That Was Definitely A Japanese Sneeze

Day 1 in Japan, day 23 of my voyage

I’m finally in Japan! We were told that we were going to be docking late because we had to slow down for rough weather on the way here, but we still pulled up alongside the dock around 9:30. We were all so excited to see land, and we even got a welcome reception by Japanese drummers as we were pulling in. We get called by sea to get our passports and go through customs and get off the ship, and my sea was 4^th. We got called around 12:30, and were off the ship right around 1. All the others I was traveling with were already off the ship, as their seas had gotten called before mine. Some of us were off to find a hotel in Tokyo, others had an FDP, and others were joining us the day after. Bruck, Graham, Corey, Brittany, Victoria and myself took off for Tokyo, while Shauna and Alli had the Yokohama city orientation that day. We headed down into the subway and immediately tried to figure out the subway system. All I have to say is thank goodness Graham was with us. He has a great sense of direction, and I feel like it may have taken us so much longer to figure it out if he weren’t there. Upon seeing Tokyo for the first time, I instantly fell in love with it. I know I say this about every city outside of the US that I visit, but it is true. Tokyo is big, vibrant, and nothing like anything I have seen at home. The one thing about Japan that I was really excited about was the amount of color. Advertisements, buildings, menus, everything is insanely colorful. There is so much pop and pizzazz about everything there you are never at a loss for things to look at. We met Victoria’s sister and business partner in Tokyo, and they took us to a really good restaurant with noodle soup, rice, and dumplings. I knew I was going to have issues eating in Japan, as they definitely do not have forks, but I managed my chopsticks better than I thought I would, and I am pretty good with them now. After lunch, Victoria took off to stay with her sister for the night, and the rest of us went to find a hotel. After wandering around hopelessly in the Roppongi district, we ran into a woman who was blonde, white, and spoke English, so we immediately asked if she knew of any hotels we could book that were relatively close and relatively cheap. We finally found a place called the APA Hotel, and Bruck and Graham booked it right away. Graham, Brittany and I headed back to Yokohama to pick up the other two girls, who were done with their city orientation, and the three of us had to pick up our bags, which were still on the ship. Ok, so let me say a few words about the subway system. First of all, everyone in Japan uses them to get around. It’s relatively cheap, convenient, and easy if you know what you’re doing and where to go. Brittany, Graham and I did not, thus resulting in our wandering around Yokohama station for a good 30 or 45 minutes before finally figuring out where to go to catch the smaller subway train that would take us to the port. Although we had issues, the people were extremely helpful in telling us how to try and get somewhere.  Not to mention the fact that we were running around during rush hour. There were so many people getting off work at that time that it was absolutely ridiculous trying to get around.  We got those, then headed back to Tokyo, which is only about a 25 minute train ride from Yokohama. We got into our hotel, put our stuff down, then headed out to dinner. We found this cute little restaurant and all of us sat down to eat. I got tempura vegetables, which were absolutely amazing, and everyone else got other yummy foods as well. We had issues splitting the bill, because of some random charge they added on, which we eventually found out was the table charge. Afterwards, we went to a little ice cream shop across the street, which was rather tasty after being on the ship without it for a while. Afterwards we wandered around for a little longer, then went back to the hotel. Now, one thing I forgot to mention is the fact that we booked one hotel room for 7 people. We all managed to sneak in and up the elevator, then we figured out where we were sleeping. The 4 girls shared the two double beds and the boys took the floor. To give you an idea of how big the room was, it was about as big as my bedroom at home, with one area cut out for the bathroom and with two double beds in it. There was also a hole in the wall, which made things rather cold for the boys, who didn’t have blankets. Despite these obvious shortcomings, the bathroom was awesome! Corey walked into the bathroom, walked back out, and said “Our bathroom is a robot!” We all gathered around to look, and he was basically correct. It wasn’t so much the bathroom that was a robot, but the toilet. There was an entire pad of little buttons to press on the side that control a bunch of different functions. It had a bidet, a “spray” function, a button to control the water pressure of the previous functions, and the seat was heated. Heated toilet seats. Let me say, I was expecting this, but they were way better than I expected. Waking up in the morning and having a heated toilet seat was the best thing ever. Overall, the room was tiny and rather uncomfortable, but we made it work. We went to bed relatively early as we had an early morning the next day and we knew that we weren’t going to be getting much sleep the next five days.

 

Day 2 in Japan, day 24 of my voyage

The next morning we were up bright and early, and the 7 of us went to a little breakfast place called Jonathan’s, which had English menus and yummy food. Brittany and I had to use the bathrooms, and once again we were pleasantly surprised. These toilets not only were heated and had all the functions of the other toilet I spoke of, but they had bird noises in the bathroom, and when you entered the bathroom and locked the door, there was a speaker that played the sound of running water until you flushed. In my opinion, these water noises are for those people who hate peeing when it is quiet, and they were rather awesome. After breakfast, we met up with the other four girls we were traveling with, stopped and got Starbucks for the caffeine addicted members of the group (aka Graham), and headed out. First we wanted to find our capsule hotel we were staying in for the night so we didn’t have to carry our bags around the entire day. Victoria knew exactly where we were going, and we made it to The Riverside Capsule hotel and dropped our stuff off. We couldn’t check in yet, but they had lockers and stuff, so we were able to leave our stuff there and go explore.

Let me just say something about those of us who were traveling together. Brittany, Shauna, Alli, Victoria, Bruck, Corey, Graham and myself are what we named Team Awesome. I honestly don’t have any idea how it started, but from now on, when I say Team Awesome in my blog, you will know who I am talking about. Team Awesome may add or lose a few members once in a while, but this is our main travel group and we shall be referred to by this wonderful name from now on in my blog.

