN! and then we waited and waited and waited, as previously mentioned, and then at some point they cleared the ship and we waited and waited some more to clear customs, and then we finally poked our anxious little heads into the real world. i was on a tour of Yokohama and Tokyo, so we got on a bus. Benjamin was even a gentleman and let me have the window even though he was there first (that only lasted the afternoon though :-P ). we had a really nice guide name Yuki (i think?). our first stop was at these BEAUTIFUL gardens that were sort of in the middle of a neighborhood and some important guy’s property, and we didn’t even realize how nice it was to see GREENERY after all of that ocean!!! and to be able to walk for 500 feet without having to turn around or tackle a staircase. and we also got a free tour from an old tour guide named Sako who was very funny and little and cute. i climbed up the this pagoda and then we all had to SPRINT back to get to the bus on time! also, it turns out that Japanese tourists in Japan are almost the same as Japanese tourists not in Japan.
our next stop was Harborview Park, where we stood and looked at the neat skyline all around the bay, which is pretty cool, and marveled at how tiny the poor little Explorer looked from up there, and we also went to a cemetery for dead foreigners. all of this was on a high point in town where the streets were kind of excitingly narrow. our last stop in Yokohama was across town in the real CBD of the city, which was remarkably more Western-feeling than the rest of it was. we took a super-fast elevator to the 69th story of the tallest building in Japan and a wonderful view - from Mt. Fuji on one side to Tokyo on other back to our now even tinier-seeming ship on another. and then we went back down and through a fancy shopping mall and back to the bus, and then we went to Tokyo. the drive was actually really interesting for a couple of reasons. one is how INCREDIBLY built up it is. i mean, i thought that the Corridor was bad, but that’s nothing on this. the highway (not freeway cause it costs like a million bucks to use) is like a roofless, winding artery snaking through this crazy environment. also because we were along the river for a little ways, and there are these boat wards down on the water. and also because the sun was setting gorgeously and you could see Mt. Fuji in the background.
we checked into our rather fancy hotel and then Deeanna, Carrie, Ben and i went searching for dinner. we walked up and block and back along the block and back up and and back along it and FINALLY ended up at this weird “beer and restaurant” that was kinda smokey and gross and i was already pretty out of it and tired because i’d been up since 5 (0500) so i gobbled up some fried rice and stared into space for awhile, and then Ben started asking Carrie and Deeanna if they “had anybody at home”, but he never asked me, which for some reason struck me as kind of odd. we wandered for a little while after that. i drifted around, like i do sometimes...and then Deeanna and Carrie went back up and Benjamin and i walked the other direction. and we were real quiet for awhile - sometimes that really weird, but it wasn’t, really - and we talked a little bit too, and explored a little residential side street (it’s funny because i guess zoning is different; residential areas are right next to business areas). it was nice. then i went back to room, lay down, and feel asleep.
the next morning the girl who was supposed to be my roommate comes BURSTING in, wearing the going-out clothes she’d been wearing all night, in total hysteria because she’d just found out that one of her best friends from home and had died, and i got really nervous and gave her a hug and ran away to breakfast - rice and croissants, what a buffet. and then we all loaded up the bus but we were missing one, so there was an ordeal of trying to locate her, and then being unsuccessful, and then leaving really late. which was ok. and eventually she turned up at the ship.
our first stop was the Tokyo observatory, which was actually amazing way to see the city, to see the way it grew organically and endlessly and all over the place. Carrie and i and a few others took the wrong elevator and ended up in the wrong spot so we ran a BIG circles around the whole building and made the whole bus even later.
the next stop was Meiji Shinto Shrine, which is near this really fancy shopping street that kind of reminded me of a giant Nantucket, for some reason. the shrine itself is, of course, beautiful; we all even observed the purification rituals like good tourists.
to my best recollection, our next stop was the Imperial Palace outer garden, which is basically a park by two of the bridges over the moat. somewhere in that a bunch of people from our group got a bunch of schoolboys to take pictures with them - it seemed kind of odd. i think that Americans have a weird school uniform fetish, but that’s just my opinion.
then we went to lunch! aka, endless amounts of tiny-portioned food that quickly added up to making you very full. i, the one vegetarian, had two little salads, one little thing with and individually cooked potato, sweet potato and okra, rice, miso, some sort of eggplant thing, and assorted sauces.
after lunch we went to this major pedestrian old-fashioned kind of shopping area that reminded me REMARKABLY of an Middle Eastern souk. i walked around with a new friend from Toronto, Eva, and she even patiently helped me pick out a Japan pin. the street ended at a big temple that had beautiful paintings on the ceiling, and you could even get a fortune - if your fortune is good, you keep it, if it isn’t, you tear it into strips and tie it to a wire rack, and the monks come along and burn them.
our last stop was at Akihabara, ElectricTown. This kid Jeff and i decided to break of there to go to the train station. Jeff, it turns out, is one of those people who thinks he knows more than he does, and we proceeded to get incredibly lost in the train system. the thing that cracks me up about the Tokyo system is that the fare is also like the station number, and it’s the only recognizable thing on the map to a foreigner. and of course Jeff thought that we were going to be pushed onto the train, as tokyo is famous for that, but did not.
we did, however, get very lost in Tokyo main station. and stood in a lot of wrong lines, some of them multiple times. the real low point, though, was when Jeff asked the poor ticket lady (who didn’t speak English) for three sets of tickets. and then one of them wasn’t the right time, so he straightened that out but then the train that he wanted to get on was full, so he was like, oh never mind, so she took the tickets away, and then he was like, oh but i can i keep those just in case? and she looked SOOO confused. and then i said, me. Ninohe, Now. and she looked relieved, and sold me a ticket, an then it was pretty much over between me and Jeff, or, The Most Annoying Boy in the World.
and then i was alone in Tokyo main station. alll alone.
continued in part II!
