25 December. 42°16'59"N, 087°57'11"W. At home.
Merry Christmas.
It’s been 12 days since the MV Explorer pulled into San Diego harbor, and I’m starting to get my land legs back. When I stand still—waiting in line to board an airplane, for example—the room still rolls a little, but the “swells” are getting smaller and will, I’m sure, soon be gone. That’s when I’ll know I’m home.
In addition to the near-record 50-foot walls of water that rolled onto the North Shore of Oahu and held us in Hawaii for a couple of days, I’ve also encountered “The Blizzard of ’09” that hit the East Coast last weekend and shut down everything from Roanoke to Boston, including Haley’s first concert with the Navy Band. Still, we had a nice weekend together, catching up on the final few days of my voyage and her 8 weeks at Navy basic training. I had it far better than she did.
I’ve now been home for almost 5 days, re-acclimating to the Chicago winter and readjusting to the idea that the people I meet in stores or on streets speak the same language and use the same currency that I do. I’ve also begun processing what I’ve experienced over the past 4+ months. I’m sure I’ll continue processing—to use a bit of psychobabble—for a long time to come, perhaps for the rest of my life. But I need to put down a few thoughts while they’re still fresh . . . unprocessed. I suppose this is a fitting way to end the blog.
So here goes: a few thoughts on SAS, the students, and the world.
ISE—the Institute for Shipboard Education—oversees SAS, which truly is a life-changing experience for voyagers: students, faculty, staff, lifelong learners, everybody on the boat. And considering the daunting challenge of owning and operating a 25,000-ton ship, and taking that ship, with 600 to 700 post-pubescent, high-hormonal, mostly affluent students to a dozen-or-so countries over a 15-week period, the people who run the organization do an incredible job.
The University of Virginia adds an academic panache for ISE that, from what I understand, was missing in the previous associations with Pitt, Colorado, and the earlier partners. Semester at Sea had become known as “the booze cruise.” While there’s certainly plenty of boozing that takes place for some students while in port, the ship itself is fairly dry. I don’t know if that’s because of the academic environment UVA has created or because of the more stringent rules that ISE has laid down regarding alcohol use onboard, but whatever the case, the “cruise” part is rather light on the “booze” part these days.
That partnership between UVA and ISE, however, is a peculiar alliance. Virginia is one of the best, most demanding, most selective universities in the country. And its academic standards match its academic standing. Our syllabi had to pass muster with corresponding departments at the university, and many faculty members were asked to add requirements to our syllabi in order to meet Virginia’s stringent standards.
ISE, on the other hand, is a business. While the organization has minimum requirements for admission to SAS—2.75 gpa at an accredited college or university, good “academic and judicial standing,” demonstrated writing skills, etc—its first priority is to fill the boat. The fall ’09 voyage was certainly an economic challenge, with only 550+ of the 700+-student capacity on board. As a result, some students were admitted who, in other years might not have been. One of my students, for example, had just finished high school and won’t enroll at an undergraduate institution until the coming spring semester (ISE calls this a “gap-year” admission). Another had been accepted at an undergraduate institution but had completed only one year of community college. And, based on the writing I saw—and from what I heard from students themselves—many on board hadn’t taken a writing course since early in their high-school years. Clearly, these—and many others—would and do struggle with standards set by a highly selective university.
This tension between maintaining the high standards demanded by UVA and accommodating the academic capabilities of students who didn’t graduate from top-tier high schools, who didn’t score 1500 on the SAT, or who aren’t attending Stanford, Dartmouth, Michigan, or UVA itself—while still challenging the students who are!—is, to my mind, the toughest job of the onboard faculty. I certainly wasn’t always happy with the way I did it.
The students: so much to say, so little space. I mentioned the academic diversity already. The economic diversity was equally broad, perhaps broader.
A significant segment of the students were of a class I referred to as “the Kobe beef of the millennial generation.” These boys and girls, most but not all coming from very affluent families, have been fed the finest food, housed in the finest homes, massaged, curried, pampered, and told “you are the best” until they believe it. Their goal seemed to be to survive the academics while at sea in order to indulge themselves in port.
Some would reboard at each port carting thousands of dollars in goods. (Reputedly, one girl spent $8,000 on clothes alone in Spain.) Several rented villas—villas!—in resort areas along the beaches of Spain, Morocco, and Mauritius. Many went skydiving several times in South Africa and Hawaii at $125 a jump plus another $150 for an accompanying videographer. Many proudly displayed dad’s or mom’s American Express card, joking, “Dad/mom probably won’t be happy when he/she gets the bill next month.” And all went on the most expensive land experiences: camel excursions in the Sahara, luxury safaris in South Africa, flights to see the Taj Mahal and Varanasi in India, 5-day excursions to Beijing and the Great Wall. I’m sure several students had gone through $50,000 or more, including the cost of the voyage itself, by the time they stepped off the ship in San Diego. Like the Kobe beef, they’re overpriced for what you get. One parent’s sign on the dock in San Diego said it all: “Princess.”
A small but noisy segment of the student body—both affluent and not so affluent—hit the closest bar or club almost as soon as Rita announced “the ship is cleared” over the intercom. I’m sure these students saw some sights and participated in some activities that didn’t include alcohol, but to hear them recount their time in port, one would think these experiences were merely brief diversions. At the same time, alcohol sales on board during the 3-hour period each evening when students could buy drinks—maximum of 3 a night—were weak. In fact, the captain shut down alcohol sales on the 7th deck for the final few weeks of the voyage because the slow sales didn’t justify the staffing expense. “Social drinking” isn’t the objective for these kids; it’s binge drinking—drinking to get drunk. When one of my faculty colleagues asked a student why drinking into oblivion is so appealing, the student replied, “We’ve been told over and over that we’ll be the first American generation to live worse than our parents. Why shouldn’t we just go out and get drunk?” Is this the beginning of a new “lost generation”?
Then there were the students who were on scholarship or had scraped and saved—or whose parents had scraped and saved—to put themselves onboard. In most ports, these kids stayed close to the ship, participating in low-cost service visits to schools, villages, orphanages (and having wonderful cross-cultural experiences) but seeing few of the exotic sights their wealthier brethren were enjoying. One girl I had dinner with told me that she rationed herself to one “neat trip” on the voyage (she chose the Great Wall), but, to afford that trip, she stayed in Cape Town, Chennai, and other ports, watching her shipmates return with stash gathered from Marrakech, the Taj, and a Kruger Park safari lodge. There’s no remedy for this inequity, but I suppose there’s a life lesson for students: some are more equal than others.
Finally, the largest segment—at least so I’d like to think—were those who adapted to the dual life demanded by an SAS voyage: student at sea, explorer in port. During days on the ship, I’d see them in the dining-room/study-hall or the piano-bar/study-hall or the small library or computer lab. From what I could tell, they spent these times doing what they’d be doing if they were on their home campuses: studying, discussing coursework with fellow students, or meeting with faculty. Of course, they’d also be internet surfing or Facebook cruising—at least those would who could afford the cost of exceeding their allotted 150 free internet minutes—but for the most part, the ship was exactly what I describe to those who ask: a floating university.
In port, most of these kids would head down the gangplank with a large backpack hanging from their shoulders heading off to independent-travel experiences. They took local busses to Ghana’s Cape Coast, trains to Fez and Marrakech, safaris in South Africa that they had arranged through the internet, overnight train trips in India, a bus to Simitai, China, where they hiked and camped out on the Great Wall. They’d come back to the ship with tales of late trains, missed busses, cross-cultural misunderstandings, and in-transit plan changes, but they all made it back. These are the experiences that most of the students will remember. Not to say that the student/voyagers didn’t also know how to party at the clubs, but partying wasn’t the reason they spent the $25,000-and-more to take the voyage.
I hope that this segment—and they included kids who came from money and those who didn’t—is the most representative of the generation. They certainly represent what a Semester at Sea voyage is supposed to be about.
The world has changed a lot in the 42 years since I boarded a Denver-bound flight in May, 1967, and joined the rest of the Michigan Men’s Glee Club on our 8-week voyage westbound around the world. On that trip, we were departing from and returning to a country that was the envy of the globe. We were the richest, most powerful nation, with a standard of living that, for most other nations’ citizens, was almost unimaginable. That experience was a watershed for all of us and I think gave us—certainly gave me—an appreciation for what we have in the U.S.
Since ’67, I’ve traveled outside the U.S. many times, including a second trip around the world, this one on business in 1998. In these travels, my focus was on the work that I was doing. I saw change in the countries I visited, of course, but most of the time I was distracted by thoughts of the next meeting or the training class I’d just completed. Fall ‘09 was different, and this time I noticed how different the world is from the one I saw in ’67. It’s fair to say that much of the world has caught up with us.
When someone asks me “what was your favorite country?” I say “the United States.” This is still the greatest country. But it’s no longer the only country. Japan is cleaner and more modern—much more modern. China’s wealth is exploding, the Chinese are able to get big things done much more quickly than we are, and their cities offer every consumer good available on U.S. store shelves. The Vietnamese, our former enemies, are friendlier. The Ghanaians, despite their deep poverty and horrible infrastructure, seem happier. I could live in Hong Kong, Cadiz, Cape Town, or Yokohama—especially Yokohama. I wouldn’t have said that about any place we visited in ’67.
I believe all this could be a good thing for the U.S. The more other countries enjoy improving lifestyles, the less likely they are to covet ours. Terrorists hate us because of what we have. The Vietnamese and Chinese, now enjoying a quality of life that compares favorably with ours, at least in the cities, don’t want to destroy us, they want to be like us, economically if not politically. And perhaps the rising economic power of Asia will be just the kick in the butt we need to inspire us to do what we’ve always been able to do: rise higher.
The other thing many of the countries we visited have is a sense of community. That’s certainly true in Vietnam, China, Japan, Ghana, and among the majority Black population of South Africa. They are succeeding because, whether because of their cultures, their government, or both, they are all rowing in the same direction. Meanwhile, we seem to be at each other’s throats, unable to achieve consensus on almost anything. Moreover, we honor those who inflame the differences and disdain those who seem to be trying to bring us together. Continuing on that path is a sure way to becoming a second-class power.
Would I do it again? Sure! But not for a while—a couple of years, at least. And if I do, it’s hard to imagine that the people I share the experience with then could match in quality and congeniality the people—especially the faculty—I shared the past 4 months with. Bob Chapel was right when he told me last summer, “you’ll make new friends you’ll want to keep in close touch with long after December.” He says his greatest strength as a director is casting, and he proved it with the faculty “cast.” As wonderful as are my memories of the ports we visited, the people I shared it with made the voyage.
That’s it. Fin. Happy 2010.
28 December 2009
18 December 2009
Day 117--Flying to Washington
18 December. En Route (by plane) from Las Vegas to Washington DC.
After 4 days with daughters, son, and grandchildren, I’m heading to DC on the last leg of my re-entry voyage before returning home to Libertyville on the 20th. Waiting in Washington is Haley, who will be performing Saturday and Sunday as the newest member of the U.S. Navy Band in their annual holiday concert at Constitution Hall. Should be a very exciting—and proud—couple of days. And they should be a nice way to mark the end of the 4-month (almost to the date) voyage.
The sea portion of the voyage ended, as expected, precisely at 0800 Monday the 14th when the MV Explorer’s crew tossed the guidelines to the stevedores on the San Diego Pier. Meanwhile, a couple hundred parents waved balloons, streamers, and hand-painted “welcome-home” signs from the dock, the harbor restaurant nearby, and the balconies of several hotels sitting opposite the San Diego waterfront. The 7th-deck and upper railings were packed with students, faculty, and staff watching the elated parents jumping and clapping on the shore. It was quite the festive arrival.
The convocation on Sunday was a bit long but appropriately formal and celebratory at the same time. Bob Chapel delivered a short but moving valedictory in his final official function as academic dean. One of the student speakers chose the event to orate on the need for fair trade and for listeners to look for goods made by people earning greater than slave wages—probably not the most appropriate topic for a convocation, but well-delivered. A second student spoke from the heart and to the hearts of us all, focusing on the risks he’d taken, the experiences we’d all shared, and the need, as he said, to “go through life not looking for happiness but with happiness.” Deans Byron and Nick said a few words, a lifelong learner talked about the voyage as a way of breaking out into a new life following the recent death of her husband, graduating seniors and all-A students were recognized, and our small choir, with the Communication Arts Department on tenor, sang a couple of tunes, including a terrific Scott DeVeaux arrangement of “Homeward Bound.” We all—all 500+ in attendance—ended the convocation singing a couple choruses of “Seasons of Love” from Rent, but with voyage-specific lyrics by Karen Barnes (“One hundred fifty-four thousand nine hundred minutes . . . of Fall 2009”). It could have been very schlocky; it was rousing . . . and moving.