Now that we got that cleared up, Team Awesome moved on out of the capsule hotel to explore. Victoria had a bunch of stuff planned out that she had gotten from her sister, so we had a great plan for the day. First we took the subway to Asakusa, where we visited a Buddhist temple with an absolutely massive market outside of it and beautiful gardens on the sides of it. We spent a little bit of time looking around at the market, which had absolutely everything for sale, from fans to sake sets to Disney watches. They are slightly obsessed with Mickey Mouse in Japan, so there was an absolute ton of Mickey stuff in every market we saw. After looking around the market and trying a few of the samples, we went into the actual temple itself. If there is one thing the Japanese know how to do, it is create a temple. They are all grandiose, beautiful, incredibly detailed buildings, full of pictures and statues and they always smell of beautiful incense. Even though some of them are small, they still have most of the qualities of the bigger temples. They put most of our churches in America to shame. After looking around the temple for a little bit, we headed outside and looked at the absolutely gorgeous gardens. They had a massive koi pond, and there were small little shrines to worship at as well. I saw many members of older generations walk up, put some money in the little offering box, pray, then bow and walk to the next statue and do the same thing. The area around here also had many pagodas. I can’t really describe a pagoda to you, it’s basically a tall tower in the style very similar to that of the temple around it, and they may also be used as houses of worship. They are very beautiful and, like the temples, intricate and very detailed. We walked down a different street outside of the market, and we saw a cute little theme park, with a ferris wheel, a flying house ride, and other typical rides. There was a cute little shopping area that some of the girls went into, and the rest of us wandered down the street and waited.

After Asakusa, we took a subway to Shibuya, it is a place that looks like times square, with tall buildings everywhere, and the absolute busiest crosswalks I have ever seen. Not only did they have crosswalks going straight across, they also had ones going diagonal in the streets. I have a picture of the busy street to show you when I get home, but trust me, it is ridiculous. There are colorful billboards everywhere, music playing, crazy colorful advertisements, and well-dressed people everywhere. We headed down one of the colorful alleyways and stopped at a noodle place for some lunch. At many of the noodle places, with your order you will get a bowl of noodles with some meat (usually pork) in it, rice (white or fried), and dumplings. Alli and I decided to split ours, mostly because we knew there was a lot of food coming to us, and because it was nice and cheap that way. The dumplings were yummy, the rice was great, and the soup was filling. I am glad we decided to split it, as there is absolutely no way I could have finished all of that by myself. Now, I did face one challenge when eating my food on this trip…I had an incredible deficit in chopstick using ability. Now, after spending 5 days in Japan, I must say I am rather proficient in my use of chopsticks, and although I am nowhere near pro status like all my frequent sushi-eating friends, I think that I will be excellent at using them by the time I am done with Viet Nam.

After lunch, we went to a massive department store called Tokyo Hands…it is basically like Ikea on crack. They have everything you can think of, from trinkets to electronics to furniture. We spent about a half an hour running around the store, then we were headed for the Meiji Shrine and the Harajuku district. We stepped out into the freezing cold air, walked about 15 minutes and came upon a massive park, which we knew the Meiji Shrine sat in the middle of. We entered the park, which had gravel walkways and beautiful trees everywhere. In order to entire the actual shrine, one must pass through a tori, or a gate of some kind. There was a massive wooden tori at the entrance to the shrine and from the tori to the shrine was easily another 10 minute walk. Along the way, we got to see giant sake barrels they used to store sake in, and we also saw massive wine barrels as well. It was difficult to believe that it was directly in the middle of a big city, and one of my friends compared it to Central Park. The Meiji Shrine is a Shinto shrine, and the entire area it was in was massive. There is a huge courtyard, a shrine, a place to cleanse your mouth, statues, and my personal favorite, which is a big tree with a hexagonal wall around the base of it. On this wall were a bunch of wooden plaques on which people write their wishes, then hang them on this wall at the base of the tree. The plaques were 500 yen and the donations went straight to the shrine, but we all decided not to buy one. Instead, there were tables around the base of the tree with papers and envelopes. One could write a prayer on them, then drop it into the box. At the next ceremony, the envelopes would be burned as an offering to the god. All of us wrote one and dropped it in, took a few more pictures and left. We had to go back the same way we came, and pretty soon, we were on the concrete sidewalks in the city once again. We walked another ten minutes and came upon the Harajuku district. For those of you who know pop culture, Harajuku is the district Gwen Stefani made famous. This is a district in which girls wear absolutely ridiculous and crazy outfits consisting of brightly colored tights, tutus, bows in their hair, and other random articles of clothing. We walked down the main street called Takeshita Dori, which held many shops full of crazy clothing and trinkets. We didn’t get to see too many girls who were really dressed up, because they only get really dressed up on Sundays. We still saw a few interesting outfits, and the stuff there were selling in the stores was ridiculous. It was in Harajuku we also decided to get crepes. I had them before when I was in France, but it had been a while since I had fresh crepes, so I got a banana and chocolate one. They were made fresh right in front of us and were warm when we got them. I forgot how yummy they were, and it was a nice warm treat for us on a cold day in Japan.