But then i realized some of the stories i never told.
the really special one was about how i got two birthdays - i wrote about birthday number 1, the GIANT ice cream cake from Mike, Lindsay, Benjamin, Deeanna, Carrie, Josh (JOSH?! he’s the yearbook guy, and i still can’t believe he was in on it. he loves to make fun of me) etc. But then the NEXT day Nancy and Jim, who are pretty much my parents by now, got me a cake that was supposed to be for our special lunch, but they accidently ordered for dinner, and they gave me a fantastic birthday present - not only was it wrapped in a beautifully folded and stitched map, but it had two things - one for buoyancy and one for well-being. the buoyancy one was an SAS rubber duckie, and the well-being one was a bunch of saltines. it was awesome. and then Kristin and Nikki and Brian and company dragged me along on their bridge tour, which was SO fun. we got to try on the captain’s hat and use the binoculars and everything and we saw DOLPHINS! and got to go out on the flying bridge, but my favorite part was learning about all our flags - i think i talked about that already. anyway, our tour guide was the great Bulgarian second-in-command. i couldn’t really understand him, but he was sure exciting.
anyway, after lots of not-so-secretive secretiveness, THEY got me a cake too. so we ate that, and then i went and fetched the Frankel children (Jake, 7 (i think), Sarah, 4, and Ellie, 2) and they helped me finish off Nancy and Jim’s cake (plus there was chocolate mousse for dessert - let’s not even GO there). for awhile after that Ellie just called me Cake. really, i think that’s why she likes me. i like her because she actually is one of the most adorable things that happened to the world.
ANYWAY - i’m trying to think of other misc. things that i may not have mentioned from the long Hawaii-Japan crossing - Doc Nancy gave a GREAT talk about her hard-core work for the National Park Service. i also think that i forgot to mention the fantastically bumpy night we had two nights before port. nobody died.
BUT THEN WE GOT TO JAPAN! and then we waited and waited and waited, as previously mentioned, and then at some point they cleared the ship and we waited and waited some more to clear customs, and then we finally poked our anxious little heads into the real world. i was on a tour of Yokohama and Tokyo, so we got on a bus. Benjamin was even a gentleman and let me have the window even though he was there first (that only lasted the afternoon though :-P ). we had a really nice guide name Yuki (i think?). our first stop was at these BEAUTIFUL gardens that were sort of in the middle of a neighborhood and some important guy’s property, and we didn’t even realize how nice it was to see GREENERY after all of that ocean!!! and to be able to walk for 500 feet without having to turn around or tackle a staircase. and we also got a free tour from an old tour guide named Sako who was very funny and little and cute. i climbed up the this pagoda and then we all had to SPRINT back to get to the bus on time! also, it turns out that Japanese tourists in Japan are almost the same as Japanese tourists not in Japan.
our next stop was Harborview Park, where we stood and looked at the neat skyline all around the bay, which is pretty cool, and marveled at how tiny the poor little Explorer looked from up there, and we also went to a cemetery for dead foreigners. all of this was on a high point in town where the streets were kind of excitingly narrow. our last stop in Yokohama was across town in the real CBD of the city, which was remarkably more Western-feeling than the rest of it was. we took a super-fast elevator to the 69th story of the tallest building in Japan and a wonderful view - from Mt. Fuji on one side to Tokyo on other back to our now even tinier-seeming ship on another. and then we went back down and through a fancy shopping mall and back to the bus, and then we went to Tokyo. the drive was actually really interesting for a couple of reasons. one is how INCREDIBLY built up it is. i mean, i thought that the Corridor was bad, but that’s nothing on this. the highway (not freeway cause it costs like a million bucks to use) is like a roofless, winding artery snaking through this crazy environment. also because we were along the river for a little ways, and there are these boat wards down on the water. and also because the sun was setting gorgeously and you could see Mt. Fuji in the background.
we checked into our rather fancy hotel and then Deeanna, Carrie, Ben and i went searching for dinner. we walked up and block and back along the block and back up and and back along it and FINALLY ended up at this weird “beer and restaurant” that was kinda smokey and gross and i was already pretty out of it and tired because i’d been up since 5 (0500) so i gobbled up some fried rice and stared into space for awhile, and then Ben started asking Carrie and Deeanna if they “had anybody at home”, but he never asked me, which for some reason struck me as kind of odd. we wandered for a little while after that. i drifted around, like i do sometimes...and then Deeanna and Carrie went back up and Benjamin and i walked the other direction. and we were real quiet for awhile - sometimes that really weird, but it wasn’t, really - and we talked a little bit too, and explored a little residential side street (it’s funny because i guess zoning is different; residential areas are right next to business areas). it was nice. then i went back to room, lay down, and feel asleep.
the next morning the girl who was supposed to be my roommate comes BURSTING in, wearing the going-out clothes she’d been wearing all night, in total hysteria because she’d just found out that one of her best friends from home and had died, and i got really nervous and gave her a hug and ran away to breakfast - rice and croissants, what a buffet. and then we all loaded up the bus but we were missing one, so there was an ordeal of trying to locate her, and then being unsuccessful, and then leaving really late. which was ok. and eventually she turned up at the ship.
our first stop was the Tokyo observatory, which was actually amazing way to see the city, to see the way it grew organically and endlessly and all over the place. Carrie and i and a few others took the wrong elevator and ended up in the wrong spot so we ran a BIG circles around the whole building and made the whole bus even later.
the next stop was Meiji Shinto Shrine, which is near this really fancy shopping street that kind of reminded me of a giant Nantucket, for some reason. the shrine itself is, of course, beautiful; we all even observed the purification rituals like good tourists.
to my best recollection, our next stop was the Imperial Palace outer garden, which is basically a park by two of the bridges over the moat. somewhere in that a bunch of people from our group got a bunch of schoolboys to take pictures with them - it seemed kind of odd. i think that Americans have a weird school uniform fetish, but that’s just my opinion.
then we went to lunch! aka, endless amounts of tiny-portioned food that quickly added up to making you very full. i, the one vegetarian, had two little salads, one little thing with and individually cooked potato, sweet potato and okra, rice, miso, some sort of eggplant thing, and assorted sauces.
after lunch we went to this major pedestrian old-fashioned kind of shopping area that reminded me REMARKABLY of an Middle Eastern souk. i walked around with a new friend from Toronto, Eva, and she even patiently helped me pick out a Japan pin. the street ended at a big temple that had beautiful paintings on the ceiling, and you could even get a fortune - if your fortune is good, you keep it, if it isn’t, you tear it into strips and tie it to a wire rack, and the monks come along and burn them.
our last stop was at Akihabara, ElectricTown. This kid Jeff and i decided to break of there to go to the train station. Jeff, it turns out, is one of those people who thinks he knows more than he does, and we proceeded to get incredibly lost in the train system. the thing that cracks me up about the Tokyo system is that the fare is also like the station number, and it’s the only recognizable thing on the map to a foreigner. and of course Jeff thought that we were going to be pushed onto the train, as tokyo is famous for that, but did not.
we did, however, get very lost in Tokyo main station. and stood in a lot of wrong lines, some of them multiple times. the real low point, though, was when Jeff asked the poor ticket lady (who didn’t speak English) for three sets of tickets. and then one of them wasn’t the right time, so he straightened that out but then the train that he wanted to get on was full, so he was like, oh never mind, so she took the tickets away, and then he was like, oh but i can i keep those just in case? and she looked SOOO confused. and then i said, me. Ninohe, Now. and she looked relieved, and sold me a ticket, an then it was pretty much over between me and Jeff, or, The Most Annoying Boy in the World.
and then i was alone in Tokyo main station. alll alone.
continued in part II!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Wet Arrival
Guess what?! We made it to Yokohama!