The disembarkation was, in a way, emblematic of the logistics we’d seen throughout the voyage: partially remarkable for its efficiency, partially frustrating for the lack of some planning that could have made the process much easier and faster. On Saturday—2 days before arriving in San Diego—we had to have all but essentials packed in boxes and suitcases for the ship’s staff to haul to the 2nd deck, ready to be offloaded. I should clarify that the staff hauled only the faculty’s and staff’s boxes and suitcases; the students had to lug their own luggage to the 2nd deck because, we’ve been told, the crew had been somewhat downsized in response to the somewhat reduced size of the student body—and resulting reduced income.
On Monday, then, immediately after docking in San Diego, the local stevedores began unloading the more-than-2000 pieces of luggage—boxes, duffels, suitcases, golf clubs—and placing them in an adjacent warehouse for reclaiming. To identify our pieces, and to facilitate locating them in the warehouse, we were given colored tags to affix to each piece, with each group—faculty, lifelong earners, the various student “seas”—identified by a different color. The stevedores, then, were instructed to keep all similarly-tagged items together.
The first three groups off the ship were select students (all-A’s and a few others), tagged beige; the Andaman Sea students, winners of the Sea Olympics, tagged white; and faculty, staff, and lifelong learners, all tagged gray. Of course, the stevedores couldn’t tell the difference among the white, beige, and gray tags. So when we entered the warehouse to reclaim boxes and luggage and transport them to waiting shipping services, all bags for the first 3 groups off the ship were scattered throughout the two large rooms of the warehouse. Following 30 minutes of searching, I located my 2 book boxes in one corner, my larger miscellaneous box in another corner, my golf clubs in yet another corner, and my duffle bag in an entirely different room, all intermingled among items bearing white, beige, and gray tags.
A stevedore told us that the Carnival Cruise ship parked at the adjacent dock had disgorged 3,000 passengers and bags within 2 hours because they had used a number system to group luggage rather than colored tags—a lesson for SAS from the 100th voyage.
By 1100, I had reclaimed my boxes, duffle, and clubs, waited in line for 30 minutes for a porter to help haul them to the UPS truck parked outside the warehouse, turned them over to UPS, and jumped in a taxi for the 15-minute ride to the airport. I managed to get on an earlier flight to Las Vegas, and, by 4pm, I was surrounded by grandkids.
Flight’s landing. I’ll have to finish this final entry over the weekend. It just occurred to me that, landing at Dulles, I’m now about as far east as Norfolk, the port from which we embarked 4 months ago.
I’ve traveled around the world.
After 4 days with daughters, son, and grandchildren, I’m heading to DC on the last leg of my re-entry voyage before returning home to Libertyville on the 20th. Waiting in Washington is Haley, who will be performing Saturday and Sunday as the newest member of the U.S. Navy Band in their annual holiday concert at Constitution Hall. Should be a very exciting—and proud—couple of days. And they should be a nice way to mark the end of the 4-month (almost to the date) voyage.
The sea portion of the voyage ended, as expected, precisely at 0800 Monday the 14th when the MV Explorer’s crew tossed the guidelines to the stevedores on the San Diego Pier. Meanwhile, a couple hundred parents waved balloons, streamers, and hand-painted “welcome-home” signs from the dock, the harbor restaurant nearby, and the balconies of several hotels sitting opposite the San Diego waterfront. The 7th-deck and upper railings were packed with students, faculty, and staff watching the elated parents jumping and clapping on the shore. It was quite the festive arrival.
The convocation on Sunday was a bit long but appropriately formal and celebratory at the same time. Bob Chapel delivered a short but moving valedictory in his final official function as academic dean. One of the student speakers chose the event to orate on the need for fair trade and for listeners to look for goods made by people earning greater than slave wages—probably not the most appropriate topic for a convocation, but well-delivered. A second student spoke from the heart and to the hearts of us all, focusing on the risks he’d taken, the experiences we’d all shared, and the need, as he said, to “go through life not looking for happiness but with happiness.” Deans Byron and Nick said a few words, a lifelong learner talked about the voyage as a way of breaking out into a new life following the recent death of her husband, graduating seniors and all-A students were recognized, and our small choir, with the Communication Arts Department on tenor, sang a couple of tunes, including a terrific Scott DeVeaux arrangement of “Homeward Bound.” We all—all 500+ in attendance—ended the convocation singing a couple choruses of “Seasons of Love” from Rent, but with voyage-specific lyrics by Karen Barnes (“One hundred fifty-four thousand nine hundred minutes . . . of Fall 2009”). It could have been very schlocky; it was rousing . . . and moving.
The disembarkation was, in a way, emblematic of the logistics we’d seen throughout the voyage: partially remarkable for its efficiency, partially frustrating for the lack of some planning that could have made the process much easier and faster. On Saturday—2 days before arriving in San Diego—we had to have all but essentials packed in boxes and suitcases for the ship’s staff to haul to the 2nd deck, ready to be offloaded. I should clarify that the staff hauled only the faculty’s and staff’s boxes and suitcases; the students had to lug their own luggage to the 2nd deck because, we’ve been told, the crew had been somewhat downsized in response to the somewhat reduced size of the student body—and resulting reduced income.
On Monday, then, immediately after docking in San Diego, the local stevedores began unloading the more-than-2000 pieces of luggage—boxes, duffels, suitcases, golf clubs—and placing them in an adjacent warehouse for reclaiming. To identify our pieces, and to facilitate locating them in the warehouse, we were given colored tags to affix to each piece, with each group—faculty, lifelong earners, the various student “seas”—identified by a different color. The stevedores, then, were instructed to keep all similarly-tagged items together.
The first three groups off the ship were select students (all-A’s and a few others), tagged beige; the Andaman Sea students, winners of the Sea Olympics, tagged white; and faculty, staff, and lifelong learners, all tagged gray. Of course, the stevedores couldn’t tell the difference among the white, beige, and gray tags. So when we entered the warehouse to reclaim boxes and luggage and transport them to waiting shipping services, all bags for the first 3 groups off the ship were scattered throughout the two large rooms of the warehouse. Following 30 minutes of searching, I located my 2 book boxes in one corner, my larger miscellaneous box in another corner, my golf clubs in yet another corner, and my duffle bag in an entirely different room, all intermingled among items bearing white, beige, and gray tags.
A stevedore told us that the Carnival Cruise ship parked at the adjacent dock had disgorged 3,000 passengers and bags within 2 hours because they had used a number system to group luggage rather than colored tags—a lesson for SAS from the 100th voyage.
By 1100, I had reclaimed my boxes, duffle, and clubs, waited in line for 30 minutes for a porter to help haul them to the UPS truck parked outside the warehouse, turned them over to UPS, and jumped in a taxi for the 15-minute ride to the airport. I managed to get on an earlier flight to Las Vegas, and, by 4pm, I was surrounded by grandkids.
Flight’s landing. I’ll have to finish this final entry over the weekend. It just occurred to me that, landing at Dulles, I’m now about as far east as Norfolk, the port from which we embarked 4 months ago.
I’ve traveled around the world.
14 December 2009
Day 112-- Last Day Before San Diego
13 December. 30°52’N, 123°43’W. Speed= 23 knots. Course= 070
“The storm of the century” never appeared. We’re now a little less than 15 hours before our scheduled arrival in Sand Diego harbor, and, other than a few gently rolling swells north of Oahu, the past 4 days have been smooth and relatively sunny. In fact, Thursday was a picture-perfect day on the Pacific: the sea looking like a massive, blue comforter, rising and falling in smooth waves; skies absolutely clear; temperatures in the mid 70s. It was as if SAS had negotiated with the gods of the sea and sky to engineer one final, perfect day on the water.
We sailed out of Honolulu harbor right at 1600 Wednesday the 9th, turned east, cruised about 2 miles offshore, passing downtown Honolulu, the beaches of Waikiki with the high-rise towers of Radissons and Outriggers dwarfing the beautiful, diminutive, pink grace of the Royal Hawaiian. Between us and the beach, a single boat towing two Japanese (no doubt) tourists suspended beneath a red-and-white parachute, both waving at the beautiful MV Explorer as we passed by. As we rounded Diamond Head, as if on cue, a couple of humpbacks breeched and blew water salutes from their blowholes. Then we turned northeast and paralleled the eastern shore of Oahu until, finally, it disappeared off the port stern. We’ve made, now, what seems like countless departures from some memorable ports, but the sail away from Honolulu will, undoubtedly, be the one I remember long after we step off the gangplank tomorrow.
The last three days—through this morning, in fact—have been harried and hectic, far moreso than I expected. I dug into some long-ago-turned-in journals on their Vietnam visit from my business communication students. I don’t know that the level of thought has improved much, but either their writing is getting clearer, or I’m developing a new ability to understand the Millennial language: like, ya know, like, it’s about the, like, the tunnels that were, like, ya know, narrow and I kinda, ya know, like got stuck.
Makes sense to me.
Then, by the deadline Friday morning, I had received all of the intercultural comm. take-home final exams. So beginning that afternoon and continuing well into yesterday afternoon, I was reading and grading 28 final exams. The was open-book, but challenging—many students will opt for a “traditional” final, knowing that “open-book” usually means “you’ll spend a long time digging through all the course materials to find the buried answer to this arcane question.” Most of the students did pretty well, finding the correct answers to the objective questions, and making decent connections on the questions that required more than regurgitation.
Yesterday afternoon, then, I started calculating final course grades, which was easy for the 7 students in my public speaking class : 3 A’s, 3 B’s, and a very generous “C.” More difficult for the 24 business comm. and 28 intercultural comm. students. In the end, I awarded more “A’s,” proportionately, than I did even in my most beneficent semesters at the Academy, and far fewer “C’s.” Nothing below a “C,” though I had several students who will carry away from their courses little more than vague memories of me seen through glazed eyes.
Last night was the alumni ball or ambassador’s ball. They can’t seem to decide what to call it, but it’s the ship’s version of a graduation dance. We began with dinner served in the dining room. I was invited to sit at the Captain’s table by Dianne Baker, who had outbid all other comers at the ship’s auction for the privilege of sitting across from Captain Jeremy Kingston and his wife, Apple. Dianne, in fact, had been the big winner, if that’s the right term, at the auction, outbidding all others for such prizes as a week in a studio apartment overlooking Central Park; a week in a Summit County, Colorado, cabin; 10 minutes of steering the ship on the bridge; the right to blow the ship’s horn as we sail into San Diego harbor tomorrow morning; and—the most prized of the prizes—two backstage passes to watch a Saturday Nite Live dress rehearsal. For that, I believe she paid over $2,000. Dianne made the auction a great night for SAS.
The Chapels, Jim and Shamim, and a few others were also at the table. All in all, it was a pleasant evening of shrimp, onion soup, not-quite-filet-mignon, and a decent wine that took us to about 10pm, when the students adjourned to the union for the dance, and I went back to my cabin to enjoy the remainder of a quiet evening and think abut today’s packing.
After submitting grades into the UVA system this morning, I packed what I could into the two book boxes I had picked up from the assistant dean’s office and the one large box I bought at the UPS store in downtown Honoulu. Between the three boxes, my large duffle bag, and, of course, my golf clubs, I’m sending most of my stuff home via UPS. I’m hoping the rest—some clothes and odds & ends—fits into my rollaboard and backpack. We’ll see.
So tomorrow morning at 0800, it all ends. We dock at 8, US customs starts clearing the ship immediately, the first passengers—3 students who came out on top at casino night, followed by the all-“A’s (is it just me, or are the priorities a little confused?), followed by the winning “sea” in the Explorer Olympics—should disembark around 1000. The faculty and staff follow, probably clearing around 1100. Then I locate my boxes and bags from among the 2,000 pieces that will be collected in a dockside warehouse, I schlep them to the UPS representative, hand them over, and depart for the San Diego airport.
I expect to spend the next couple of weeks decompressing and digesting. The decompression will take place mostly on my couch, watching TV, reading the newspaper, enjoying home. The digesting will be another matter, drawing together all of the experiences from the past 4 months and coming up with something to take away from it all. I have new feelings about the world, very different, in both good ways and not-so-good ways, from my feelings before August 21st. I have strong opinions about SAS, who provides an incredibly rich experience for all of us: students, faculty, staff, lifelong learners, families. And I have strong opinions about the students, a very select slice of American 18- to 22-year-olds.