After Harajuku, we headed out to the Akihabara district. The Akihabara district is a place where there are neon lights everywhere, and Bruck needed to buy a camera, so we went into the biggest electronic store I have ever seen. It was 7 floors of pure fun, and we had about an hour to wander around before we were going to meet at the front doors, so I wondered around by myself in the store for an hour. If anyone in the US thinks we have a lot of different models of phones, you are so wrong. We only have about 80, in Japan, they have about 9 hundred. 900 different phone models. The first two floors were mostly phones and accessories for them, which were also insane. They had things to hang off your phone, to stick on the back, etc. They had a massive selection of headphones, and I thought of my dad when I saw Bose headphones that were a bit cheaper than any ones in the US. I was also ridiculously tempted by the selection of computers….they had an Acer (a small computer) for only 10,000 yen, or about 110 US dollars. They run about 200 in the US, so it would have been quite a bargain. After we left the electronic store, we were all getting incredibly hungry, so we went to a little tiny place near our hotel that was ridiculously monolingual. The language barrier became very apparent at this restaurant, but they had an English menu and we were able to point at pictures to tell them what we wanted. I got a bowl of crab fried rice in sticky sauce (so great) and a plate of sashimi. I was told by my wonderful boyfriend before I left that I had better not be a chicken when it came to trying food in these countries. For those of you who don’t know what sashimi is, it is basically raw fish and rice. It isn’t even the rolls you see at typical restaurants. I have a picture of my plate, but I had six different kinds: tuna, yellowtail, salmon, egg (it was cooked), shrimp, and squid (which I couldn’t bear to eat, so I gave it to Graham). It was so yummy! The yellowtail and tuna were by far my favorite, and I can say that after that experience I will definitely be eating sushi at home more often. The dinner was so good and cost about ten bucks, so I think it was worth it. The group of us paid our bill and left, then we were headed to the karaoke bar we had heard about that was really close to our hotel. A karaoke bar in Japan isn’t exactly what most picture would picture. Most people picture a typical bar, just with really bad singing involved. This was totally different. The place was divided into 7 floors, each with it’s own themed décor. One floor was 70’s, one was hip-hop, and ours was Indian Bollywood style. We took the elevator up to our floor and we were shown into our very own karaoke room. It had tables and they gave us a MASSIVE book of all of the English karaoke songs they had to choose from. We sang everything from You Shook Me All Night Long to A While New World (from Aladdin) to Bohemian Rhapsody (the video for this is epic) to Thriller. We were there for about two hours and had the greatest time ever. We got back to our capsule hotel around 2 and went to bed, as we had yet another early morning ahead of us.

 

Day 3 in Japan, day 25 of my voyage

I slept like a baby inside my little capsule and was perfectly happy to wake up at 6:45 and head out to Hakone for the hot springs. We had a quick breakfast and hopped on the train, then had to take a bus up to the actual hot springs. We were very close to Mt. Fuji and would have been able to see it from where we were, but it was too foggy and misty and rainy that day. Our bus ride was about a half an hour up into the mountains, and by the time we got to the hot springs, there was some snow on the ground in patches and there was a light mist and fog everywhere. It was absolutely beautiful, but ridiculously cold. We walked into this place that looked like a shopping mall and were directed up tot eh fourth floor, where the hot spring area was. Since it was a holiday, the hot springs were fairly crowded, but it was pretty cool to see all of the people with their kids. When we walked in they gave us girls an orange zip-up shirt to wear over our bathing suits while we headed out to the baths, and the boys got blue. We also got wristbands, which were the “keys” to our lockers as well as our “credit card” for the day. In order to get into our lockers, all we did was match the number on the wristband with the number on the locker and swipe the band in front of the sensor on the door and it would unlock. You did the same to lock it when you were done. Also, if you got food, you swiped your wristband, then you paid at the very end once you left the springs. We headed to our separate locker rooms, which were absolutely ridiculous. Not only did they have a ton of lockers, they had showers to use when you were done (with shampoo and conditioner), as well as an area of mirrors and hairdryers to use after the shower. We pulled our clothes off and put the shirts on over our swimsuits, and we met the boys downstairs. We headed outside to the springs, and let me tell you, it was cold. The mistiness was everywhere, and small beads of water formed on your skin the second you stepped outside. We took our shirts off and ran to the first area we saw. To our pleasant surprise, we were bathing in coffee!!! We knew they had baths of various liquids for you to bathe in, but I wasn’t expecting coffee. They were very diluted but it still had the distinctive coffee tinge to it as well as the smell. After coffee we ran around trying different baths. We climbed in everything from a mineral bath to a charcoal bath to sake, red wine, and green tea. All of them smelled absolutely heavenly, and Victoria had a waterproof camera so we were able to take some really great photos. As much as I hated the cold, it made the environment perfect for the springs. Had it been sunny I don’t think it would have been nearly as beautiful as it was when it was rainy and misty outside. After we froze our butts off outside, we went to the inside portion. They had a huge indoor area for kids to play in, as well as a foot bath, which you sit and stick your feet into and little fishies come up and eat the dead skin off of your feet. Here I encountered a bit of a problem. In order to get into the baths at all, you are not allowed to have any tattoos. I had put bandaids over my one on my foot and the one on my hip was covered, but the bandaids eventually fell off, so I had to be super careful with who could see my feet, so I did not go into the foot bath, but everyone else did. I wasn’t too bummed about it, as I hate having my feet touched anyways. Right before we got into the shower, we wandered down into the onsens. The onsens are the totally naked area of the hot springs. We pulled our swimsuit straps over our heads and tucked them into our towels so you couldn’t see them, then we went in just to see what they were like. It was incredibly foggy and misty inside, but it was really cool. I was very surprised at how many women there were. It was an all women’s onsen, but I was still surprised at how many women were so willing to bare everything. There were these really big spa areas where you could just sit, and outside there were individual wooden spas that were only about a foot deep. We walked through for about 2 minutes, then went back inside and to the locker room. We spent a total of about 4 hours at the springs, showered, dried our hair, got all cute, then we all went to Kyoto. In the train station on the way to Kyoto, we were bored and cold while waiting for our train, so Graham busted out the Twister board and we played for about 5 minutes. It was hilarious to see the faces of the Japanese people around us as we flung our arms and legs everywhere. We didn’t get to Kyoto until about 8 or so, and we still needed to find a hotel. Lo and behold, we saw a hotel called Hotel Vista directly across the street from the train station and decided to check it out. The lobby was on the 3^rd floor, so the rest of us waited downstairs while Graham and Alli checked it out. As we walked in, we ran into 2 girls and a boy from SAS. One of the girls immediately went off about how tiny the rooms were, saying that they were only as big as a closet, and she was just rather rude to all of us. They left, and Graham and Alli came back downstairs and told us they booked it. We headed upstairs to drop our bags off and when we walked in the room, we were so happy. It was bigger than our room from the first night in Tokyo, and it had more floor space for the boys. The girls downstairs were obviously not used to “roughing it” (I use the term loosely because we were still in hotels, it’s not like we were camping), and if the room was as big as a closet, they must live in mansions. It was still relatively early and we weren’t in the downtown area of Kyoto, so we decided to just walk around for a little bit and maybe try and find a nice bar or pub to just sit and talk at and warm up in. We walked across the street and down a little ways from our hotel, and we bumped into more SAS people, who were going out to somewhere. Everywhere we went we saw SAS people, which was a little bit disappointing, as we see them all the time. Eventually the group of us found a small Irish Pub (yes, an Irish Pub in Kyoto) called  Man in The Moon, so we went inside and sat down. They had great Irish music playing, as well as movies, and there were some other people in there as well. We all ordered a beer and just sat around and talked and laughed until around 11:15, when half of us went back to the hotel for the night. The next morning we were splitting up, with some of the girls staying in Kyoto, and Graham, Bruck, Corey, Shauna, and myself heading to Hiroshima.