Guess what’s outside my window?! LAND!!!!!! as in, solid. as in, not moving. as in, halfway around the world from everything i’ve ever known. i mean, the ocean looks pretty much the same everywhere, so we didn’t notice. but the local alphabet does NOT.
i was so excited that it was hard to sleep last night - we’ve all been tired though because yesterday was our first big Global Studies test (meaning all 650 of us have to take it, some of us on dinner trays in the student union...and as i said in an email, the student union is the farthest thing forward short of the bridge on the 6th of 7 decks. think about the physics of that, and you’ll realize why two bathroom stalls just ain’t enough.) anyway, of course the night before when we were all trying to study we hit the remnants of a typhoon that’s been in the area, and the seas were the roughest they’ve been - the pool on the seventh deck was having tsunami issues, and the water was all over the deck (i guess we slowed down to miss the worst of it but then we had to speed up and go like 20 knots for a couple days, which is booking it). needless to say, we’ve all needed some good sleep. but yet i managed to wake myself up at 5 - it looked out my window like they were swabbing the upstairs decks, but in fact, it was just raining that hard. i pulled on all the waterproof-ish things i owned and headed up to the deck, but everybody coming down said that it was just too wet and cloudy. we tried 7 aft but there were about three feet of standing water! FINALLY my friend Bo and i found dry spots out on the lifeboat decks, and we watched, or at least heard, this major thunderstorm roll in, cross over us, and keep going, and just kept raining and raining and raining! in the foggy, murky distance we passed other ships, and you could see more as it got lighter, and then, at last, land! Tokyo Bay is humungous, so all we were really seeing was these distant rocky islets, and it was still hours to go, but we kept seeing more and more ships. i finally made it out to 7 forward where Cole (he’s famous as being the outspoken Ian Kennedy of this voyage, and slightly less annoying) and i were the only ones braving the wet for awhile (everyone else stared at us, warm and dry in the faculty/staff lounge). more and more people joined us and eventually we made it all the way into the bay, with city and industry and all kinds of trawlers and container ships and barges and pushers ALL around! it was SO cool! i saw the pilot hop on and then we raised our Japanese and under pilot sailing and quarantine flags (which we now all understand from our bridge tour! also we saw dolphins on our bridge tour! - did i ever mention that? but learning about the flags was my favorite). we wound in and under a GIANT new suspension bridge and then turned the whole freakin thing around and backed into the fancy fancy new terminal that has landscaping on top and all manner of people waving and shouting and music (including somewhere over the rainbow(?)) being pumped in (one guy shouted “Konnichi wa! Hello! buenos dias!”) and a big welcome to Yokohama sign, and Cole and I were all out with the crew, mostly the cooks, and they were all just as excited as we were. it was awesome.
after we pulled up some people came on board and there was a ceremony in which Capt. Jeremy got a plaque (this is Explorer’s first time Yokohama!!!!!) and a pretty piece of art and lots of people took pictures, and two girls in kimono presented us all with flowers and then a group did a Lion Dance, all drums and flutes and even the one guy who did fancy fancy moves with the drumstick in one hand while he drummed with the other. it was great. afterwards they let us, and some of our little kids, play them. it was sweet.
now we wait. to be cleared.
while we’re waiting, what else had happened lately? last night there was a talent show! that was fun. Except for an act that Jade and another kid were in that kind of made us all want to die. Jade looked like a muppet, and that’s all i have to say about that. there was some more TC and Aldrianna hula-ing (separately, and awesome as usual). And lots of other singing. two guys did show tunes one right after the other. and some other guys sang way off-key backup for Judy, who always sings right before port (her partner is the one known as Sparkles, who runs the field office. they’re both wonderfully buxom older women and make a lovely couple, really). it was great. i was sitting next to to Jeff and he always makes me laugh, or i make him laugh, and that’s fun. he and Nikki, btubs - TOTALLY hooking. up. hmm. i guess you guys wouldn’t really care about that.
also last night Doc Nancy the bio prof got out her super-duper will-blind-airline-pilots laser and pointed at some starts. also last night the whole ship smelled like fish, aka, downtown Boston. made me kinda homesick. and i’m sad that Japan means that our Japanese interport students, Aki and Megumi, are leaving :-( i like them.
also my roommate is the only other person i know besides me who consistently falls asleep with the TV on. interesting. when we got close to Japan on our little chart, the ship didn’t fit, so for awhile it looked like we were crashing into it.
UMMMM everybody just wants to get off the ship but for me it’s ok waiting. i’m just happy to see land and a gangway, which, oddly and excitingly enough, is on deck 5 instead of two, and looks almost like a jetway. this is a very fancy terminal indeed.
i really hope that i don’t offend anyone here by the fact that right now i smell like wet dog. but mostly, so does everybody else.
sometimes i get lonesome. i know i have lots of friends on the ship, but i’m not really a central part of anybody’s anything; it’s not like people ever come looking for me or anything, i’m just an added extraneous bonus sometimes, or a hinderance others. why does life feel like that sometimes?
anyway. back to blow-drying my pants.
Guess what’s outside my window?! LAND!!!!!! as in, solid. as in, not moving. as in, halfway around the world from everything i’ve ever known. i mean, the ocean looks pretty much the same everywhere, so we didn’t notice. but the local alphabet does NOT.