But I need to think about all that. Meanwhile, tonight we have convocation, the final event of the voyage. And I should get ready.
“The storm of the century” never appeared. We’re now a little less than 15 hours before our scheduled arrival in Sand Diego harbor, and, other than a few gently rolling swells north of Oahu, the past 4 days have been smooth and relatively sunny. In fact, Thursday was a picture-perfect day on the Pacific: the sea looking like a massive, blue comforter, rising and falling in smooth waves; skies absolutely clear; temperatures in the mid 70s. It was as if SAS had negotiated with the gods of the sea and sky to engineer one final, perfect day on the water.
We sailed out of Honolulu harbor right at 1600 Wednesday the 9th, turned east, cruised about 2 miles offshore, passing downtown Honolulu, the beaches of Waikiki with the high-rise towers of Radissons and Outriggers dwarfing the beautiful, diminutive, pink grace of the Royal Hawaiian. Between us and the beach, a single boat towing two Japanese (no doubt) tourists suspended beneath a red-and-white parachute, both waving at the beautiful MV Explorer as we passed by. As we rounded Diamond Head, as if on cue, a couple of humpbacks breeched and blew water salutes from their blowholes. Then we turned northeast and paralleled the eastern shore of Oahu until, finally, it disappeared off the port stern. We’ve made, now, what seems like countless departures from some memorable ports, but the sail away from Honolulu will, undoubtedly, be the one I remember long after we step off the gangplank tomorrow.
The last three days—through this morning, in fact—have been harried and hectic, far moreso than I expected. I dug into some long-ago-turned-in journals on their Vietnam visit from my business communication students. I don’t know that the level of thought has improved much, but either their writing is getting clearer, or I’m developing a new ability to understand the Millennial language: like, ya know, like, it’s about the, like, the tunnels that were, like, ya know, narrow and I kinda, ya know, like got stuck.
Makes sense to me.
Then, by the deadline Friday morning, I had received all of the intercultural comm. take-home final exams. So beginning that afternoon and continuing well into yesterday afternoon, I was reading and grading 28 final exams. The was open-book, but challenging—many students will opt for a “traditional” final, knowing that “open-book” usually means “you’ll spend a long time digging through all the course materials to find the buried answer to this arcane question.” Most of the students did pretty well, finding the correct answers to the objective questions, and making decent connections on the questions that required more than regurgitation.
Yesterday afternoon, then, I started calculating final course grades, which was easy for the 7 students in my public speaking class : 3 A’s, 3 B’s, and a very generous “C.” More difficult for the 24 business comm. and 28 intercultural comm. students. In the end, I awarded more “A’s,” proportionately, than I did even in my most beneficent semesters at the Academy, and far fewer “C’s.” Nothing below a “C,” though I had several students who will carry away from their courses little more than vague memories of me seen through glazed eyes.
Last night was the alumni ball or ambassador’s ball. They can’t seem to decide what to call it, but it’s the ship’s version of a graduation dance. We began with dinner served in the dining room. I was invited to sit at the Captain’s table by Dianne Baker, who had outbid all other comers at the ship’s auction for the privilege of sitting across from Captain Jeremy Kingston and his wife, Apple. Dianne, in fact, had been the big winner, if that’s the right term, at the auction, outbidding all others for such prizes as a week in a studio apartment overlooking Central Park; a week in a Summit County, Colorado, cabin; 10 minutes of steering the ship on the bridge; the right to blow the ship’s horn as we sail into San Diego harbor tomorrow morning; and—the most prized of the prizes—two backstage passes to watch a Saturday Nite Live dress rehearsal. For that, I believe she paid over $2,000. Dianne made the auction a great night for SAS.
The Chapels, Jim and Shamim, and a few others were also at the table. All in all, it was a pleasant evening of shrimp, onion soup, not-quite-filet-mignon, and a decent wine that took us to about 10pm, when the students adjourned to the union for the dance, and I went back to my cabin to enjoy the remainder of a quiet evening and think abut today’s packing.
After submitting grades into the UVA system this morning, I packed what I could into the two book boxes I had picked up from the assistant dean’s office and the one large box I bought at the UPS store in downtown Honoulu. Between the three boxes, my large duffle bag, and, of course, my golf clubs, I’m sending most of my stuff home via UPS. I’m hoping the rest—some clothes and odds & ends—fits into my rollaboard and backpack. We’ll see.
So tomorrow morning at 0800, it all ends. We dock at 8, US customs starts clearing the ship immediately, the first passengers—3 students who came out on top at casino night, followed by the all-“A’s (is it just me, or are the priorities a little confused?), followed by the winning “sea” in the Explorer Olympics—should disembark around 1000. The faculty and staff follow, probably clearing around 1100. Then I locate my boxes and bags from among the 2,000 pieces that will be collected in a dockside warehouse, I schlep them to the UPS representative, hand them over, and depart for the San Diego airport.
I expect to spend the next couple of weeks decompressing and digesting. The decompression will take place mostly on my couch, watching TV, reading the newspaper, enjoying home. The digesting will be another matter, drawing together all of the experiences from the past 4 months and coming up with something to take away from it all. I have new feelings about the world, very different, in both good ways and not-so-good ways, from my feelings before August 21st. I have strong opinions about SAS, who provides an incredibly rich experience for all of us: students, faculty, staff, lifelong learners, families. And I have strong opinions about the students, a very select slice of American 18- to 22-year-olds.
But I need to think about all that. Meanwhile, tonight we have convocation, the final event of the voyage. And I should get ready.
09 December 2009
Day 107--In port, Honolulu HI
9 December. In port, Honolulu.
We’re now in the middle of our 6th full day in paradise, “stuck,” you might say, waiting for the giant swells in the North Pacific to settle down before we depart on the last leg of our nearly-4-month voyage. We arrived on time Friday morning, 4 December, just beating the storm, if that’s what it was. And the local newspapers were forecasting the biggest waves in years on the North Shore of Oahu, reputedly one of the best surfing beaches in the world. High surf (forecast in excess of 50-foot walls) are great news for the surfer dudes and dudettes; they’re bad news for a 500-foot ship loaded with desks, chairs, books, students, and irritable faculty. So Captain Jeremy Kingston is keeping us in Honolulu until the swells unswell a little. Latest word is that we'll sail this afternoon.
It’s about 2,500 statute miles from Honolulu to San Diego, and, at top speed, the MV Explorer can do about 30 knots, which is a little under 40 mph. So we could leave here as late as Friday morning and still pull into San Diego on time at 0800 Monday the 14th. But I’m afraid we’ll be on the open water before then. Parking in Honolulu is very expensive. We may be in for a rough few days as we finish up this great adventure.
We arrived in Honolulu while the sun was just starting to rise, pulling into dock 10 at the base of the Aloha Tower at 6am Friday. US Immigration insisted on face-to-face clearance of each passenger, so we all paraded through the faculty lounge to be welcomed back to the US individually. The ship cleared by 9am, and at 9:30, I was leaving with Jim and Shamim to pick up our rental car.
Stepping back onto US soil was exhilarating! Hawaii certainly has its own culture, distinct from almost anywhere else in the country and certainly different than Chicago’s. But I felt like I was home. I could read the signs, I could understand the security guards—and they could understand me—I knew how to use my cash , I knew how to ask for directions, I knew which side of the sidewalk was mine. It’s not the big things that I’ve missed over the past 4 months; it’s all these wonderful little things.
Although the storm was moving in—clouds were building over the Pali cliffs faster than typical—Bob, Jim, and I headed to Luana Hills Country Club on the windward side about 11:30, plenty early to arrive and hit a few balls before our 12:30pm tee time. We hadn’t counted on confusing directions and 3 navigators, however, so, after a 90-minute unscheduled tour back and forth between Diamond Head and Kaneohe, we arrived at Luana Hills—right at the base of the Pali, a place we passed 20 minutes after leaving the ship—at 12:15pm. Fortunately, with weather threatening, the course wasn’t crowded, so we were able to warm up and even get a bite to eat before heading to the first tee.
Luana Hills is a spectacularly beautiful course carved into the base of the Pali cliffs. It’s very hilly, very lush—rain-foresty, in fact—very narrow, and very unforgiving. In addition, because the island had received considerable rain over the previous few days, the course was “cart paths only,” meaning we couldn’t leave the paved paths that lined each fairway. As a result, the round took almost 5 hours to complete despite the fact we were the only ones playing. Worse, the walking up and down slippery hills and ravines wreaked havoc with my right knee—the original equipment. The upshot was that I decided not to play again on Saturday and give the knee a chance to rest before we tackled Mauna Kea on Sunday.
Friday nite, I dropped Jim and Bob off at the ship, and I drove to the Hale Koa Hotel, where I had reserved a room for the night. The Hale Koa sits on Fort DeRussy, located between the Hilton Hawaiian Village and the Outrigger Hotels, and beachfront on Waikiki. It opened in the early ‘70s exclusively for military active and retired members and families, one of the great benefits of those 20 years I spent in the Air Force. While it may not rival a Four Seasons or Ritz, the Hale Koa is a 4-star hotel by any standards. Plus, it houses services one can typically find only on a military base—a base exchange, for instance. And the mai-tais are excellent.
That night I took a short walk down the beach before sitting at a bar for a couple drinks and dinner. I was in my room for the night by 10pm, lying in bed watching the news, and was asleep by 10:30.
Saturday, after taking the car to the golfers, I had breakfast at the Hale Koa then stayed in the room ‘til noon checkout catching up on e-mail and enjoying the fast internet connection. As I said, it’s the little things. At noon, I took a bus back to the ship, dropped off my suitcase, then went to the next-door mall and sat at the bar of the Cantina Bikini, where I watched most of the Florida-Alabama game (#1 vs. #2), and had a couple of Boddingtons. Al Hunt joined me, and we had a great time talking to others, commenting on the game and the fortunes of our teams (his is Texas, so he had far more to talk about), and just enjoying a fall football Saturday, my first and last of the season. If I do this again, it’ll be in the spring. There’s just too much going on in the fall that I enjoy.
When the boys got back from golf, I took the car back to the rental agency after a stop by the Ala Moana mall to pick up some golf balls. Back on the ship by 1800 (6pm), and we sailed for Hilo at 1930.
Hilo is on the northeast side of Hawaii, the Big Island. The Big Island, one of my favorite spots, is a remarkable place. It’s the youngest of the islands, formed by 5 volcanoes, 3 of which—Hualalai, Mauna Loa, and Kilauea—are still active. Kilauea is the one that gets the most press because it’s constantly in eruption, sometimes violently. The resulting lava flows from the volcanoes has formed the island into a series of gently sloping cones rising from sea level all the way up to over 14,000’ at the summit of Mauna Kea. Because of these mountains an valleys, the Big Island is a patchwork of mini climates: tropical on the sunny (south and western) sides at sea level; rainy and jungle on the windward (north and eastern) sides; dry and arid in the saddle between Hulalai and Mauna Kea, where the Parker cattle ranch spreads over thousands of acres; temperate at the intermediate levels between the ocean and 4,000 to 5,000 feet; cold at the summit of the mountains. Besides the US’s highest observatory, the summit of Mauna Kea also has a small ski area.
We arrived at Hilo at 0800 Sunday, and the ship cleared the local authorities by 0830. Jim, Shamim, and I taxied to the Hilo airport to pick up rental cars—Shamim wanted her own so she could explore the Kona side of the island without having to worry about chauffering the golfers around—and we headed to the western, sunny shore. At least, it’s usually sunny. Sunday was an unusually cloudy, drizzly day all over the island. In fact, Mauna Kea resort had had so much rain over the previous 24 hours that the course was closed to carts when we arrived at 1100 for our 1300 (1pm) tee time. The starter told us, though, that if the rains held off, he’d reopen the course by 1. So Jim and I adjourned to the dining room, where I had an excellent mahi mahi sandwich on a ciabatta complemented by a $7 glass if iced tea.