 

Day 4 in Japan, day 26 of my voyage

Those of us headed to Hiroshima woke up around 6:30, got doughnuts for breakfast, and hopped on a train a 7:50 for Hiroshima. It was about a 2 hour train ride, then we had to take a bus to the actual park. The second we got to the park, you can feel the atmosphere around you change. The first things we saw were some monuments in the park, one was the children’s monument, the other was the people for peace, and there were also others. There were thousands of origami paper crane chains hanging on the children’s monument. While we were walking around the park, a woman stopped and asked us if we wanted a free tour. We agreed, and she introduced herself as Nishimura Yoriku, a volunteer for the park. There are a bunch of volunteers that offer free tours in the park, so we figured we would take her up on it. She had a book of pictures and was telling us a bunch of facts about what happened, and we noticed another man with a badge like the one she was wearing behind us. She introduced him, and he told us that he was an in-utero survivor, meaning his mother was pregnant with him when the bomb hit. They were within the range of the blast a few kilometers away, but neither he nor his mother or father suffered radiation damage. Each survivor got a certificate from the government saying they were a survivor, and the certificate covers some of their medical expenses. Our lady guide then took us across the street to the direct hypocenter, and we got to see a cemetery as well. We then headed over to the museum. They had everything, from clothing people were wearing, to rubble, to bottles, and everything else under the sun. For the most part, everyone in the museum was dead silent, going through the exhibits and reading everything that had happened. It was really heartbreaking to see that many of the clothes were from children about junior high age that had been killed in the blast. In looking at the devastation that happened, I understood why the US bombed Hiroshima to a certain extent, but at the same time, it still makes no sense to me why they would take so many lives at once. The original target was the T-shaped bridge in the middle of the city and right across from the bridge was an elementary school. I just don’t get it, and I guess I never really will. Everyone always says “well we would have lost so many more American lives”. But we still killed people, it doesn’t matter what nationality they are, so it’s hard for me to see the rationale behind it. Hiroshima and the emotions behind it are incredibly difficult to put into words, so I will stop here.

After Hiroshima, our group was headed to Nara, where we would be spending our last night in Japan. Our group arrived in Nara around 6:30 right as the sun was going down, and we set out to find the place we were staying at. We eventually discovered that it was actually two subway stops sooner than when we had gotten off, so we got back on the subway. Thanks to Graham and his wonderful sense of direction, we found our ryokan, a traditional Japanese guest house that Victoria had booked for 9 of us the week before. The house we were staying in was over 150 years old, we had to take our shoes off before we entered, we slept on tatami mats on the floor, and we got to wear kimonos and slippers around. The place was absolutely beautiful, and it was owned by a man who moved to Japan from Britain 13 years ago. He spoke with a British accent, but he was fluent in Japanese. There were 9 of us booked there for the night, so Graham, Shauna, and I were the only ones from our original Hiroshima group staying there, and the girls who stayed in Kyoto met us there later. The other 3 went back to Nara and found a cheap hotel for the night, and we said we would see them once we got back on the ship. Once the other 6 girls arrived at the ryokan, we split up into our rooms. Alli, Brittany and I shared a 3 person room, which was in the traditional Japanese style and was so cute. Once everyone finally got a chance to set all of their stuff down, we went right across the street to a small Japanese restaurant, where I ordered dumplings and grilled rice balls. After a yummy dinner, all of us went back to our place, hung out, used the free internet, goofed around in our kimonos, talked and relaxed, then went to bed.

 

Day 5 in Japan, day 27 of my voyage

Up, ready and sitting at the breakfast table by 8 am. We sat on the floor around a low table and were served a breakfast of eggs, ham, toast, apples, and bananas. We could have had a traditional Japanese breakfast, but most of us wanted eggs and ham and yumminess. After breakfast, we were venturing to the big park in Nara, which is home not only to the most friendly little deer you will ever meet, but the tallest seated indoor Buddha in the world at the Todaiji temple. The tallest seated Buddha is also in the largest wooden structure in the world. It is incredibly old, and I am surprised that it is still standing. The Buddha was absolutely beautiful, and I know Perry will be incredibly jealous when he sees the pictures of it. We wandered around the temple for a little bit. Alli, Brittany, and I bought bracelets, then we headed back out to the train station to get to Kobe to catch the ship. By this point, all of our shoulders were killing us from carrying our stuff around all day, and we were incredibly happy to get on the train and sit down and relax. The train ride took about half an hour, and we were in Kobe. Got off the train and set out to find Graham a Kobe steak. Now, everyone had been telling me about this Kobe steak, but from the sound of it, it was going to be incredibly expensive, so I was most likely not going to be getting one. We found a place up on the 8^th floor of a building and went up, all 9 of us. To our delight, it was a teppenyaki (spelling?) restaurant, where they cook the food right in front of you. When we sat down, we looked at the menu, and to our delight, they had a lunch special for a steak that was relatively cheap, so Brittany and I decided to split it, since she can’t eat much meat (she’s a vegetarian but couldn’t pass up the steak). They cooked the steak right in front of us then we got to eat it right off the grill. Let me tell you, it was the best steak I have ever had. While it wasn’t the best Kobe steak we could have gotten, it was infinitely better than any other steak I have ever had. Our waiter, who spoke pretty decent English, also told us that that restaurant was the place where cooking in front of customers originated. Apparently, way back in 1945, when his grandfather was working there, American soldiers entered the restaurant and requested that their food be cooked in front of them, and they obliged. Thus, teppenyaki was born. The founder of Beni Hana also came from this restaurant originally, then moved to the US to start his business. Pretty cool, huh?