i was so excited that it was hard to sleep last night - we’ve all been tired though because yesterday was our first big Global Studies test (meaning all 650 of us have to take it, some of us on dinner trays in the student union...and as i said in an email, the student union is the farthest thing forward short of the bridge on the 6th of 7 decks. think about the physics of that, and you’ll realize why two bathroom stalls just ain’t enough.) anyway, of course the night before when we were all trying to study we hit the remnants of a typhoon that’s been in the area, and the seas were the roughest they’ve been - the pool on the seventh deck was having tsunami issues, and the water was all over the deck (i guess we slowed down to miss the worst of it but then we had to speed up and go like 20 knots for a couple days, which is booking it). needless to say, we’ve all needed some good sleep. but yet i managed to wake myself up at 5 - it looked out my window like they were swabbing the upstairs decks, but in fact, it was just raining that hard. i pulled on all the waterproof-ish things i owned and headed up to the deck, but everybody coming down said that it was just too wet and cloudy. we tried 7 aft but there were about three feet of standing water! FINALLY my friend Bo and i found dry spots out on the lifeboat decks, and we watched, or at least heard, this major thunderstorm roll in, cross over us, and keep going, and just kept raining and raining and raining! in the foggy, murky distance we passed other ships, and you could see more as it got lighter, and then, at last, land! Tokyo Bay is humungous, so all we were really seeing was these distant rocky islets, and it was still hours to go, but we kept seeing more and more ships. i finally made it out to 7 forward where Cole (he’s famous as being the outspoken Ian Kennedy of this voyage, and slightly less annoying) and i were the only ones braving the wet for awhile (everyone else stared at us, warm and dry in the faculty/staff lounge). more and more people joined us and eventually we made it all the way into the bay, with city and industry and all kinds of trawlers and container ships and barges and pushers ALL around! it was SO cool! i saw the pilot hop on and then we raised our Japanese and under pilot sailing and quarantine flags (which we now all understand from our bridge tour! also we saw dolphins on our bridge tour! - did i ever mention that? but learning about the flags was my favorite). we wound in and under a GIANT new suspension bridge and then turned the whole freakin thing around and backed into the fancy fancy new terminal that has landscaping on top and all manner of people waving and shouting and music (including somewhere over the rainbow(?)) being pumped in (one guy shouted “Konnichi wa! Hello! buenos dias!”) and a big welcome to Yokohama sign, and Cole and I were all out with the crew, mostly the cooks, and they were all just as excited as we were. it was awesome.
after we pulled up some people came on board and there was a ceremony in which Capt. Jeremy got a plaque (this is Explorer’s first time Yokohama!!!!!) and a pretty piece of art and lots of people took pictures, and two girls in kimono presented us all with flowers and then a group did a Lion Dance, all drums and flutes and even the one guy who did fancy fancy moves with the drumstick in one hand while he drummed with the other. it was great. afterwards they let us, and some of our little kids, play them. it was sweet.
now we wait. to be cleared.
while we’re waiting, what else had happened lately? last night there was a talent show! that was fun. Except for an act that Jade and another kid were in that kind of made us all want to die. Jade looked like a muppet, and that’s all i have to say about that. there was some more TC and Aldrianna hula-ing (separately, and awesome as usual). And lots of other singing. two guys did show tunes one right after the other. and some other guys sang way off-key backup for Judy, who always sings right before port (her partner is the one known as Sparkles, who runs the field office. they’re both wonderfully buxom older women and make a lovely couple, really). it was great. i was sitting next to to Jeff and he always makes me laugh, or i make him laugh, and that’s fun. he and Nikki, btubs - TOTALLY hooking. up. hmm. i guess you guys wouldn’t really care about that.
also last night Doc Nancy the bio prof got out her super-duper will-blind-airline-pilots laser and pointed at some starts. also last night the whole ship smelled like fish, aka, downtown Boston. made me kinda homesick. and i’m sad that Japan means that our Japanese interport students, Aki and Megumi, are leaving :-( i like them.
also my roommate is the only other person i know besides me who consistently falls asleep with the TV on. interesting. when we got close to Japan on our little chart, the ship didn’t fit, so for awhile it looked like we were crashing into it.
UMMMM everybody just wants to get off the ship but for me it’s ok waiting. i’m just happy to see land and a gangway, which, oddly and excitingly enough, is on deck 5 instead of two, and looks almost like a jetway. this is a very fancy terminal indeed.
i really hope that i don’t offend anyone here by the fact that right now i smell like wet dog. but mostly, so does everybody else.
sometimes i get lonesome. i know i have lots of friends on the ship, but i’m not really a central part of anybody’s anything; it’s not like people ever come looking for me or anything, i’m just an added extraneous bonus sometimes, or a hinderance others. why does life feel like that sometimes?
anyway. back to blow-drying my pants.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
A Pounderance (that's the Canadian term)
(sorry, the actual date is up for grabs. i don’t even know.)
Sometimes, you stare out at the ocean and wonder what’s really in that 5000 meters of crap between you and the bottom.
Also, this is fun. it’s like i get two birthdays.
Sometimes, you stare out at the ocean and wonder what’s really in that 5000 meters of crap between you and the bottom.
Also, this is fun. it’s like i get two birthdays.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Eeeeeee
My computer thinks it’s Sept. 7. How cute. cause no one on this ship does.
What happened was, there was a storm last night. no, there wasn’t really a storm last night, but there was rough water. yeah. that’s what there was. i woke up in the middle of the night when my side table drawers slammed shut, and then of course i couldn’t fall asleep - what was really scary, though, was knowing that it could get worse. i tried to get back to sleep, but just couldn’t, so i decided to go looking for my previously missing benadryl. i felt all around in the dark and couldn’t find it, but then curled up in bed and tried really hard to sleep, which i finally did, about an hour later - and proceeded to have such a vivid dream about finding my benadryl and taking it that, when i woke up this morning, i couldn’t remember whether or not i’d actually taken it. it was WEIRD.
classes are becoming increasingly difficult, not because the classes themselves are hard, but because telling myself that it’s ok, we’ll get through this, wave by wave, is a full-time job, and so i can’t concentrate on normal things, like school. it takes all day to finish a project that should take about an hour. grrrr. it’s really frustrating to not be able to concentrate.
but what DID happen today is that one of my groups of friends, Lindsay, Mike, Ben, Carrie, Zack and co., ordered a chocolate ice cream for me that said “Sept. 7th was RETARDED, Happy Birthday Emily”, and then when i tired to cut it the R fell off, so it said “RETA DED”, which is obviously perfect, my being from Boston and all. i had a wonderful evening running around and trying to find lots of people to serve my giant ice cream cake to before it melted. it was such an adventure. and RD Laura, who also missed her birthday once due to the international date line, made me a certificate of my membership in the BGM, or Birthdays Gone Missing Society. and someone put up birthday post its all over my door, and i asked everyone and they said that they didn’t do it, and then Tal finally was like “oh, i saw some old lady putting those up earlier.”
So Nancy’s pretty much my new mommy. she sang me an unbirthday song. and she and Jim are taking me to lunch tomorrow, as much as one can take one to lunch on a small ship.
also tonight i did a workshop on language with most of the RDs - Paul, Meghan, Michele, Laura, and Akirah, and their boss, Anna, who’s really sweet - and that was really interesting too. i’m afraid that Akirah is going to make Paul shave his head for the Students of Service auction and the end of the voyage, which we makes me sad, because i’m pretty much in love with Paul and his hair. he’s gay, among other things, so don’t get too excited.
i think i’m going to go star-gazing soon. they turned off our overhead string of lights, so that means it’s happening.