The rains held off, the sun came out for a few minutes, and the course was open for our 1pm tee time. The next 4 ½ hours were alternately wonderful and woeful. The Mauna Kea course is reputedly the best in Hawaii. It sits along the lava-formed coast, with spectacular views, splashing surf, and the obligatory par-3 with a shot over a blue-water cove. The front nine was fun, and my game wasn’t too bad. But as we made the turn, the rains started again—mostly mist but occasional real drops—and by 12, we were soaked and, worse, the course was slippery and slow. Again, maneuvering up and down hills, trying to find my footing, was hell on my knee, and by 16, I wasn’t having fun anymore. My golf was terrible, not a good memory to take away from what, on another day, would surely rank as one of the most beautiful, challenging courses I’ve seen or played. Some day I’ll go back and try again.
Sunday night, the 3 of us stayed at the sister property next to the Mauna Kea: the Hapuna Beach Prince resort. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves (memo to self: the weeks before Xmas are nice and quiet in Hawaii), which helps explain the excellent room rate we got. And the hotel is simply beautiful: several layers of open-air rooms, restaurants, lounges, pools, and lanais stairstepping down to an excellent, very large beach. After a post-golf shower, I went immediately to the open-air lounge overlooking the pool and ocean, ordered a couple of G&Ts, and watched the sun set as I waited for Jim and Shamim to join me for dinner. Life at the high end!
The next morning, Monday, Jim and I left the Hapuna Beach at 0800 and drove to Big Island Country Club, where we met Bob, who had stayed on the ship Sunday performing dean duty. Big Island CC is up the slope of Hualalai about 3,000 feet, so it’s a little cooler and, usually, much windier. But Monday was perfect, a big contrast to the rains at Mauna Kea. The Bug Island CC course was, as Jim said, “rougher” than Mauna Kea’s, partly because the recent rains had prevented them from mowing, rolling, and raking, partly because they don’t have the big-buck backing from Japan that the Mauna Kea has. Still, the course is a nice layout with excellent views along the entire coast, challenging holes, and fair. Again, my golf wasn’t especially good, and my knee was hurting. But the day was fun and the weather couldn’t have been better—an excellent final day of golf for the ’09 season.
We finished the 18 holes by 1:30—again, the course was very uncrowded—and headed back to Hilo, stopping first at a little restaurant in Waimea called “Pau,” where I had a fish sandwich for $6.50 that was better than even the excellent fish sandwich I had paid $18 for at the Mauna Kea on Sunday. When the fish is only a day or two from having been frolicking in the sea, it’s usually pretty good, and this was.
We were back onboard the MV Explorer by 1700 Monday. At 2000 (8pm), the deans called an all-ship meeting to announce that we’d be returning to Honolulu to wait out the big waves. A large cruise ship—the “Pride of America” (owned by Norwegian Caribbean Lines, registered in the Bahamas, sailing with mostly Japanese passengers)—was hold up in Honolulu trying to avoid the swells, and, with passage between Hawaii and Oahu fairly calm, the two ships would trade places. The students went nuts at the news we’d be heading back to Honolulu, especially when they heard they’d be able to get off the ship and not have to return before 9pm Tuesday. The faculty was less than pleased with final exams starting on Wednesday. But, as Bob pointed out, students aren’t locked into their rooms before finals on most other campuses, so they shouldn’t be here. Those who would study anyway, still would; those who wouldn’t, wouldn’t.
So yesterday was a free day in Honolulu. I spent the morning at a nearby Starbucks, drinking coffee, doing online stuff, and watching Honolulu walk by. In the afternoon, I took a bus to Waikiki, where I walked down the beach to the Royal Hawaiian, sat in their Mai Tai Bar enjoying a couple of G&Ts (you have to be in the right mood for a mai tai—a sweet mood), then walked back to the Hale Koa, stopping first along the Fort DeRussey walk to watch the sun set. After dinner at the Hale Koa and 30 minutes of the holiday concert performed by the US Navy Pacific Fleet Band, I taxied back to the ship.
Today was the first day of finals. I listened to one last final speech in my 0800 public speaking course. Since then, I’ve been doing some final grading and, of course, working on this blog. And now, finally, I’m caught up!
Hawaii has been a wonderful transition back to the real world . . . in, I suppose, a very unreal way. It’s felt a little like a hill—not a wall; that would be far too abrupt—separating what will surely feel like the fantasy of the last 3 ½ months from the reality of the coming (very cold!) months. I’m looking forward to getting home and letting this experience soak while sitting on my own couch.
But there’s more to come: 4 days on what I’m guessing will be very rough seas.
We’re now in the middle of our 6th full day in paradise, “stuck,” you might say, waiting for the giant swells in the North Pacific to settle down before we depart on the last leg of our nearly-4-month voyage. We arrived on time Friday morning, 4 December, just beating the storm, if that’s what it was. And the local newspapers were forecasting the biggest waves in years on the North Shore of Oahu, reputedly one of the best surfing beaches in the world. High surf (forecast in excess of 50-foot walls) are great news for the surfer dudes and dudettes; they’re bad news for a 500-foot ship loaded with desks, chairs, books, students, and irritable faculty. So Captain Jeremy Kingston is keeping us in Honolulu until the swells unswell a little. Latest word is that we'll sail this afternoon.
It’s about 2,500 statute miles from Honolulu to San Diego, and, at top speed, the MV Explorer can do about 30 knots, which is a little under 40 mph. So we could leave here as late as Friday morning and still pull into San Diego on time at 0800 Monday the 14th. But I’m afraid we’ll be on the open water before then. Parking in Honolulu is very expensive. We may be in for a rough few days as we finish up this great adventure.
We arrived in Honolulu while the sun was just starting to rise, pulling into dock 10 at the base of the Aloha Tower at 6am Friday. US Immigration insisted on face-to-face clearance of each passenger, so we all paraded through the faculty lounge to be welcomed back to the US individually. The ship cleared by 9am, and at 9:30, I was leaving with Jim and Shamim to pick up our rental car.
Stepping back onto US soil was exhilarating! Hawaii certainly has its own culture, distinct from almost anywhere else in the country and certainly different than Chicago’s. But I felt like I was home. I could read the signs, I could understand the security guards—and they could understand me—I knew how to use my cash , I knew how to ask for directions, I knew which side of the sidewalk was mine. It’s not the big things that I’ve missed over the past 4 months; it’s all these wonderful little things.
Although the storm was moving in—clouds were building over the Pali cliffs faster than typical—Bob, Jim, and I headed to Luana Hills Country Club on the windward side about 11:30, plenty early to arrive and hit a few balls before our 12:30pm tee time. We hadn’t counted on confusing directions and 3 navigators, however, so, after a 90-minute unscheduled tour back and forth between Diamond Head and Kaneohe, we arrived at Luana Hills—right at the base of the Pali, a place we passed 20 minutes after leaving the ship—at 12:15pm. Fortunately, with weather threatening, the course wasn’t crowded, so we were able to warm up and even get a bite to eat before heading to the first tee.
Luana Hills is a spectacularly beautiful course carved into the base of the Pali cliffs. It’s very hilly, very lush—rain-foresty, in fact—very narrow, and very unforgiving. In addition, because the island had received considerable rain over the previous few days, the course was “cart paths only,” meaning we couldn’t leave the paved paths that lined each fairway. As a result, the round took almost 5 hours to complete despite the fact we were the only ones playing. Worse, the walking up and down slippery hills and ravines wreaked havoc with my right knee—the original equipment. The upshot was that I decided not to play again on Saturday and give the knee a chance to rest before we tackled Mauna Kea on Sunday.
Friday nite, I dropped Jim and Bob off at the ship, and I drove to the Hale Koa Hotel, where I had reserved a room for the night. The Hale Koa sits on Fort DeRussy, located between the Hilton Hawaiian Village and the Outrigger Hotels, and beachfront on Waikiki. It opened in the early ‘70s exclusively for military active and retired members and families, one of the great benefits of those 20 years I spent in the Air Force. While it may not rival a Four Seasons or Ritz, the Hale Koa is a 4-star hotel by any standards. Plus, it houses services one can typically find only on a military base—a base exchange, for instance. And the mai-tais are excellent.
That night I took a short walk down the beach before sitting at a bar for a couple drinks and dinner. I was in my room for the night by 10pm, lying in bed watching the news, and was asleep by 10:30.
Saturday, after taking the car to the golfers, I had breakfast at the Hale Koa then stayed in the room ‘til noon checkout catching up on e-mail and enjoying the fast internet connection. As I said, it’s the little things. At noon, I took a bus back to the ship, dropped off my suitcase, then went to the next-door mall and sat at the bar of the Cantina Bikini, where I watched most of the Florida-Alabama game (#1 vs. #2), and had a couple of Boddingtons. Al Hunt joined me, and we had a great time talking to others, commenting on the game and the fortunes of our teams (his is Texas, so he had far more to talk about), and just enjoying a fall football Saturday, my first and last of the season. If I do this again, it’ll be in the spring. There’s just too much going on in the fall that I enjoy.
When the boys got back from golf, I took the car back to the rental agency after a stop by the Ala Moana mall to pick up some golf balls. Back on the ship by 1800 (6pm), and we sailed for Hilo at 1930.
Hilo is on the northeast side of Hawaii, the Big Island. The Big Island, one of my favorite spots, is a remarkable place. It’s the youngest of the islands, formed by 5 volcanoes, 3 of which—Hualalai, Mauna Loa, and Kilauea—are still active. Kilauea is the one that gets the most press because it’s constantly in eruption, sometimes violently. The resulting lava flows from the volcanoes has formed the island into a series of gently sloping cones rising from sea level all the way up to over 14,000’ at the summit of Mauna Kea. Because of these mountains an valleys, the Big Island is a patchwork of mini climates: tropical on the sunny (south and western) sides at sea level; rainy and jungle on the windward (north and eastern) sides; dry and arid in the saddle between Hulalai and Mauna Kea, where the Parker cattle ranch spreads over thousands of acres; temperate at the intermediate levels between the ocean and 4,000 to 5,000 feet; cold at the summit of the mountains. Besides the US’s highest observatory, the summit of Mauna Kea also has a small ski area.
We arrived at Hilo at 0800 Sunday, and the ship cleared the local authorities by 0830. Jim, Shamim, and I taxied to the Hilo airport to pick up rental cars—Shamim wanted her own so she could explore the Kona side of the island without having to worry about chauffering the golfers around—and we headed to the western, sunny shore. At least, it’s usually sunny. Sunday was an unusually cloudy, drizzly day all over the island. In fact, Mauna Kea resort had had so much rain over the previous 24 hours that the course was closed to carts when we arrived at 1100 for our 1300 (1pm) tee time. The starter told us, though, that if the rains held off, he’d reopen the course by 1. So Jim and I adjourned to the dining room, where I had an excellent mahi mahi sandwich on a ciabatta complemented by a $7 glass if iced tea.
The rains held off, the sun came out for a few minutes, and the course was open for our 1pm tee time. The next 4 ½ hours were alternately wonderful and woeful. The Mauna Kea course is reputedly the best in Hawaii. It sits along the lava-formed coast, with spectacular views, splashing surf, and the obligatory par-3 with a shot over a blue-water cove. The front nine was fun, and my game wasn’t too bad. But as we made the turn, the rains started again—mostly mist but occasional real drops—and by 12, we were soaked and, worse, the course was slippery and slow. Again, maneuvering up and down hills, trying to find my footing, was hell on my knee, and by 16, I wasn’t having fun anymore. My golf was terrible, not a good memory to take away from what, on another day, would surely rank as one of the most beautiful, challenging courses I’ve seen or played. Some day I’ll go back and try again.
Sunday night, the 3 of us stayed at the sister property next to the Mauna Kea: the Hapuna Beach Prince resort. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves (memo to self: the weeks before Xmas are nice and quiet in Hawaii), which helps explain the excellent room rate we got. And the hotel is simply beautiful: several layers of open-air rooms, restaurants, lounges, pools, and lanais stairstepping down to an excellent, very large beach. After a post-golf shower, I went immediately to the open-air lounge overlooking the pool and ocean, ordered a couple of G&Ts, and watched the sun set as I waited for Jim and Shamim to join me for dinner. Life at the high end!
The next morning, Monday, Jim and I left the Hapuna Beach at 0800 and drove to Big Island Country Club, where we met Bob, who had stayed on the ship Sunday performing dean duty. Big Island CC is up the slope of Hualalai about 3,000 feet, so it’s a little cooler and, usually, much windier. But Monday was perfect, a big contrast to the rains at Mauna Kea. The Bug Island CC course was, as Jim said, “rougher” than Mauna Kea’s, partly because the recent rains had prevented them from mowing, rolling, and raking, partly because they don’t have the big-buck backing from Japan that the Mauna Kea has. Still, the course is a nice layout with excellent views along the entire coast, challenging holes, and fair. Again, my golf wasn’t especially good, and my knee was hurting. But the day was fun and the weather couldn’t have been better—an excellent final day of golf for the ’09 season.