We all finished lunch, headed across the street for one last sweet ice cream treat, then got back on the ship. All of us were practically crying when we got on the ship, as we didn’t want to leave at all. There was so much that we didn’t see that we would have loved to see, but I guess that just gives me an excuse to go back at some point in my life. ;-) I absolutely fell in love with Japan, and I really hope that I can go back in the future. There is so much culture and the people are all so welcoming, accommodating, and willing to help. The food is amazing, and so are the toilets. The babies are the cutest things I have ever seen, and Brittany and I had to be stopped from stealing one once or twice throughout the trip. Going to Japan made me wish I had more culture in my own life, as the Japanese life seems so focused around culture. I love it! I really hope I can go back one day. Headed out to sea tonight, then in two days, I will be in China and freezing my butt off.

 

Day 28 and 29

Recovered, went to class, “debriefed” Japan in every class, confirmed some more China plans, tried to catch up on sleep, it didn’t happen. China tomorrow!

Packing.....

Day 18

I woke up on February the 4^th after going to bed on February 2^nd. The concept of having a lost day is quite weird. I had my first Global Mental Health exam this morning, and I think I did quite well. There were a couple questions that were a little tricky, but overall, it could have been much worse. We went to the Union and watched Jaws last night. It was fun to watch it with everyone, as there were a few moments where pretty much everyone in the entire place screamed. It is such a great and classic movie, even though it scared me to death when I watched it when I was 7 or 8 with my dad. I fully blame him for my ridiculous fear of sharks.

In other news, I had dinner with my extended family tonight! The extended family program is one where students, faculty, and lifelong learners can sign up to be a part of a shipboard family. A number of students will be assigned to a set of “parents” who may or may not already have kids. I got assigned to Barbara and Phil Yarnell, two absolutely adorable and thoroughly enjoyable lifelong learners. The two of them usually sit in on my global mental health class, but up until today I never realized who they were. My family consists of 8 other students, and we all met for dinner at 5:30. Our parents weren’t eating, as they had been invited to dinner with the captain that night. In talking with them, we found out that this is their third voyage on SAS as lifelong learners. They did one other semester-long voyage as well as one summer voyage. They really enjoy having all of the kids around, and they definitely love to travel. All of us kids at the table got to talking about school and trips and whatnot, and 5 of us found out that we were doing the sleep on the Great Wall trip through The China Guide. John and I are both doing option 2, and the other girls are doing option 1, but we figure we will still see one another on the trip. Our parental unit left around 6:30 or so to head up to the captain’s dinner, but all of us kids sat and talked until around 7:30 or so. It was so much fun, and we are meeting again our first day at sea after Japan. After dinner, I wandered around in search for my friends, who were planning on watching a movie. Lo and behold, I found them in classroom 8, just starting Inglorious Basterds. I know Grandma Max didn’t really like it, but I absolutely loved it. A certain amount of appreciation of Quentin Tarantino is required, which I now have after watching Kill Bill. It had a great plot line, and the acting was phenomenal, especially on the part of Brad Pitt. We set our clocks back one hour tonight, which is always greatly appreciated on movie nights, as we are usually up fairly late. 

 

Day 19

No global studies class today! Which is nice, but I still have to be up at the crack of dawn because I have an 8 a.m. class. It sucks a little bit, but that’s ok. I got the details about my first theology paper today, and it is due the day after Japan. It's terrible, but I guess it has to be done. Tonight was the Mediterranean Sea’s movie night. I am in the Baltic Sea, but the majority of my friends on the ship are in the Mediterranean, so they told me to crash their movie night and go with them. So I went, and I was the only person who wasn’t in that sea that managed to not get kicked out by the Sea’s Living Learning Coordinator (basically an RA). We had cookies and popcorn and watched Top Gun, and it was awesome. Tomorrow is my last A day of classes before Japan, and I can’t wait to get there!!!!

 

Day 20

Woke up today, went to Global Mental Health, got my test back, and got an A!!!! Go me! I was incredibly happy, so hopefully I will be able to keep this up for the rest of my semester in this class. I have my first global studies test tomorrow, so we will see how that goes. It’s 50 multiple choice, so I don’t think it will be too bad, as I usually do really well on multiple choice tests. Otherwise, I had a mostly uneventful day. Got some studying done, but I will be doing most of it tomorrow after I get out of class at 10:45. We were told we were going to have rough seas today, but other than a little bit of rocking and rolling, it hasn’t been bad at all. Last day of classes tomorrow before Asia Day!!!! Woohoo!

 

Day 21

Ok, so I totally take back what I said about the rocking and rolling. It started getting bad really early this morning around 3. We weren’t really rocking from side to side, but now it is rocking a bit more forwards and backwards. When we come down off one wave, we hit another one head on, and the entire ship jolts a little bit and shakes; it’s called pitching. The jolting and shaking doesn’t happen every time, so it isn’t too bad, but it was nearly impossible to sleep last night. I woke up probably every half an hour, and from 5 am on I didn’t sleep, so today has been a ridiculously long day.