WE’RE ALMOST HALFWAY TO JAPAN!! how excited am i?! so excited. SOOO excited.
What happened was, there was a storm last night. no, there wasn’t really a storm last night, but there was rough water. yeah. that’s what there was. i woke up in the middle of the night when my side table drawers slammed shut, and then of course i couldn’t fall asleep - what was really scary, though, was knowing that it could get worse. i tried to get back to sleep, but just couldn’t, so i decided to go looking for my previously missing benadryl. i felt all around in the dark and couldn’t find it, but then curled up in bed and tried really hard to sleep, which i finally did, about an hour later - and proceeded to have such a vivid dream about finding my benadryl and taking it that, when i woke up this morning, i couldn’t remember whether or not i’d actually taken it. it was WEIRD.
classes are becoming increasingly difficult, not because the classes themselves are hard, but because telling myself that it’s ok, we’ll get through this, wave by wave, is a full-time job, and so i can’t concentrate on normal things, like school. it takes all day to finish a project that should take about an hour. grrrr. it’s really frustrating to not be able to concentrate.
but what DID happen today is that one of my groups of friends, Lindsay, Mike, Ben, Carrie, Zack and co., ordered a chocolate ice cream for me that said “Sept. 7th was RETARDED, Happy Birthday Emily”, and then when i tired to cut it the R fell off, so it said “RETA DED”, which is obviously perfect, my being from Boston and all. i had a wonderful evening running around and trying to find lots of people to serve my giant ice cream cake to before it melted. it was such an adventure. and RD Laura, who also missed her birthday once due to the international date line, made me a certificate of my membership in the BGM, or Birthdays Gone Missing Society. and someone put up birthday post its all over my door, and i asked everyone and they said that they didn’t do it, and then Tal finally was like “oh, i saw some old lady putting those up earlier.”
So Nancy’s pretty much my new mommy. she sang me an unbirthday song. and she and Jim are taking me to lunch tomorrow, as much as one can take one to lunch on a small ship.
also tonight i did a workshop on language with most of the RDs - Paul, Meghan, Michele, Laura, and Akirah, and their boss, Anna, who’s really sweet - and that was really interesting too. i’m afraid that Akirah is going to make Paul shave his head for the Students of Service auction and the end of the voyage, which we makes me sad, because i’m pretty much in love with Paul and his hair. he’s gay, among other things, so don’t get too excited.
i think i’m going to go star-gazing soon. they turned off our overhead string of lights, so that means it’s happening.
WE’RE ALMOST HALFWAY TO JAPAN!! how excited am i?! so excited. SOOO excited.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
A Kind of Aloha
So here, as promised, whether you wanted it or not, is Hawaii.
I somehow managed to wake myself up at 5:45, and was like, hey, that’s when Jim said the pilot boat was coming! so i poked my head out the window - there, in the distance in the shadowy morning light were the lights of LAND! and there, headed straight toward my window, was the pilot boat! as it turns out the, the port side pilot boat docking spot is right under our window, and i got watch the whole transaction of pilot boat lining up with the ship so the Honolulu pilot could hop on board and lead us in. it was so neat! and it was SO exciting to see land. you don’t even understand.
it took us awhile to clear the ship - the immigration people come on board (though i spent much of that time in the clinic being giving anti-anxiety medications :-P ) - but it seemed an even more impatient process to actually disembark everybody. when i went to join the line it stretched all the way down the narrow narrow hall and up the next set of stairs back, and so i gave up and hung out with Nancy until everybody else cleared. it was a wise choice in terms of getting off the boat (sorry, ship), but perhaps not such a wise choice in terms of staying with the group i was supposed to be with, and by the time i got out of the terminal they were gone. so i ran around Honolulu for a while, and found them eventually.
The tour - poor Bob - was a bit disjointed. Bob had never really done this tour before, and i think we spent more time getting in the way of everybody’s grocery shopping that we did observing honolulu. oh well. we did walk right into the middle of a festival celebrating Queen Liliokalani’s birthday, and would got to see a group of men performing a traditional dance, which was pretty cool.
then we took the bus out to Waikiki and hung out on the crowded but lovely beach for a bit. and then, not wanting to go off alone, i joined in a trip to ala moana mall with my professor and his wife and couple of other girls. the other girls seemed perfectly nice - of course, now i cannot remember their names - and we all went together to a big food court at the mall. pretty much all i wanted was pizza. it was SO weird to finally sit down and really feel our bodies trying to make up for the lack of rocking of the ship. it’s like being seasick, but on land.
anyway, the girls got to talking with this navy kid about living on ships, and i was eating too slow, so i ended up joining in two other SAS girls, Kate and Heidi, who had just shown up. we finished lunch, and then we all decided to do some shopping. and my goodness was that a lot of time in Long’s drugs. then they needed to go to sears. and a skate shop so that Katie could get a new sweatshirt. and all i really wanted to do was call my parents. so i did. and then we agonized about picking a sweatshirt for Heidi, and then wandered around in the parking garage underbelly of Ala Moana mall, only to get on a bus headed BACK out to Waikiki, which we then proceeded to get off randomly when they decided we were going the wrong way, and we ended up spending forever in a little local park along the beach and next to the military museum. there were strange birds there.
then there was a VEEERY long and complicated process of finding the friends who invited me to dinner, and i ended up scampering alone down fancy Waikiki streets, searching for them, only to get a text message from Lindsay that said “don’t come! it’s closed!” thank goodness i ran into them! i even might have been on the wrong street! i don’t even know what happened, but we ended up wandering like four lost vegetarians (and one non-vegetarian, Ben) in the desert for 40 years, except the desert was really fancy stores that very inconveniently did not sell the cheap food. incidentally, our tired party at last came to rest at Cheeseburger Waikiki, where lovely tofu and garden burgers were enjoyed by all (but Ben, who had fish.) then we called a cab to get back to the docks on time, which ended up being complicated when two cabs showed up. but we all ended up in one of them, headed back to the ship, past the ACTUAL ala moana transit hub, as opposed to the little bus stop Kate and Heidi and i had THOUGHT was where all the buses came from. as the harbor came into view, we saw this great string of lights and were like “Ohh it’s our ship! how pretty!” and then we closer to the beautiful, perfect lights, and were like, “nah, it’s that giant cruise ship.” and then from behind it appeared strand of droopier lights, missing a few bulbs and sagging in the center, and we were like “now THAT’s our ship!”
before we lined up to get back on, Bobbi (the one who raises peacocks and drives motorcycles) and Leila and i spent a few last moments at a little coffee store at Aloha Tower, and then fell into line. we passed through the first checkpoint just fine, only to discover that the line to get on the ship was RIDICULOUSLY long. we waited and waited, and it hardly moved. we keep waiting. i got antsy, and started to feel funny. people were crowding in around us, trying to cut (if your card gets swiped in after on-ship time, you get punished by having to serve dock time - sitting on the ship - at the next port). the crowd started to get rowdy, and they were all SCREAMING. i was about to fall over, and Leila was holding me up and pushing me on (hence the heroism) and then of course my own roommate cut in front of us...we got on about ten minutes to on-ship time (having waited in line for an hour and a half), but the mob of at least 200 people behind us had gotten COMPLETELY out of control. and the whole reason it was taking so long in the first place was because people were trying to do stupid shit, like smuggle alcohol on in their crotch. god. some of these people are crazy.