We finished the 18 holes by 1:30—again, the course was very uncrowded—and headed back to Hilo, stopping first at a little restaurant in Waimea called “Pau,” where I had a fish sandwich for $6.50 that was better than even the excellent fish sandwich I had paid $18 for at the Mauna Kea on Sunday. When the fish is only a day or two from having been frolicking in the sea, it’s usually pretty good, and this was.
We were back onboard the MV Explorer by 1700 Monday. At 2000 (8pm), the deans called an all-ship meeting to announce that we’d be returning to Honolulu to wait out the big waves. A large cruise ship—the “Pride of America” (owned by Norwegian Caribbean Lines, registered in the Bahamas, sailing with mostly Japanese passengers)—was hold up in Honolulu trying to avoid the swells, and, with passage between Hawaii and Oahu fairly calm, the two ships would trade places. The students went nuts at the news we’d be heading back to Honolulu, especially when they heard they’d be able to get off the ship and not have to return before 9pm Tuesday. The faculty was less than pleased with final exams starting on Wednesday. But, as Bob pointed out, students aren’t locked into their rooms before finals on most other campuses, so they shouldn’t be here. Those who would study anyway, still would; those who wouldn’t, wouldn’t.
So yesterday was a free day in Honolulu. I spent the morning at a nearby Starbucks, drinking coffee, doing online stuff, and watching Honolulu walk by. In the afternoon, I took a bus to Waikiki, where I walked down the beach to the Royal Hawaiian, sat in their Mai Tai Bar enjoying a couple of G&Ts (you have to be in the right mood for a mai tai—a sweet mood), then walked back to the Hale Koa, stopping first along the Fort DeRussey walk to watch the sun set. After dinner at the Hale Koa and 30 minutes of the holiday concert performed by the US Navy Pacific Fleet Band, I taxied back to the ship.
Today was the first day of finals. I listened to one last final speech in my 0800 public speaking course. Since then, I’ve been doing some final grading and, of course, working on this blog. And now, finally, I’m caught up!
Hawaii has been a wonderful transition back to the real world . . . in, I suppose, a very unreal way. It’s felt a little like a hill—not a wall; that would be far too abrupt—separating what will surely feel like the fantasy of the last 3 ½ months from the reality of the coming (very cold!) months. I’m looking forward to getting home and letting this experience soak while sitting on my own couch.
But there’s more to come: 4 days on what I’m guessing will be very rough seas.
30 November 2009
Day 98--Crossing the International Date Line, Enroute to Hawaii
29 November (Sunday after our two Saturdays). 28°52’ N, 173°44’ E. Course: 107. Speed: 15 knots.
Though we don’t cross the international date line until this evening, sometime between 1800 and 1900 hours, the ship declared yesterday as our fall-back day, when we lose all the hours we’ve gained over the past 3+ months and are now behind the U.S. Early yesterday, we were 18 hours ahead of Chicago. Tomorrow, after yet another lost hour, we’ll be only 5 hours behind. One more hour to lose before we arrive in Honolulu. Most people on board are saying, “This ain’t the right direction to travel if you’re heading around the world.” Especially on this long, long leg across the Pacific, we’re all suffering a little boat-lag.
Moreover, the Pacific has been anything but pacific. We’ve been rocking and rolling since we sailed out into the ocean last Tuesday night. Most voyageurs have well-seasoned sea legs by now, so mal de mer hasn’t been much of a problem. But a moving house gets old, and it’s especially tough on tired joints. My right knee—the original equipment—has been aching since my long walk around Shanghai. Now, with the ship swaying constantly, both knees need to make quick adjustments as I walk down a hall or climb stairs. And the adjustments are involuntary, the kind we learn when we first start to walk and find ways to keep our balance. The ship sways right, I feel myself swaying with it, my right leg does what it’s supposed to do and locks slightly to keep me from falling, and a sharp pain shoots through the knee. Holding onto the rails that run throughout the ship helps. But only a little.
Most of us are looking forward very much to seeing Coronado Island off the bow.
I’m starting to make plans for my re-entry into the real, wonderfully boring world of suburban Chicago. I think some serious decompression time will be in order—lots of time sitting on my own couch, watching football and holiday specials on TV, and sleeping in a still bed. I’m planning a 3-day visit to Nevada immediately after arriving in San Diego. We’ll need a few hours to clear the ship and arrange shipment of boxes and bags. Then I fly to Vegas, arriving early evening for 3 days with daughters, son, and grandkids.
On the 18th, I fly from Las Vegas to Washington DC, where Haley will be preparing for her first concert with the Navy Band: their annual holiday concert in Constitution Hall. I’ll see her new digs just a few blocks from the National Mall and the Navy Yard, I expect to be treated to a free meal or two, and, of course, I’ll attend the concert Saturday night. I’m looking forward very much to watching Sailor (Musician 1st Class) Bangs play her flute with one of the great bands in the world.
Finally, Sunday night the 20th, I’ll head back to Chicago and Libertyville. Refuge! A home that doesn’t move.
But, once again, I’m ahead of myself. Back to Kobe and Hiroshima.
Kobe and Hiroshima
I woke at 0800 on Monday the 23rd to find us already tied tight to the dock in Kobe. The arrival and docking process has become so routine I don’t even try to get up to watch anymore.
Kobe’s arrival terminal wasn’t as impressive as the one in Yokohama: older, a few patches of rust running along the 3-story, 60s-style, white, glass-and aluminum building that ran the entire length of the 2,000-foot dock—long enough for two large cruise ships to tie up, though we were the only ones there at the moment.
Bob Chapel had left me a note before he departed the ship in Yokohama asking if I’d wait for him on Monday before heading for the train station to catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima. Maria was going to Kyoto, and Bob, true to form, had “seen enough temples.” At 8:30, Bob appeared at my cabin door, and by 9:15, we were on the subway to Shinkobe, the bullet train station serving Kobe.
We bought 2 reserved-seat tickets on the 10:22 departure—probably an unnecessary luxury, but we wanted to make sure we had seats. Open seating for the over-200-kilometer trip costs about $50 each way; a reserved seat costs another $45 or so. But the assurance of having a seat was worth the extra cost to us.
As expected, the train pulled into the station precisely on time, a very sleek, needle-nose, white streamliner that truly does look like something out of the future. The train was at least eight cars long, having started in Tokyo and running all the way to Fukuoka on the far western island of Kyushu. And a similar train passes through Kobe about every 20 to 30 minutes, all day long. Based on what we saw, load factors are not a problem on the trains. Our reserved-seat car was at least 2/3rds full, and the other cars looked the same. I imagine the non-reserved-seat cars were closer to full. Obviously, Japanese travelers prefer surface travel to air travel. The reasons are obvious.
The train pulled out of the station as the second hand swept through 10:22, and very soon, the Japanese countryside was passing by in a blur. Everthing I had heard about the bullet trains is true: they are spooky quiet, smooth as riding a BMW on a new interstate, and far more comfortable than even economy-plus seating on a United cross-country flight. They leave our so-called fast service on the East coast—Amtrak’s Accela—in the dust. And don’t even ask about Metra in Chicago. I took some video as we passed through the mountains and fields of western Honshu, and, as I look at the video today, I think, “Somehow I must have done something in the recording process to create this illusion of speed.” But I didn’t. The Shinkansen is just plain fast! We covered the 200+ kilometers—about 120 miles—in 70 minutes. That included 3 intermediate stops between Kobe and Hiroshima. Top speed was 180 kph. Why would anyone fly between cities with train service like this?
We pulled into Hiroshima station (the Japanese say “here-oh-shee-mah,” with no accents, not “here-ROH-shee-mah”) about 11:35am, found our way to the streetcar stop, and climbed aboard for the slow ride through downtown Hiroshima to Peace Park, the memorial to victims of the atomic bomb attack on August 5th, 1945. Hiroshima, as expected, looks like a city built in the late 40s, which, of course, is precisely the case, as it was completely destroyed when the bomb dropped. The day was perfect: clear skies, temperature in the low 60s F, exactly the kind of day August 5th had been.
We learned later that the Enola Gay crew had 3 potential targets that day. The decision to go to Hiroshima was made when the aircraft was about halfway from Wake to the Japanese mainland. The weather over Hiroshima that day was clear, little wind, just as it was on Monday. As we rode the streetcar, I commented to Bob that it was a day precisely like this one when people, riding on their way to work just as we were doing, suddenly saw the flash, wondered for a brief moment what that might have been, then felt for only an instant the heat and blast as they, their families, and their city were literally reduced to smoldering dust.
Bob and I got off the streetcar across from what they call the Peace Dome, the remaining shell and dome of what had been a government building during the war. It has since become the symbol of Hiroshima as it was one of the few buildings left standing after August 5th. It survived somewhat intact because it was almost directly below the point 600 meters above where the bomb exploded. The blast and heat went outward from the explosion point, leaving the building directly below only badly damaged.
We spent a few minutes walking around the dome before debating whether to go directly to the museum in the middle of the park across the river, or to go to lunch.
Lunch won. We walked into the city, a couple blocks away from the river, and found a local spot serving excellent noodle soup and teriyaki. Then we walked back to the river, crossed the bridge across one of the rivers that flow from downtown to the Inland Sea, and walked into Peace Park.
Peace Park is an island formed by a split in one of the several rivers that flow out to the sea from Hiroshima. It was selected as the location of memorials to the victims of the bombing because it connects to the rest of the city by what’s called the “T” bridge, a bridge that spans the main river just west of the park, with a perpendicular span connecting the bridge to the park. The intersection of the main span and connecting span form a “T,” and it was this prominent landmark that the Enola Gay had used as its primary aim point for the drop: point zero.
We walked through the park toward the museum, a long, modern building sitting on the eastern end of the park. In front of the museum, a couple hundred yards toward the “T” bridge, is what’s called the Peace Cenotaph, a hangar-shaped memorial to the victims. A group of middle-school-aged children—dressed very neatly in dark-blue shorts, skirts, and jackets, and each topped by a bright yellow cap—were visiting the museum and, as Bob and I passed, were listening to a very animated talk by a guide or teacher. A good photo op.
We then walked to the museum. There’s not much point in describing what’s in the museum. It documents the time leading up to August 5th, the moment of the attack, and, in gruesome detail, the aftermath, particularly the effect on people who had been near the bomb’s point zero. It includes replicas of letters from Einstein, Truman, Oppenheimer, Stillwell, Eisenhower, and other American leaders, some counseling restraint, others advising to use the weapon. It was interesting to see that people like Eisenhower and Stillwell advised strongly against dropping the bomb because, as General Stillwell said, “we’ll never be forgiven.” But, of course, the US did drop the bomb. The aftereffects were chilling, documented by shreds of burned, bloody clothing worn by children who had been near the blasts’ s center. All died within hours or days of the attack.
We spent about 2 hours in the museum, then left to walk through the park back toward the streetcar stop. The skies were still absolutely clear and blue, and the trees, as they had been in Yokohama and Tokyo, were at the peak of color. It was a strangely anachronistic scene compared to the grim, gray, relentless displays inside the museum.
After a brief stop in a department store so Bob could buy some gifts for his housesitters in Charlottesville, we took the streetcar back to Hiroshima station. We had time for a quick beer before heading to the train. Then we rode the 70 minutes back to Kobe.
Monday night, I joined Maria—who had returned from Kyoto about the same time we got back from Hiroshima—and Bob for dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse across Kobe Bay from where the MV Explorer was tied up. No taxis were waiting outside the terminal, so Bob suggested we start walking down the long ramp leading away from the terminal because, surely, we’d be able to find a taxi. About an hour and a couple of miles later, after several false starts down dead-end piers that looked like they led to the bright lights of the harbor area, we managed to flag down an available taxi for the remaining ½ mile to the restaurant. The eventual meal was OK. My knee was burning.
Tuesday morning, I stayed onboard to grade a few papers and catch up on some blogging and photo editing. Then, about 11am, I headed into Kobe for some last-minute foreign-port shopping—Christmas shopping—on our final day in a non-US port. Kobe is a rather non-descript city, though every bit as neat, clean, orderly, and quiet as I had found Tokyo, Yokohama, and Hiroshima. I managed to find everything I had been looking for—or didn’t know I was looking for—before heading back to the ship around 4pm.