Went to class this morning, which got out early (score!), then sat in the garden lounge on deck 6 to study for global studies. I sat in that room all day, right up until 7 pm when our test was. It wasn’t bad at all, and I finished it in about 25 minutes. The rocking of the ship got really bad from lunch until after our test, but it mellowed out a little bit a little later on. They came over the loudspeaker and said that due to bad weather, the captain was having to slow down, which would most likely delay our arrival into Japan. Everyone was incredibly sad to hear about this, as we all just want to be off the ship already! A bunch of us played Apples to Apples until late, then we all headed off to bed, excited not only for Asia day, but the SUPERBOWL!

 

Day 22

Woke up at 7, breakfast at 7:30, headed to the Union at 8, where they were going to try and stream the Superbowl for us. They turned off all the computers in the computer lab and asked people to not use the internet so we had all the bandwidth possible to try and stream the game. They managed to stream the game, and although the quality wasn’t the greatest, at least we got to see the game and the commercials! We got pretty good seats towards the front of the room and on the side, so we could see all the action. We had some diehard fans from both teams in the room, and watching the game with everyone was a blast. How many times will I ever be able to say I watched the Superbowl on a Monday in the middle of the Pacific? Never again. It was so much fun, and while I was sad for Mr. Manning, it was nice to see the Saints win. We are having Asian themed food for dinner, but until then, I am going to try and get some packing done, then start my paper I have due the day after Japan. I will blog again after Japan and let you all know about all of my adventures!!!! Hopefully I will have some great stories!

Middle Of The Pacific

Day 13

It was an absolute struggle getting out of bed today. Being out constantly in the sun for the 4 days I was in Hawaii took all the energy out of me, and having to wake up at 7 didn’t help too much either. Today is the first day of a really long trek to Japan. On the bright side, there are two days that we don’t have class, plus we completely lose the day of February third. Classes are still going well, it was just tough to get back into class mode after being in Hawaii for 4 days straight. One of the best parts about our voyage going the way we are is the fact that every time a time zone changes, we gain an hour of sleep. The voyage that goes the other way around loses an hour of sleep, which really stinks for them. Sleep is incredibly valuable here, and I value every possible hour I can get, but naps don’t happen too often for me. I got some reading done between classes, so I had the night free to do whatever. Our group decided to all pitch in on Twister in Honolulu because we thought it would give us something fun to do on the ship. This may have been one of the best purchases ever. We set it up in the dining room, then had an absolute blast. We got some hilarious pictures and videos, and it is one of the times having long legs has really come in handy. After Twister, we decided to watch a movie. In the end we decided on watching Silence of the Lambs, since there were one or two people that had never seen it. We originally went into the Union and were watching it on Graham’s laptop, but about 45 minutes into the movie we discovered that the classroom next to the Union was empty, so we went in there and were able to hook it up to the huge projector screen. It was awesome to watch it on a bigger screen and with good sound, and there were only 6 of us, so we managed to keep it pretty quiet throughout the entire movie. We decided that movie nights were easily the best way to pass the time in between ports, so this may be happening quite often.

 

Day 14

My days are getting ridiculously monotonous. Wake up, eat, class, read, eat, read, class, eat, hang out, sleep. January 30^th proved to be much more fun and different than my previous B days. We finally got sent the finalized activities schedule in our email, and I'm so excited to see that we had a Zumba class we could go to at six. For those of you who do not know what Zumba is, it’s a fitness class that is very Latin based and set to upbeat music. I did it numerous times at USD, and I am so excited they are offering it on the ship. We managed to talk three of the boys into going, so there was a group of us that all went that consisted of me, Brittany, Shauna, Allie, Graham, Corey, and Bruck. There were probably about 25 of us total doing Zumba, so the room was really crowded. I was excited the boys went to Zumba, because it tends to be a class mostly dominated by women. There is a lot of hip and butt shaking involved, and most guys aren’t that in touch with their feminine side. Not these boys. They were shaking it around with the best of us, and at the end they decided that they might be doing this with us every B day because it was such a great cardio workout. After Zumba, we discovered they were also offering Latin salsa class. So the group of us headed upstairs to do that class. It was so much fun. Of course there were many more guys than girls, but we had so much fun learning the basic salsa steps. We have decided that this might become a basic B day activity schedule for us. After our wonderful 2 hour workout session, we decided that we wanted to watch another movie, so we headed to our empty classroom again. This time we were watching Hannibal, since some people had never seen that movie either. I think we are planning on watching Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2 next. We have a lot of movies to get through before the end of the voyage, but we figure we will probably be able to do it, since we are stuck on the ship with nothing else to do at night anyways. Tomorrow they are offering breakdancing class, so I think I may go to that and make a fool out of myself with the rest of the girls.  

 

Day 15

I have my first round of tests and papers coming up this week, so I have been reading quite a bit and studying as well. I know it definitely doesn’t seem like it, but between classes is when I do my reading so I have my nights free to do what I want. I have a global mental health test on Thursday, which means I need to get to studying, because Wednesday doesn’t exist for us. We don’t have classes on Tuesday, so it will mainly be a study day for me. On the bright side, I already took abnormal psychology, so I don’t think this exam will be too difficult. I also have a Theology paper due on Saturday. It is very strange to me to say that I have a paper due on Saturday, but I figure I basically have spring break every other week, so I can deal with having classes on weekends. Our Theology paper has to be on the topic of “What can theology contribute to sustainability?” We shall see what happens with this paper, as we have mostly just been talking about the book in class. A girl and my teacher got in a debate about sustainability today. My teacher is very skeptical about the idea of sustainability so he was talking against it, but the girl’s major is sustainability, so she got rather offended at some of the points he made. It was a very heated debate that lasted about 45 minutes of class, and once 3:15 rolled around, she left class, even though he was not done talking yet. It was incredibly intense, but it was a very interesting debate to witness. After classes, I got some reading done, then had dinner and went to breakdancing class. After about 5 minutes, I sat down and watched people rather than participate in the activities. The kid that was teaching us is from London and has been breakdancing for 9 years, so he was absolutely incredible. After breakdancing we headed up to dinner, then we went to watch the boys play basketball for a little while up on the top deck. It was really windy, so every type of shot they made would go off course. After basketball, it was movie time. Kill Bill was the movie of choice, and we decided that the next three nights will be Tarantino nights, with Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2, then Inglorious Basterds.