The moral of the story is, we actually left Honolulu. eventually. and here we are, once again the middle of the pacific. right now i’m so beyond exhausted that i just tried to have multiple conversations that did not go over well...although now a bunch of random people are aware of the tiny hole in my shirt.
things have been going decently well, but we’ve gotten to that point were people are just starting to pair off, you know? that part when it starts to become glaringly obvious that you don’t really belong in anyone’s group? i guess i still just don’t know where i fit into this whole thing. even here, with people around us all the time, life is lonesome. but we do exciting things, like stargaze or read aloud on the front deck, or get professors to buy us hot chocolate when we sit down with them to talk about our majors, or watch Mulan on closed-circuit TV, because soon we go to China. i even had a really nice chat with one of my vicarious voyage teammates, about whom i was a bit skeptical at first - i don’t think she thinks i’m a total dork anymore! but i’ve been getting more homesick lately, too, and getting more and more impatient to get to Japan, and weeks with more land time instead of more ship time, as it is now. because for me, i still have to take this one wave at a time.
and today we sailed through a little rainy corner of a storm, and then there was a giant, giant double rainbow - way more awesome than Ben’s - spread across the sky, and even some birds flying around it, which is weird cause we’re like 1000 miles from land.
Mike says it was like someone had just turned the switch on.
I somehow managed to wake myself up at 5:45, and was like, hey, that’s when Jim said the pilot boat was coming! so i poked my head out the window - there, in the distance in the shadowy morning light were the lights of LAND! and there, headed straight toward my window, was the pilot boat! as it turns out the, the port side pilot boat docking spot is right under our window, and i got watch the whole transaction of pilot boat lining up with the ship so the Honolulu pilot could hop on board and lead us in. it was so neat! and it was SO exciting to see land. you don’t even understand.
it took us awhile to clear the ship - the immigration people come on board (though i spent much of that time in the clinic being giving anti-anxiety medications :-P ) - but it seemed an even more impatient process to actually disembark everybody. when i went to join the line it stretched all the way down the narrow narrow hall and up the next set of stairs back, and so i gave up and hung out with Nancy until everybody else cleared. it was a wise choice in terms of getting off the boat (sorry, ship), but perhaps not such a wise choice in terms of staying with the group i was supposed to be with, and by the time i got out of the terminal they were gone. so i ran around Honolulu for a while, and found them eventually.
The tour - poor Bob - was a bit disjointed. Bob had never really done this tour before, and i think we spent more time getting in the way of everybody’s grocery shopping that we did observing honolulu. oh well. we did walk right into the middle of a festival celebrating Queen Liliokalani’s birthday, and would got to see a group of men performing a traditional dance, which was pretty cool.
then we took the bus out to Waikiki and hung out on the crowded but lovely beach for a bit. and then, not wanting to go off alone, i joined in a trip to ala moana mall with my professor and his wife and couple of other girls. the other girls seemed perfectly nice - of course, now i cannot remember their names - and we all went together to a big food court at the mall. pretty much all i wanted was pizza. it was SO weird to finally sit down and really feel our bodies trying to make up for the lack of rocking of the ship. it’s like being seasick, but on land.
anyway, the girls got to talking with this navy kid about living on ships, and i was eating too slow, so i ended up joining in two other SAS girls, Kate and Heidi, who had just shown up. we finished lunch, and then we all decided to do some shopping. and my goodness was that a lot of time in Long’s drugs. then they needed to go to sears. and a skate shop so that Katie could get a new sweatshirt. and all i really wanted to do was call my parents. so i did. and then we agonized about picking a sweatshirt for Heidi, and then wandered around in the parking garage underbelly of Ala Moana mall, only to get on a bus headed BACK out to Waikiki, which we then proceeded to get off randomly when they decided we were going the wrong way, and we ended up spending forever in a little local park along the beach and next to the military museum. there were strange birds there.
then there was a VEEERY long and complicated process of finding the friends who invited me to dinner, and i ended up scampering alone down fancy Waikiki streets, searching for them, only to get a text message from Lindsay that said “don’t come! it’s closed!” thank goodness i ran into them! i even might have been on the wrong street! i don’t even know what happened, but we ended up wandering like four lost vegetarians (and one non-vegetarian, Ben) in the desert for 40 years, except the desert was really fancy stores that very inconveniently did not sell the cheap food. incidentally, our tired party at last came to rest at Cheeseburger Waikiki, where lovely tofu and garden burgers were enjoyed by all (but Ben, who had fish.) then we called a cab to get back to the docks on time, which ended up being complicated when two cabs showed up. but we all ended up in one of them, headed back to the ship, past the ACTUAL ala moana transit hub, as opposed to the little bus stop Kate and Heidi and i had THOUGHT was where all the buses came from. as the harbor came into view, we saw this great string of lights and were like “Ohh it’s our ship! how pretty!” and then we closer to the beautiful, perfect lights, and were like, “nah, it’s that giant cruise ship.” and then from behind it appeared strand of droopier lights, missing a few bulbs and sagging in the center, and we were like “now THAT’s our ship!”
before we lined up to get back on, Bobbi (the one who raises peacocks and drives motorcycles) and Leila and i spent a few last moments at a little coffee store at Aloha Tower, and then fell into line. we passed through the first checkpoint just fine, only to discover that the line to get on the ship was RIDICULOUSLY long. we waited and waited, and it hardly moved. we keep waiting. i got antsy, and started to feel funny. people were crowding in around us, trying to cut (if your card gets swiped in after on-ship time, you get punished by having to serve dock time - sitting on the ship - at the next port). the crowd started to get rowdy, and they were all SCREAMING. i was about to fall over, and Leila was holding me up and pushing me on (hence the heroism) and then of course my own roommate cut in front of us...we got on about ten minutes to on-ship time (having waited in line for an hour and a half), but the mob of at least 200 people behind us had gotten COMPLETELY out of control. and the whole reason it was taking so long in the first place was because people were trying to do stupid shit, like smuggle alcohol on in their crotch. god. some of these people are crazy.