We sailed out of Kobe Tuesday night at 2100, our final departure from a foreign port.
Though we don’t cross the international date line until this evening, sometime between 1800 and 1900 hours, the ship declared yesterday as our fall-back day, when we lose all the hours we’ve gained over the past 3+ months and are now behind the U.S. Early yesterday, we were 18 hours ahead of Chicago. Tomorrow, after yet another lost hour, we’ll be only 5 hours behind. One more hour to lose before we arrive in Honolulu. Most people on board are saying, “This ain’t the right direction to travel if you’re heading around the world.” Especially on this long, long leg across the Pacific, we’re all suffering a little boat-lag.
Moreover, the Pacific has been anything but pacific. We’ve been rocking and rolling since we sailed out into the ocean last Tuesday night. Most voyageurs have well-seasoned sea legs by now, so mal de mer hasn’t been much of a problem. But a moving house gets old, and it’s especially tough on tired joints. My right knee—the original equipment—has been aching since my long walk around Shanghai. Now, with the ship swaying constantly, both knees need to make quick adjustments as I walk down a hall or climb stairs. And the adjustments are involuntary, the kind we learn when we first start to walk and find ways to keep our balance. The ship sways right, I feel myself swaying with it, my right leg does what it’s supposed to do and locks slightly to keep me from falling, and a sharp pain shoots through the knee. Holding onto the rails that run throughout the ship helps. But only a little.
Most of us are looking forward very much to seeing Coronado Island off the bow.
I’m starting to make plans for my re-entry into the real, wonderfully boring world of suburban Chicago. I think some serious decompression time will be in order—lots of time sitting on my own couch, watching football and holiday specials on TV, and sleeping in a still bed. I’m planning a 3-day visit to Nevada immediately after arriving in San Diego. We’ll need a few hours to clear the ship and arrange shipment of boxes and bags. Then I fly to Vegas, arriving early evening for 3 days with daughters, son, and grandkids.
On the 18th, I fly from Las Vegas to Washington DC, where Haley will be preparing for her first concert with the Navy Band: their annual holiday concert in Constitution Hall. I’ll see her new digs just a few blocks from the National Mall and the Navy Yard, I expect to be treated to a free meal or two, and, of course, I’ll attend the concert Saturday night. I’m looking forward very much to watching Sailor (Musician 1st Class) Bangs play her flute with one of the great bands in the world.
Finally, Sunday night the 20th, I’ll head back to Chicago and Libertyville. Refuge! A home that doesn’t move.
But, once again, I’m ahead of myself. Back to Kobe and Hiroshima.
Kobe and Hiroshima
I woke at 0800 on Monday the 23rd to find us already tied tight to the dock in Kobe. The arrival and docking process has become so routine I don’t even try to get up to watch anymore.
Kobe’s arrival terminal wasn’t as impressive as the one in Yokohama: older, a few patches of rust running along the 3-story, 60s-style, white, glass-and aluminum building that ran the entire length of the 2,000-foot dock—long enough for two large cruise ships to tie up, though we were the only ones there at the moment.
Bob Chapel had left me a note before he departed the ship in Yokohama asking if I’d wait for him on Monday before heading for the train station to catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima. Maria was going to Kyoto, and Bob, true to form, had “seen enough temples.” At 8:30, Bob appeared at my cabin door, and by 9:15, we were on the subway to Shinkobe, the bullet train station serving Kobe.
We bought 2 reserved-seat tickets on the 10:22 departure—probably an unnecessary luxury, but we wanted to make sure we had seats. Open seating for the over-200-kilometer trip costs about $50 each way; a reserved seat costs another $45 or so. But the assurance of having a seat was worth the extra cost to us.
As expected, the train pulled into the station precisely on time, a very sleek, needle-nose, white streamliner that truly does look like something out of the future. The train was at least eight cars long, having started in Tokyo and running all the way to Fukuoka on the far western island of Kyushu. And a similar train passes through Kobe about every 20 to 30 minutes, all day long. Based on what we saw, load factors are not a problem on the trains. Our reserved-seat car was at least 2/3rds full, and the other cars looked the same. I imagine the non-reserved-seat cars were closer to full. Obviously, Japanese travelers prefer surface travel to air travel. The reasons are obvious.
The train pulled out of the station as the second hand swept through 10:22, and very soon, the Japanese countryside was passing by in a blur. Everthing I had heard about the bullet trains is true: they are spooky quiet, smooth as riding a BMW on a new interstate, and far more comfortable than even economy-plus seating on a United cross-country flight. They leave our so-called fast service on the East coast—Amtrak’s Accela—in the dust. And don’t even ask about Metra in Chicago. I took some video as we passed through the mountains and fields of western Honshu, and, as I look at the video today, I think, “Somehow I must have done something in the recording process to create this illusion of speed.” But I didn’t. The Shinkansen is just plain fast! We covered the 200+ kilometers—about 120 miles—in 70 minutes. That included 3 intermediate stops between Kobe and Hiroshima. Top speed was 180 kph. Why would anyone fly between cities with train service like this?
We pulled into Hiroshima station (the Japanese say “here-oh-shee-mah,” with no accents, not “here-ROH-shee-mah”) about 11:35am, found our way to the streetcar stop, and climbed aboard for the slow ride through downtown Hiroshima to Peace Park, the memorial to victims of the atomic bomb attack on August 5th, 1945. Hiroshima, as expected, looks like a city built in the late 40s, which, of course, is precisely the case, as it was completely destroyed when the bomb dropped. The day was perfect: clear skies, temperature in the low 60s F, exactly the kind of day August 5th had been.
We learned later that the Enola Gay crew had 3 potential targets that day. The decision to go to Hiroshima was made when the aircraft was about halfway from Wake to the Japanese mainland. The weather over Hiroshima that day was clear, little wind, just as it was on Monday. As we rode the streetcar, I commented to Bob that it was a day precisely like this one when people, riding on their way to work just as we were doing, suddenly saw the flash, wondered for a brief moment what that might have been, then felt for only an instant the heat and blast as they, their families, and their city were literally reduced to smoldering dust.
Bob and I got off the streetcar across from what they call the Peace Dome, the remaining shell and dome of what had been a government building during the war. It has since become the symbol of Hiroshima as it was one of the few buildings left standing after August 5th. It survived somewhat intact because it was almost directly below the point 600 meters above where the bomb exploded. The blast and heat went outward from the explosion point, leaving the building directly below only badly damaged.
We spent a few minutes walking around the dome before debating whether to go directly to the museum in the middle of the park across the river, or to go to lunch.
Lunch won. We walked into the city, a couple blocks away from the river, and found a local spot serving excellent noodle soup and teriyaki. Then we walked back to the river, crossed the bridge across one of the rivers that flow from downtown to the Inland Sea, and walked into Peace Park.
Peace Park is an island formed by a split in one of the several rivers that flow out to the sea from Hiroshima. It was selected as the location of memorials to the victims of the bombing because it connects to the rest of the city by what’s called the “T” bridge, a bridge that spans the main river just west of the park, with a perpendicular span connecting the bridge to the park. The intersection of the main span and connecting span form a “T,” and it was this prominent landmark that the Enola Gay had used as its primary aim point for the drop: point zero.
We walked through the park toward the museum, a long, modern building sitting on the eastern end of the park. In front of the museum, a couple hundred yards toward the “T” bridge, is what’s called the Peace Cenotaph, a hangar-shaped memorial to the victims. A group of middle-school-aged children—dressed very neatly in dark-blue shorts, skirts, and jackets, and each topped by a bright yellow cap—were visiting the museum and, as Bob and I passed, were listening to a very animated talk by a guide or teacher. A good photo op.
We then walked to the museum. There’s not much point in describing what’s in the museum. It documents the time leading up to August 5th, the moment of the attack, and, in gruesome detail, the aftermath, particularly the effect on people who had been near the bomb’s point zero. It includes replicas of letters from Einstein, Truman, Oppenheimer, Stillwell, Eisenhower, and other American leaders, some counseling restraint, others advising to use the weapon. It was interesting to see that people like Eisenhower and Stillwell advised strongly against dropping the bomb because, as General Stillwell said, “we’ll never be forgiven.” But, of course, the US did drop the bomb. The aftereffects were chilling, documented by shreds of burned, bloody clothing worn by children who had been near the blasts’ s center. All died within hours or days of the attack.
We spent about 2 hours in the museum, then left to walk through the park back toward the streetcar stop. The skies were still absolutely clear and blue, and the trees, as they had been in Yokohama and Tokyo, were at the peak of color. It was a strangely anachronistic scene compared to the grim, gray, relentless displays inside the museum.
After a brief stop in a department store so Bob could buy some gifts for his housesitters in Charlottesville, we took the streetcar back to Hiroshima station. We had time for a quick beer before heading to the train. Then we rode the 70 minutes back to Kobe.
Monday night, I joined Maria—who had returned from Kyoto about the same time we got back from Hiroshima—and Bob for dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse across Kobe Bay from where the MV Explorer was tied up. No taxis were waiting outside the terminal, so Bob suggested we start walking down the long ramp leading away from the terminal because, surely, we’d be able to find a taxi. About an hour and a couple of miles later, after several false starts down dead-end piers that looked like they led to the bright lights of the harbor area, we managed to flag down an available taxi for the remaining ½ mile to the restaurant. The eventual meal was OK. My knee was burning.
Tuesday morning, I stayed onboard to grade a few papers and catch up on some blogging and photo editing. Then, about 11am, I headed into Kobe for some last-minute foreign-port shopping—Christmas shopping—on our final day in a non-US port. Kobe is a rather non-descript city, though every bit as neat, clean, orderly, and quiet as I had found Tokyo, Yokohama, and Hiroshima. I managed to find everything I had been looking for—or didn’t know I was looking for—before heading back to the ship around 4pm.
We sailed out of Kobe Tuesday night at 2100, our final departure from a foreign port.
25 November 2009
Day 94--En route to Honolulu
25 November. 33°17’N, 139°43’E. Course: 090. Speed 16 knots.
We’re 18 hours east of Kobe, about 8 miles north of the Isu Islands, which (I think I remember this) are the peaks of the tallest mountains in the world. That’s true because (again, I think I remember this) we’re just about to sail over the Japan Trench, part of the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest point of all the world’s oceans—something over 30,000 feet. Six miles down. In brief, there’s a lot of water below us. And funny thing: it all looks exactly the same as all the other water I’ve seen over the past 3 months.
We left our final non-US port, Kobe, Japan, last night at 2100 (9pm) to the Big Band sounds of a local ensemble of musicians, assembled and playing on one of the decks of the port terminal. It was the city’s and country’s farewell to a group that had, over the past 5 days, pumped much yen into the Japanese economy. And Japan returned the investment many fold. A beautiful, orderly, amazingly clean, extraordinarily friendly, wonderfully quiet (I heard one car horn the entire 5 days), exceedingly polite people. Most on board are talking today about the time spent “in my new favorite country.”
There is a dark underbelly to the Japanese nirvana, however. They have the highest suicide rate in the world. Their economy is still reeling from the “lost decade” of the ‘90s and taking a belly punch from the current world recession. A million Japanese kids have locked themselves in their rooms (literally!), refusing to come out, because of the stress to succeed created by the school system. And the young generation, especially the women, are rebelling, striking out on their own, refusing to follow the old traditions and to fall into the old roles. So the question is will Japan be able to continue their near-idyllic world, or will the cultural rules break down and will Japan become like the rest of the developed world: a little noisier, a little dirtier, a lot less pleasant? It’ll be interesting for my kids and grandkids to watch. Meanwhile, Japan sure is a wonderful place to visit.
Tokyo and Yokohama
We arrived in Yokohama harbor right on time: 0800 the morning of 20 November. It was the Friday before a 3-day weekend in Japan, and most of the MV Explorer voyageurs had had trouble finding hotel rooms—at least, affordable hotel rooms—for their overland trips, especially in the cities everyone wanted to visit: Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and Hiroshima. I, on the other hand, had no plans other than wanting to take a day trip to Hiroshima on the 23rd, our first day in Kobe. And I had no expectations for Yokohama and Tokyo other than another typical port city and another typical big city. I was wrong on both counts.
We sailed into the port of Yokohama under a glistening white bridge spanning the opening to the bay like a grand welcoming gate. In front of us was a skyline of new, sparkiling skyscrapers interspersed with traditional-style brick buildings, all lining a waterfront of parks and trees. The port terminal itself is, as I said earlier, a work of art mixing steel, wood, and parkland in a flowing building that gracefully rises and falls as it swoops from its endpoint in the bay to its terminus at the city park.