One great thing about the direction of our voyage is the fact that we are constantly gaining an hour of sleep as we travel through various time zones. The voyages that go the other way are constantly losing an hour of sleep and only have 23 hour days, so I am very happy we are going the direction we are. I am also getting a bit of a cold, so I am really hoping it goes away before Japan. Speaking of Japan, a group of 7 of us have made plans for Japan travel. We are going to Yokohama, Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, and Kobe. All of this in just 5 short days. We are going to the fresh fish market early in the morning in one place, the wine baths in another, a karaoke bar in another, and temples in another. It is going to be so much to take in such a short amount of time, but our group has decided that sleep will most likely not be happening. Now that we have definite plans for Japan, I am so excited to finally get there. Being on the ship is fun, but it is nothing compared to exploring foreign countries with newfound close friends. I have my best friends from home and school, but there will be nothing like having friends from all over the country who shared the experience of going around the world together. I have friends from Los Angeles, Washington, Arizona, South Carolina, Kansas (this should make grandma happy J), and so many other places. Everyone has already said that if we are ever traveling and need somewhere to crash we can always call them. I know people from Canada, London, Africa, and other places too. Everyone is always so friendly, no matter what happens. I can sit with anyone at lunch and they are so welcoming. The men who work in the dining hall are also incredibly amazing. The group of us always eat in the same place in the dining hall so we can have the same attendant, Alan, every time. He now knows us by name, and he also knows what we usually like to drink for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He is from the Philippines and has a family, but he absolutely loves his job and all the girls on board that sit in his section are absolutely in love with him. I usually carry my water bottle to the dining hall in the morning to fill before class, and he usually takes it the second I put it down on the table and he puts ice and water in it for me. The other members of the crew are also amazing. My cabin steward, Auxilio, is unbelievable. They clean our cabins every day. The bathroom gets cleaned, and they make our beds and will generally clean everything in the room. If I leave a pair of pants on the floor, they will pick them up and fold them and lay them neatly on the bed. They work so hard, and most of us don’t really like the fact that they do everything for us. I really don’t care if my bed is made every day, and I know I can put my dishes away by myself as well. But the crew absolutely loves doing their jobs, as it gives them a way of connecting with the students. One of my other favorite waiters is from Jamaica and is constantly singing and happy. When we ask him how he is, he usually replies with something along the lines of “I have a smile on my face and in my heart and I get to see all of you, so today is a great day.” You can’t fake happiness like that. He is one of the most naturally happy people I have ever met, and it is always an absolute joy to see him in the morning right after I roll out of bed.

Speaking of the dining room, let me say a few words about the food. I enjoy breakfast, it is my favorite meal of the day. Oh the ship, they always put out fruit, yogurt, and eggs every morning. There is always either pancakes or French toast, never both on the same day. Sometimes we are lucky enough to get really greasy bacon, and there is usually some type of omlette and potatoes. They always have English muffins and a bagel of some type and cereal, and if we are lucky they will have fresh bananas and oranges. It is common practice to steal the good fruit when they have it, and I usually cram a banana in my backpack as a snack for later in the day. We also have the absolute best chocolate croissants ever. They are usually fresh and still warm when I get down to breakfast since I am up so early for class. Whereas breakfast is usually pretty good and I almost always like it, lunch and dinner are a little bit different. I can tell you, without failure, what is for lunch and dinner every single day. There is always salad, and pasta and potatoes of some kind are guaranteed. There are always two kinds of meat; either chicken or beef and a fish of some kind. There is always soup, and there is always bread for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Overall, the food is getting very monotonous. There are some days when the food is better than others. I usually eat half a plate of salad and either a quarter or half a plate of pasta, then I usually get some kind of fruit. Every once in a while, dessert will be yummy. They had great coconut cake one night, then chocolate cake and brownies another. Other times I can’t stand the desserts, as they try and put random ingredients together to make something yummy, and they simply fail. They usually have snack time around ten, but I’m either asleep or watching a movie during this time, so no snack for me (which is probably better anyways).

 

Day 16

Today is the last day of class before no class day tomorrow. We don’t have classes tomorrow in order to adjust to the big time change that will be happening soon. Tomorrow is February 2^nd, then the next day of my life is February 4^th. We cross the international date line, so for us, February 3^rd simply does not exist. My year will only be 364 days long. I do like the fact that they give us days off while at sea, as it gives us some time to catch up on work and reading.  We have also formed a group for our global studies project. Like I said earlier, global studies is the class that every student on semester at sea is required to take. We also have to do a group project in groups of 6 or 7. We have to do a project in which we collect information from each country we visit, and make a lesson plan for high school seniors based on our research. Our project must also involve the theme of our voyage: sustainability. Some of the suggested topics were recycling, water, accepting homosexuality, and waste management in various countries. To our group, none of these sounding like they would be even remotely appealing to us or high school seniors, and they seemed somewhat difficult to research both in each country and on the ship, as we have very limited internet. Sustainability, we were told, does not simply refer to natural resources, but to human life as well. It has been suggested that we need to reduce the world population in order to save resources and to prevent us from completely destroying our earth. My group, which consists of me, Brittany, Carson, Simone, Lydia, Graham, and Thomas, took all of these facts and looked at them. We asked ourselves questions: What would be interesting to study? What is relatively easy to look at in each country? What would interest high school seniors? We came up with a few things….food, sleep, partying, blah, blah, blah. Then, we collectively had a lightbulb moment. Sex. Always an interesting topic for high school seniors, we also thought it would be an interesting topic to look at in various countries. Since the idea of sustainability suggests that we need to reduce the population of the world, we want to look at a few things in each country. First, is birth control readily available in each country (it should be fun to go to various drug stores in each country and look at condom boxes, hehe)? Second, who is responsible for birth control, men or women? Third, are there laws concerning how many children you can have, such as in China? Fourth, is there any type of sex ed in schools? These are all questions we want to look at in every country we go to. I think it will be rather interesting to look at some of these questions, especially in places like China (where they have a limit on the number of children one can have), and India (where the country is so poor that most of them probably can’t afford birth control). I also think it will be interesting because these countries most likely have different views on sex than America. In America, sex is still relatively taboo. It is not talked about or spoken of openly in most circles, except with very close friends. Many other countries throughout the world, especially in Europe are very open about sex. In some countries, one is expected to be totally pure before marriage, in other countries, it doesn’t really matter. In some countries we go to, I am sure some people will be open in talking about sex, in other countries, they will most likely be ashamed or embarrassed to talk about it. This is a project we must research throughout the semester and in each country, then present it at the very end of the voyage, and eventually, the ten best groups’ projects will actually be taught in schools. We got our topic approved, so now all we have to do is start researching once we get to countries.