The moral of the story is, we actually left Honolulu. eventually. and here we are, once again the middle of the pacific. right now i’m so beyond exhausted that i just tried to have multiple conversations that did not go over well...although now a bunch of random people are aware of the tiny hole in my shirt.
things have been going decently well, but we’ve gotten to that point were people are just starting to pair off, you know? that part when it starts to become glaringly obvious that you don’t really belong in anyone’s group? i guess i still just don’t know where i fit into this whole thing. even here, with people around us all the time, life is lonesome. but we do exciting things, like stargaze or read aloud on the front deck, or get professors to buy us hot chocolate when we sit down with them to talk about our majors, or watch Mulan on closed-circuit TV, because soon we go to China. i even had a really nice chat with one of my vicarious voyage teammates, about whom i was a bit skeptical at first - i don’t think she thinks i’m a total dork anymore! but i’ve been getting more homesick lately, too, and getting more and more impatient to get to Japan, and weeks with more land time instead of more ship time, as it is now. because for me, i still have to take this one wave at a time.
and today we sailed through a little rainy corner of a storm, and then there was a giant, giant double rainbow - way more awesome than Ben’s - spread across the sky, and even some birds flying around it, which is weird cause we’re like 1000 miles from land.
Mike says it was like someone had just turned the switch on.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Ben's Rainbow
Tomorrow i’ll write more about the weird adventure that was my day in Honolulu, and all about how much i miss land already, even from the few fleeting moments we spent on it. But right now, before i fall asleep, i just want to preserve (for posterity) a lovely evening. One exciting thing that happened today was that i met our two Japanese students that we’re taking back to Japan, Aki and Megumi. they’re real nice. Aki loves all kinds of British and American pop music - we had to check out the ipod. also, her last name is Morioka, so she thought it was pretty funny that i was going to Morioka, even though she lives in Kobe. and Megumi and i stood outside staring at the wake and trying to understand each other for awhile. it was pretty exciting.
And then later Mike and Ben and Lindsay and i played this long game of hearts that ended up being hysterically funny, and Mike just lost and lost and lost some more, but it was still entertaining. and then someone got to talking about japanese encephalitis, which, according to Mike, can be abbreviated “japalitis”. he and Ben are really funny together, and, even though he and Lindsay are that practically-married kind of boyfriend and girlfriend, it’s really easy to be around them. the other haha moment of the day goes to Ben, who, just finally today in reading the dean’s memo, realized how they cleverly call alcohol night (four drink max), which takes place on the the back of the 7th deck, AFTer hours. he thought it was hysterical. we thought it was way old news. (for any midwesterners and/or non-boat-savvy readers out there, the front part of a boat is the “fore” part and the back part is “aft”, as in the “ass” of the boat. scuse me. SHIP.)(well, i thought it was clever). Ben also got very attached to a giant cloud, and we didn’t really understand why, and then we finally looked back and there was a rainbow in it! (i didn’t take a picture of it. but i did have a picture of Ben.)
Anyway, some rather uneventful things happened as i sat freezing in the Garden lounge (one of our eating areas) reading and reading and reading (well, Drew came running in. were both using iweb, and we both have been having problems with it, and it’s pretty much all he ever talks about. and then today, totally independently of each other, we both figured out the problem. hmm.), and then some big old boys came along and were talking about Boston, and they were like, “hey man, is Boston bigger than New York? is it bigger than LA? oh yeah, it’s about the same as chicago? they can’t have beaches in chicago! they don’t have beaches on lakes!” and here i was doing my geography of the cities of the world homework and it was nearly killing me, so i went up to them with my lovely statistical diagram of US cities, and they got distracted by all the pictures on the front of the book and tried to name them all. their knowledge of “beachless” (whatever, dudes) Chicago did not seem to extend to recognition of the Hancock Tower. Needless to say, i’m pretty sure more than one of them tried to sneak alcohol on the ship last night, which automatically makes me respect them less than i respect normal big old boys (or BOBs).
But after that, and after dinner, i ended up out the 6th deck with Kristin and Brian and Leila (who’s pretty much my hero right now, but more on that later) and Nikki and Jade, who was playing guitar. it was really really pleasant. and then this guy name Tal came along to say hi and Kristin introduced him and he said “oh nice to meet you i’ve heard so much about you!” and that was awkward but also endearing, and i’m pretty sure he’s the kid that, only a few days ago, Kristin and Brian thought was named Towel. i think Tal is a much more preferable name for a human being, don’t you? and our port lights were on, the big string of lights that goes from bow to stern that they only turn on when we’re kinda near land (which we’re not, really). anyway, sitting there i realized how it weird it is that our home has become this giant blue and white moving thing in the middle of the ocean - it’s just always moving, and we’re sitting there taking it all for granted that it does, and that somewhere on the other side of that deep black abyss is Japan.
somewhere.
ps - tonight we retard our clocks again! yay! another hour of my birthday! (since every time we retard (yes, we retard them. apparently it’s not politically incorrect for timepieces) our clocks, we’re making up for the “lost day”, i figure every one of those hours is my birthday in little pieces.)
pps - Katie D., today in Global Studies we learned about the Philippines, and there were no mail order brides in sight!
And then later Mike and Ben and Lindsay and i played this long game of hearts that ended up being hysterically funny, and Mike just lost and lost and lost some more, but it was still entertaining. and then someone got to talking about japanese encephalitis, which, according to Mike, can be abbreviated “japalitis”. he and Ben are really funny together, and, even though he and Lindsay are that practically-married kind of boyfriend and girlfriend, it’s really easy to be around them. the other haha moment of the day goes to Ben, who, just finally today in reading the dean’s memo, realized how they cleverly call alcohol night (four drink max), which takes place on the the back of the 7th deck, AFTer hours. he thought it was hysterical. we thought it was way old news. (for any midwesterners and/or non-boat-savvy readers out there, the front part of a boat is the “fore” part and the back part is “aft”, as in the “ass” of the boat. scuse me. SHIP.)(well, i thought it was clever). Ben also got very attached to a giant cloud, and we didn’t really understand why, and then we finally looked back and there was a rainbow in it! (i didn’t take a picture of it. but i did have a picture of Ben.)