Jim and Shamim had made reservations at a Tokyo hotel—the Villa Fontaine—and they were going to follow Maria Chapel and Betsy Bloom into the city. Maria planned to meet a friend at a train station near the Ginza and then, after lunch, envisioned a walking tour of the heart of Tokyo. Betsy, Jim, and Shamim planned to tag along, so I invited myself to join them. Bob Chapel stayed at the ship as duty dean—babysitter—for the day.
After clearing the ship, the five of us walked, first, to the local post office to get cash at one of the few ATMs that accept non-Japanese credit cards (at least that’s what we were told). Then we walked down into the Yokohama subway and took a 10-minute ride to Yokohama Station, where we caught the JR (Japan Rail) train to Shimbashi Station, Tokyo. It took some bewildered looks to figure out how to buy tickets for the train, but soon we all figured out the system that is, despite the very different language, pretty simple to manage. All signs on the public transportation system are in Japanese and English. And, though not always easy to find, signs telling where to go next are nearby all exits from trains and subways. Despite the to-Western-eyes indecipherable characters of the Japanese language, Japan is a surprisingly easy country in which to get around.
Maria’s friend, Edsko, met us at Shimbashi Station, and led us via underground halls and malls to the Villa Fontaine, which is only a few blocks from the station and a few blocks from the Ginza, Tokyo’s Times Square and Michigan Boulevard. I had brought with me only things to get me through the day, intending to return to Yokohoma and the ship that evening. But the hotel was very nice, brand new, excellently located. And Jim and Shamim had gotten a for-Tokyo excellent rate of just under $200/night.
I asked a clerk if they had any single rooms available. To my astonishment, they offered me a room for the night at ¥10,000—just over $100. I didn’t pause an instant and took the room. The rate even included breakfast, a toothbrush, a razor, and shaving cream. A fresh pair of underwear, and I’d be set.
We left the hotel and went first to a restaurant on the top floor of an office building just outside the Ginza. The restaurant was a typical business venue, but very Japanese, with small, private rooms, complete with sliding doors, for small parties like ours. I had teriyaki with udon noodles, all delicious and accompanied by an excellent view across a park to Tokyo Bay.
After lunch, Edsko led us to the grounds of the imperial palace, home of the emperor and empress. The palace sits on a series of islands square in the middle of Tokyo, the islands defined by stone-lined moats and marked by guard towers that retain the traditional, multi-storied look common in Japanese painting. To get to the palace grounds, we walked across a wide park—Hibya—that runs along a 6-lane boulevard—Hibya Dori. I had stayed in a hotel on this same boulevard when I was in Tokyo about 12 years ago—the November it snowed—and I thought then how much that area reminded me of Michigan Boulevard in Chicago where it runs along Grant Park. Today, the area seems even more like Chicago, except, of course, Grant Park has no views of medieval guard towers and ancient bridges curving over imperial moats. I suppose Tokyo doesn’t have anything quite like Taste of Chicago either. I’ll bet Tokyo likes it that way.
We walked around the imperial palace grounds—you can’t go inside—then walked the few blocks over to the Ginza, stopping first at a wonderful little coffee shop for what turned out to be the best cup of $10 coffee I’ve ever had. It was little; it was delicious, truly the best I’ve ever had; and the cup, slightly larger than a demitasse, really cost $10. No refills. The preconceptions that people who have never visited Japan may include crowds, traffic, noise, and exorbitant prices. Only the latter is true . . . except for my hotel room at the Villa Fontaine.
By now it was dusk, and the lights of the Ginza were starting to appear as we turned onto Chuo-Don Avenue, Tokyo’s 5th Avenue. This Buddhist/Shinto country goes into Christmas big time, and all the stores were decorated with the secular icons of the season: big Christmas trees, lighted Santas, elves, all the typical decorations we could see at Macy’s or used to be able to see at Marshall Field’s. We saw the same thing in Hong Kong and even, to a lesser degree in Shanghai. Christmas—at least the gift-buying, merchandising part—has become a worldwide holiday.
We found a department store—Sogo—that intrigued the ladies and was a likely place for me to buy a fresh pair of underwear for the morning, so we went in and split up, Jim and I to the men’s floor, Betsy, Shamim, and Maria to . . . wherever. We agreed to meet 40 minutes later.
The men’s floor contained a terrific selection of suits, shirts, sweaters, jackets, everything for the well-dressed businessman and everything very expensive. I didn’t see a shirt priced under US$100, and all the suits were over US$1,000. All this in a store that, from all appearances, is a step down from a Nordstrom’s, probably on par with Macy’s. I finally found the men’s fundamentals—underwear and socks—and picked out the least-expensive pair of pants: one pair, US$11.50. So now the room price had gone up about 10%, still a bargain.
Jim and I had completed our shopping in about 10 minutes, so, with 30 minutes left to kill, we left the store and found a small yakitori and soup counter, where we ordered and enjoyed a couple of draft Asahi beers while we passed the time.
After rejoining the ladies—they were later than 40 minutes, of course—we left the store and split up: Maria, Betsy, and Edsko going to dinner; Jim, Shamim, and I to the hotel a few blocks away.
My room was very small—no bigger than 12’ X 12’—but it had everything I wanted: king-size bed, high-speed internet, TV with BBC news, and a bathroom with toothbrush, saving gear, and a Japanese toilet. When I first visited Japan in ’67, a Japanese toilet was a hole in the ground with a porcelain appliance at ground level shaped something like a spittoon. A few of those remain in Japan today. But most Japanese bathrooms today come equipped with a toilet for those who wouldn’t mind spending hours, even days, on the toilet. These 21st –Century “crappers” (named after the Englishman who invented the first toilet) are equipped with heated seats, even with adjustable temperature settings. And most come with built-in cleansing sprayers. The push of a button causes a few seconds of buzz and whirr while the toilet warms the water, followed by a perfectly aimed spray that is, to say the least, shockingly pleasant. Pleasant comes after the shock. The spray is even adjustable, from gentle mist to something short of tidal wave. There’s also a built-in bidet and, on some, air-drying.
We had been told about the toilets during our cultural pre-port briefing, but I thought they’d be novelty items, maybe only in the very best hotels or Tokyo Disneyland. They’re everywhere. The Japanese are setting new standards for even our most personal activities. Sir Crapper never could have envisioned what this Asian nation would do with his device.
Jim, Shamim, and I found a restaurant in the adjacent mall and had an unusual though very good dinner of asparagus spears, grilled pork, grilled chicken, and something that was similar to a pork egg-foo-young, all served on a hot grills similar to, but smaller than, the ones used at a Benihana’s restaurant in the US. But no chef appeared at this tapanyaki restaurant to fling shrimp at us or put on a show while grilling a steak. Instead, the grill was used to keep the food warm, nothing more. But the food was very good, and we still had room for ice cream after dinner. I stopped by a 7-11 and bought a Haagen-Dazs ice cream sandwich with cookies and cream; Jim and Shamim opted for a McDonalds soft-serve cone.
Then we went back to the hotel, and I was in bed by 10:30pm.
The next morning, following a breakfast of yogurt, rolls, hard boiled eggs, and miso soup, we checked out of the hotel and went across the street to the Hamarikyu Gardens, an ancient garden that was once reserved for the emperor but had long since been given to the city as a public garden. I took lots of pictures in the garden, so I won’t try to describe it except to say that, like everything else in Tokyo, it was perfectly manicured, spotlessly clean, and interlaced with old bridges, ginko-lined paths, sea-fed ponds swimming with carp, and a gazebo sitting on a small peninsula where walkers could stop for a quiet cup of tea. All this was surrounded by the shiny skyscrapers of Tokyo. The trees were especially beautiful because they were at their peak of fall color, and it all made me feel like I was back home in the Midwest, a wonderful place to be.
After a 1-hour walk in the park, the three of us went back to the hotel, where Jim and Shamim grabbed their bags, and we went to Shimbasi station to catch our respective trains, mine back to Yokohama, Jim and Shamim’s to a small village at the foot of Mt Fuji.
That afternoon, I returned to the ship briefly then went out into Yokohama to find an internet connection and to see the city in the vicinity of the port. As I said in my previous entry, Yokohama is a city that makes me happy. I felt very much at home walking through this Japanese version of Evanston IL. I walked along the park that lines the waterfront, watching families out with their kids and being entertained by street artists. Then I turned around and returned to the port area along a street that could have been in the area of the Orrington Hotel: lined with maples and ginkos fronting ‘30s and ‘40s-era buildings housing restaurants and hotels.
At the port terminal, I turned inland and walked a few blocks to the baseball stadium—playoffs are still going on in Japan—turned north a few blocks until I found a Starbucks, where I had an excellent cup of tea and a wonderfully strong WI-FI connection. I remained there for well over an hour nursing the tea and working on blog and e-mails. Then I packed up and headed back to the ship.
It was about 6pm, and ship time—the time we have to back onboard before sailing—was 2100 (9pm), so I stopped for dinner at a small Italian restaurant a few blocks from the port, where I had a Bolognese pizza accompanied by a glass of newly arrived Beaujolais Nouveau, my Thanksgiving swill. The wine was excellent (for swill), the pizza was delicious, the price was reasonable (about US$20). I was back onboard by 2030, and we sailed for Kobe at 2300—11pm.
We’re 18 hours east of Kobe, about 8 miles north of the Isu Islands, which (I think I remember this) are the peaks of the tallest mountains in the world. That’s true because (again, I think I remember this) we’re just about to sail over the Japan Trench, part of the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest point of all the world’s oceans—something over 30,000 feet. Six miles down. In brief, there’s a lot of water below us. And funny thing: it all looks exactly the same as all the other water I’ve seen over the past 3 months.
We left our final non-US port, Kobe, Japan, last night at 2100 (9pm) to the Big Band sounds of a local ensemble of musicians, assembled and playing on one of the decks of the port terminal. It was the city’s and country’s farewell to a group that had, over the past 5 days, pumped much yen into the Japanese economy. And Japan returned the investment many fold. A beautiful, orderly, amazingly clean, extraordinarily friendly, wonderfully quiet (I heard one car horn the entire 5 days), exceedingly polite people. Most on board are talking today about the time spent “in my new favorite country.”
There is a dark underbelly to the Japanese nirvana, however. They have the highest suicide rate in the world. Their economy is still reeling from the “lost decade” of the ‘90s and taking a belly punch from the current world recession. A million Japanese kids have locked themselves in their rooms (literally!), refusing to come out, because of the stress to succeed created by the school system. And the young generation, especially the women, are rebelling, striking out on their own, refusing to follow the old traditions and to fall into the old roles. So the question is will Japan be able to continue their near-idyllic world, or will the cultural rules break down and will Japan become like the rest of the developed world: a little noisier, a little dirtier, a lot less pleasant? It’ll be interesting for my kids and grandkids to watch. Meanwhile, Japan sure is a wonderful place to visit.
Tokyo and Yokohama
We arrived in Yokohama harbor right on time: 0800 the morning of 20 November. It was the Friday before a 3-day weekend in Japan, and most of the MV Explorer voyageurs had had trouble finding hotel rooms—at least, affordable hotel rooms—for their overland trips, especially in the cities everyone wanted to visit: Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and Hiroshima. I, on the other hand, had no plans other than wanting to take a day trip to Hiroshima on the 23rd, our first day in Kobe. And I had no expectations for Yokohama and Tokyo other than another typical port city and another typical big city. I was wrong on both counts.
We sailed into the port of Yokohama under a glistening white bridge spanning the opening to the bay like a grand welcoming gate. In front of us was a skyline of new, sparkiling skyscrapers interspersed with traditional-style brick buildings, all lining a waterfront of parks and trees. The port terminal itself is, as I said earlier, a work of art mixing steel, wood, and parkland in a flowing building that gracefully rises and falls as it swoops from its endpoint in the bay to its terminus at the city park.
Jim and Shamim had made reservations at a Tokyo hotel—the Villa Fontaine—and they were going to follow Maria Chapel and Betsy Bloom into the city. Maria planned to meet a friend at a train station near the Ginza and then, after lunch, envisioned a walking tour of the heart of Tokyo. Betsy, Jim, and Shamim planned to tag along, so I invited myself to join them. Bob Chapel stayed at the ship as duty dean—babysitter—for the day.