Tonight is Zumba class again, and I am pretty excited to dance around and watch the boys try to shimmy again. There is also an onboard dance tonight, but I haven’t decided whether or not I am going to go. I think I may take a Benadryl and go to bed, as I really want to try and get rid of this cold before Japan, as it is apparently very rude to blow your nose in public.

 

Day 17

No class day!!!! But it is also a study day, as I have an exam for my Global Mental Health class tomorrow. I went to the dance for about half an hour last night, just long enough to hear “On A Boat”, then I took two Benadryl and tumbled into bed. Although there was no class today, I still had to get up at 7:30. SAS does a picture on deck for each school, and my schools’ time was at 8:20. I was really hoping to sleep in, as I woke up still really sleepy from the meds I took. After breakfast and my picture, I came back to my room, read a reading for a class until about 9:30, then fell asleep until 11:15, when Graham knocked on my door to see if I wanted to go to lunch. We knocked on everyone’s door, but apparently I was not the only one who slept fairly late. After lunch, we watched a movie, and then headed up to deck 6 to study before dinner. Jaws is on tonight, and I am really excited to watch it on the big screen in the union. I got the majority of my studying done before dinner, so I just have to review before Jaws, then I have my exam tomorrow morning at 8. We cross the international date line tonight, so I go to bed on the 2^nd and wake up on the 4^th….strange.

We also finished up some plans for Japan tonight. One night 5 of us will be staying in a hostel in Tokyo, then the next night 7 of us will be sleeping in a capsule hotel. A capsule hotel is what many Japanese businessmen will use while they are traveling, or if they are too tired to make the commute home after a late night at work. It is basically like sleeping in a coffin. Each “capsule” is about 2 meters by 1 meter, and bathrooms are outside the capsule and are communal. Most will have a television inside, and many also have a wireless internet connection. They also usually have sections that divide them by men and women. Some hotels may have only 50 capsules, and others have up to 700. You can google them and find pictures, but we figured it would be a really fun experience for one night in Japan. Japan is definitely going to be the most expensive country we travel to throughout the voyage, so hopefully I don’t go completely broke while I am traveling around. One thing I am really excited for is the food in Japan! Basically, I am a ridiculously picky eater, but I have made it a personal goal of mine to be more adventurous food-wise on this trip, as I will probably never get to have authentic food from most of these countries ever again. We are going to a fish market really early in the morning in one of the places we are going to, and the sushi is apparently amazing, so I will definitely be trying some. My friends (especially Christine and Perry) will be rather jealous of this one. If I could ship some home to them, I definitely would, but that might smell a little icky and not taste too great by the time it gets home. The group of us also bought rail passes for Japan, since we are going to so many different places. It was 300 bucks, but it allows us to take any of the trains to any city, and we can also use many of the buses within cities as well. The rail pass is only available to tourists to Japan, and many people on our voyage ended up buying them because we will be traveling around so much.

In other news, today is February 2^nd. It is hard to believe that one year ago is the day that changed my life in a big way. I’m sure most of you reading this know this already, but it was one year ago today that I lost vision completely in my left eye. The week in the hospital that followed was one that was full of tests and stress in trying to figure out exactly what happened. One year ago, I never would have dreamed that I would be doing what I am today. I never would have thought I would be sailing around the world with 600 other college students, looking at life in other places and experiencing it for myself. Looking at the world through one eye will be different (not simply because of the lack of depth perception) because it is a constant reminder to me to live every single day to the fullest. I have always been the type of person to live from day to day, not really focusing too much on the future, but just taking things one step and day at a time (which I know sometimes drives my mother crazy J). This trip is allowing me to truly live in the moment. Knowing that I had a blood clot in my eye that could have very easily gotten stuck in my brain and caused much more damage allows me to enjoy every single moment in my life. I also know that my life could always be much worse, and I know I will get to see how my life could have been had I been born in a different country. Over half of the people in India live on less than $2 a day. Areas in South Africa and Ghana have extreme poverty and many cases of HIV and AIDS. Infant mortality rates are much higher in some countries we are going to than in the United States. When looking at all of these facts, what happened to me seems relatively trivial. I am well fed, I have a place to sleep, and I have family and friends who love me unconditionally. I get to go to a great school, I know I will be able to work and have a steady job once I graduate college, I can participate in every aspect of government in my country, and I can marry whoever I want. Would it have been nice to never have had that blood clot in my eye? Sure. Do I wish I could still see out of my eye? Only when someone throws something to me or I have to shake someone’s hand or parallel park my car. Did I learn something about myself because of what happened to me a year ago? Definitely. I learned that I can do absolutely anything I want to, I can overcome anything life throws at me, and I can do it all with a smile on my face, even during the worst times because I know there are great things for me discover, both in the world and in my future!