Anyway, some rather uneventful things happened as i sat freezing in the Garden lounge (one of our eating areas) reading and reading and reading (well, Drew came running in. were both using iweb, and we both have been having problems with it, and it’s pretty much all he ever talks about. and then today, totally independently of each other, we both figured out the problem. hmm.), and then some big old boys came along and were talking about Boston, and they were like, “hey man, is Boston bigger than New York? is it bigger than LA? oh yeah, it’s about the same as chicago? they can’t have beaches in chicago! they don’t have beaches on lakes!” and here i was doing my geography of the cities of the world homework and it was nearly killing me, so i went up to them with my lovely statistical diagram of US cities, and they got distracted by all the pictures on the front of the book and tried to name them all. their knowledge of “beachless” (whatever, dudes) Chicago did not seem to extend to recognition of the Hancock Tower. Needless to say, i’m pretty sure more than one of them tried to sneak alcohol on the ship last night, which automatically makes me respect them less than i respect normal big old boys (or BOBs).
But after that, and after dinner, i ended up out the 6th deck with Kristin and Brian and Leila (who’s pretty much my hero right now, but more on that later) and Nikki and Jade, who was playing guitar. it was really really pleasant. and then this guy name Tal came along to say hi and Kristin introduced him and he said “oh nice to meet you i’ve heard so much about you!” and that was awkward but also endearing, and i’m pretty sure he’s the kid that, only a few days ago, Kristin and Brian thought was named Towel. i think Tal is a much more preferable name for a human being, don’t you? and our port lights were on, the big string of lights that goes from bow to stern that they only turn on when we’re kinda near land (which we’re not, really). anyway, sitting there i realized how it weird it is that our home has become this giant blue and white moving thing in the middle of the ocean - it’s just always moving, and we’re sitting there taking it all for granted that it does, and that somewhere on the other side of that deep black abyss is Japan.
somewhere.
ps - tonight we retard our clocks again! yay! another hour of my birthday! (since every time we retard (yes, we retard them. apparently it’s not politically incorrect for timepieces) our clocks, we’re making up for the “lost day”, i figure every one of those hours is my birthday in little pieces.)
pps - Katie D., today in Global Studies we learned about the Philippines, and there were no mail order brides in sight!
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Flight of the Fish
This morning my roommate was pacing around our cabin at some ungodly hour, and i was like, Ariel, what time do you think it is? and she was like, 8, right? and i was like, huh turn on the TV (we have little closed-circuit TV onboard that shows the Dean’s memo and the film class movies on loop and - the best part - our little map projection channel, which shows where we are, tells us the speed of the boat and our current location (in degrees of lat. and long.) and, best of all, provides us with totally free, totally corny ‘80s and ‘90s soft rock), and so she turned on the TV, and, sure enough, it was five of six. it’s that clock retardation thing, man. anyway, after that i couldn’t really fall asleep, so i sat up and noted with great excitement, large schools of tiny flying fish darting around out our window. they fly for really far, for a fish.
the last two days have been hectic and have involved far too much decision-making than my tiny brain is capable of handling. i finalized my classes AND we had to pick out next round of trips. you thought schoolwork was hard, try deciding what to with yourself in Egypt. it’s no easy task. speaking of ports, tomorrow we at last make land - only to leave it that night, but still. seagulls and islands and ground oh my! we can’t wait to get to Honolulu! we have a few hawaiians on the ship, including this one guy, TC, who ended up doing this awesome hawaiian dance for us. it took him ten minutes to say the names of the people who taught him - all the kulani and leliokalanis and such. i felt special because he kind of became a celebrity after that, and he actually introduced himself to me. he’s a hawaiian studies major. interesting. i’ve been quite reveling in hanging out with certain people - i actually have inadvertently managed to spend a lot of time around this guy Ben, who, for you Earlham people (and at least in my mind) looks quite like Christopher Richmond, just taller and with shaggier hair. we talk about random things. no worries, he will be bored of me soon. and then there’s Carrie and Diana (remind me someday to tell the funny story about Diana and tanning, because there are profound conclusions there) and Lindsay and Mike, who came together. all very very nice. and tonight i had dinner with Lara the music teacher, and (accidently) with another girl named Juliana who seems perfectly lovely aside from her lack of social awareness (she just has an interrupting problem, is all. she was very nice.)
yeah. i forgot what else i was going to say. except that the only thing in life that i want to be able to do is a homestay in India, and i won’t be able to. and that i’m totally freaked out because supposedly the seas after hawaii get pretty rough (though my new friend Nancy, whose husband is the assistant Dean, has been quite reassuring. although they might have to get me valium.) and i’m terrified that i joined yearbook staff. that was dumb.
oh yeah, and today i got to act in a skit about how you shouldn’t mix prescription drugs and alcohol.
altogether a productive day, really.
the last two days have been hectic and have involved far too much decision-making than my tiny brain is capable of handling. i finalized my classes AND we had to pick out next round of trips. you thought schoolwork was hard, try deciding what to with yourself in Egypt. it’s no easy task. speaking of ports, tomorrow we at last make land - only to leave it that night, but still. seagulls and islands and ground oh my! we can’t wait to get to Honolulu! we have a few hawaiians on the ship, including this one guy, TC, who ended up doing this awesome hawaiian dance for us. it took him ten minutes to say the names of the people who taught him - all the kulani and leliokalanis and such. i felt special because he kind of became a celebrity after that, and he actually introduced himself to me. he’s a hawaiian studies major. interesting. i’ve been quite reveling in hanging out with certain people - i actually have inadvertently managed to spend a lot of time around this guy Ben, who, for you Earlham people (and at least in my mind) looks quite like Christopher Richmond, just taller and with shaggier hair. we talk about random things. no worries, he will be bored of me soon. and then there’s Carrie and Diana (remind me someday to tell the funny story about Diana and tanning, because there are profound conclusions there) and Lindsay and Mike, who came together. all very very nice. and tonight i had dinner with Lara the music teacher, and (accidently) with another girl named Juliana who seems perfectly lovely aside from her lack of social awareness (she just has an interrupting problem, is all. she was very nice.)
yeah. i forgot what else i was going to say. except that the only thing in life that i want to be able to do is a homestay in India, and i won’t be able to. and that i’m totally freaked out because supposedly the seas after hawaii get pretty rough (though my new friend Nancy, whose husband is the assistant Dean, has been quite reassuring. although they might have to get me valium.) and i’m terrified that i joined yearbook staff. that was dumb.
oh yeah, and today i got to act in a skit about how you shouldn’t mix prescription drugs and alcohol.
altogether a productive day, really.
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