After clearing the ship, the five of us walked, first, to the local post office to get cash at one of the few ATMs that accept non-Japanese credit cards (at least that’s what we were told). Then we walked down into the Yokohama subway and took a 10-minute ride to Yokohama Station, where we caught the JR (Japan Rail) train to Shimbashi Station, Tokyo. It took some bewildered looks to figure out how to buy tickets for the train, but soon we all figured out the system that is, despite the very different language, pretty simple to manage. All signs on the public transportation system are in Japanese and English. And, though not always easy to find, signs telling where to go next are nearby all exits from trains and subways. Despite the to-Western-eyes indecipherable characters of the Japanese language, Japan is a surprisingly easy country in which to get around.
Maria’s friend, Edsko, met us at Shimbashi Station, and led us via underground halls and malls to the Villa Fontaine, which is only a few blocks from the station and a few blocks from the Ginza, Tokyo’s Times Square and Michigan Boulevard. I had brought with me only things to get me through the day, intending to return to Yokohoma and the ship that evening. But the hotel was very nice, brand new, excellently located. And Jim and Shamim had gotten a for-Tokyo excellent rate of just under $200/night.
I asked a clerk if they had any single rooms available. To my astonishment, they offered me a room for the night at ¥10,000—just over $100. I didn’t pause an instant and took the room. The rate even included breakfast, a toothbrush, a razor, and shaving cream. A fresh pair of underwear, and I’d be set.
We left the hotel and went first to a restaurant on the top floor of an office building just outside the Ginza. The restaurant was a typical business venue, but very Japanese, with small, private rooms, complete with sliding doors, for small parties like ours. I had teriyaki with udon noodles, all delicious and accompanied by an excellent view across a park to Tokyo Bay.
After lunch, Edsko led us to the grounds of the imperial palace, home of the emperor and empress. The palace sits on a series of islands square in the middle of Tokyo, the islands defined by stone-lined moats and marked by guard towers that retain the traditional, multi-storied look common in Japanese painting. To get to the palace grounds, we walked across a wide park—Hibya—that runs along a 6-lane boulevard—Hibya Dori. I had stayed in a hotel on this same boulevard when I was in Tokyo about 12 years ago—the November it snowed—and I thought then how much that area reminded me of Michigan Boulevard in Chicago where it runs along Grant Park. Today, the area seems even more like Chicago, except, of course, Grant Park has no views of medieval guard towers and ancient bridges curving over imperial moats. I suppose Tokyo doesn’t have anything quite like Taste of Chicago either. I’ll bet Tokyo likes it that way.
We walked around the imperial palace grounds—you can’t go inside—then walked the few blocks over to the Ginza, stopping first at a wonderful little coffee shop for what turned out to be the best cup of $10 coffee I’ve ever had. It was little; it was delicious, truly the best I’ve ever had; and the cup, slightly larger than a demitasse, really cost $10. No refills. The preconceptions that people who have never visited Japan may include crowds, traffic, noise, and exorbitant prices. Only the latter is true . . . except for my hotel room at the Villa Fontaine.
By now it was dusk, and the lights of the Ginza were starting to appear as we turned onto Chuo-Don Avenue, Tokyo’s 5th Avenue. This Buddhist/Shinto country goes into Christmas big time, and all the stores were decorated with the secular icons of the season: big Christmas trees, lighted Santas, elves, all the typical decorations we could see at Macy’s or used to be able to see at Marshall Field’s. We saw the same thing in Hong Kong and even, to a lesser degree in Shanghai. Christmas—at least the gift-buying, merchandising part—has become a worldwide holiday.
We found a department store—Sogo—that intrigued the ladies and was a likely place for me to buy a fresh pair of underwear for the morning, so we went in and split up, Jim and I to the men’s floor, Betsy, Shamim, and Maria to . . . wherever. We agreed to meet 40 minutes later.
The men’s floor contained a terrific selection of suits, shirts, sweaters, jackets, everything for the well-dressed businessman and everything very expensive. I didn’t see a shirt priced under US$100, and all the suits were over US$1,000. All this in a store that, from all appearances, is a step down from a Nordstrom’s, probably on par with Macy’s. I finally found the men’s fundamentals—underwear and socks—and picked out the least-expensive pair of pants: one pair, US$11.50. So now the room price had gone up about 10%, still a bargain.
Jim and I had completed our shopping in about 10 minutes, so, with 30 minutes left to kill, we left the store and found a small yakitori and soup counter, where we ordered and enjoyed a couple of draft Asahi beers while we passed the time.
After rejoining the ladies—they were later than 40 minutes, of course—we left the store and split up: Maria, Betsy, and Edsko going to dinner; Jim, Shamim, and I to the hotel a few blocks away.
My room was very small—no bigger than 12’ X 12’—but it had everything I wanted: king-size bed, high-speed internet, TV with BBC news, and a bathroom with toothbrush, saving gear, and a Japanese toilet. When I first visited Japan in ’67, a Japanese toilet was a hole in the ground with a porcelain appliance at ground level shaped something like a spittoon. A few of those remain in Japan today. But most Japanese bathrooms today come equipped with a toilet for those who wouldn’t mind spending hours, even days, on the toilet. These 21st –Century “crappers” (named after the Englishman who invented the first toilet) are equipped with heated seats, even with adjustable temperature settings. And most come with built-in cleansing sprayers. The push of a button causes a few seconds of buzz and whirr while the toilet warms the water, followed by a perfectly aimed spray that is, to say the least, shockingly pleasant. Pleasant comes after the shock. The spray is even adjustable, from gentle mist to something short of tidal wave. There’s also a built-in bidet and, on some, air-drying.
We had been told about the toilets during our cultural pre-port briefing, but I thought they’d be novelty items, maybe only in the very best hotels or Tokyo Disneyland. They’re everywhere. The Japanese are setting new standards for even our most personal activities. Sir Crapper never could have envisioned what this Asian nation would do with his device.
Jim, Shamim, and I found a restaurant in the adjacent mall and had an unusual though very good dinner of asparagus spears, grilled pork, grilled chicken, and something that was similar to a pork egg-foo-young, all served on a hot grills similar to, but smaller than, the ones used at a Benihana’s restaurant in the US. But no chef appeared at this tapanyaki restaurant to fling shrimp at us or put on a show while grilling a steak. Instead, the grill was used to keep the food warm, nothing more. But the food was very good, and we still had room for ice cream after dinner. I stopped by a 7-11 and bought a Haagen-Dazs ice cream sandwich with cookies and cream; Jim and Shamim opted for a McDonalds soft-serve cone.
Then we went back to the hotel, and I was in bed by 10:30pm.
The next morning, following a breakfast of yogurt, rolls, hard boiled eggs, and miso soup, we checked out of the hotel and went across the street to the Hamarikyu Gardens, an ancient garden that was once reserved for the emperor but had long since been given to the city as a public garden. I took lots of pictures in the garden, so I won’t try to describe it except to say that, like everything else in Tokyo, it was perfectly manicured, spotlessly clean, and interlaced with old bridges, ginko-lined paths, sea-fed ponds swimming with carp, and a gazebo sitting on a small peninsula where walkers could stop for a quiet cup of tea. All this was surrounded by the shiny skyscrapers of Tokyo. The trees were especially beautiful because they were at their peak of fall color, and it all made me feel like I was back home in the Midwest, a wonderful place to be.
After a 1-hour walk in the park, the three of us went back to the hotel, where Jim and Shamim grabbed their bags, and we went to Shimbasi station to catch our respective trains, mine back to Yokohama, Jim and Shamim’s to a small village at the foot of Mt Fuji.
That afternoon, I returned to the ship briefly then went out into Yokohama to find an internet connection and to see the city in the vicinity of the port. As I said in my previous entry, Yokohama is a city that makes me happy. I felt very much at home walking through this Japanese version of Evanston IL. I walked along the park that lines the waterfront, watching families out with their kids and being entertained by street artists. Then I turned around and returned to the port area along a street that could have been in the area of the Orrington Hotel: lined with maples and ginkos fronting ‘30s and ‘40s-era buildings housing restaurants and hotels.
At the port terminal, I turned inland and walked a few blocks to the baseball stadium—playoffs are still going on in Japan—turned north a few blocks until I found a Starbucks, where I had an excellent cup of tea and a wonderfully strong WI-FI connection. I remained there for well over an hour nursing the tea and working on blog and e-mails. Then I packed up and headed back to the ship.
It was about 6pm, and ship time—the time we have to back onboard before sailing—was 2100 (9pm), so I stopped for dinner at a small Italian restaurant a few blocks from the port, where I had a Bolognese pizza accompanied by a glass of newly arrived Beaujolais Nouveau, my Thanksgiving swill. The wine was excellent (for swill), the pizza was delicious, the price was reasonable (about US$20). I was back onboard by 2030, and we sailed for Kobe at 2300—11pm.
23 November 2009
Day 92--In port, Kobe, Japan
22 November. 33°18’ N, 135°50’ E. Speed= 11 knots. Course= 247°
We’re sailing toward Kobe at a blistering 11 knots, scheduled to arrive at 7am tomorrow. Bob and Maria Chapel have been traveling overland between Tokyo and Kobe, and will rejoin the ship in the morning. Then Maria will go to Kyoto, and Bob I’ve-seen-all-the-temples-I-want-to-see Chapel and I will board a bullet train for the 75-minute trip to Hiroshima. We’ll spend our last couple of days in a non-US port visiting the site of the first city to have suffered an atomic attack. I imagine it will be sobering. It’s on my bucket list.
Back to Shanghai.
Shanghai
I think I said this already, but visiting Shanghai is visiting the future. We docked on the northwest side of the Huangpu River, about a half-mile north of the Bund district, which is the old financial area of colonial Shanghai. The Bund riverbank is lined with buildings from the ‘30s and ‘40s that look a little like the older buildings that line Grant Park in Chicago. Behind the classical façade rise the steel, brick, and glass skyscrapers of the newer Shanghai.
But the newest skyline of Shanghai is on the south bank of the river. Jim and Shamim were in Shanghai on their honeymoon in 1987, only 9 years after Deng declared that China had suffered enough years of poverty and that the time to make money had arrived. In ’87, the south bank of the river was nothing but rice paddies. Today, the south bank resembles the waterfront of Hong Kong: high-rise buildings of every style, from retro art deco to ultra-modern avant garde, each one trying to outdo the other in height, curves, glass, and lighting. And dominating the skyline of the south bank—the Pudong region—is the Oriental Pearl Tower, which looks a little like a giant toothpick that someone had used to spear two enormous olives. Each olive contains several hundred hotel rooms. It all looks like a scene out of the old Flash Gordon serials I used to watch at Saturday matinees in Birmingham, Michigan. “Ming the Merciless” was the inscrutably Chinese villain in those 20-minute episodes. I imagine that politically incorrect character is still lurking the towers of Shanghai.
My first job after docking was to try to reach Jesse Xia. Jesse is president of Anderson’s Asia/Pacific region and would be my host for our FDP on Monday the 16th. Don Finkle, Cousin Nancy’s husband, had told me about the challenges Jesse and he had faced setting up their joint venture with the Chinese company, Power Dekor, and I thought seeing the operation and hearing the stories firsthand would be a good experience, especially for my business comm. students.
To my amazement, my cellphone worked in China even though the country is on a different system than the CDMA cellular system of the US. After several false starts—probably expensive false starts—I finally reached Jesse, who invited me to join him for dinner that night. I accepted, of course.
Next, I bundled up in sweater and UM windbreaker and headed out into the streets of Shanghai. The weather was chilly—probably in the high 40s Fahrenheit—but dry, so I was comfortable as I walked out the entrance to the dock area and was immediately accosted by vendors trying to sell me “Rolex watch, very cheap.” My destination was Nanjing Road, the famous shopping district of Shanghai, about a half-mile away. That half-mile was a maze of construction as the city prepares to host next year’s world’s fair, Expo 2010. So I negotiated through the traffic and over fences until I finally turned north onto Nanjing Rd.
I spent the next 3 hours walking down Nanjing. The street and stores that line the street could have been in any large city in the US. Except, of course, that the signs were written in large Mandarin characters. But the store windows were full of mannequins dressed in the latest Paris fashions, furniture and appliances of the latest designs, and brand names one can see on store fronts along 5th Avenue in New York or Boul Mich in Chicago: Gucci, Tiffany, Prada, Rolex . . . they’re all in China.
About an hour after leaving the ship, I was getting hungry, so I walked into a restaurant that looked inexpensive and inviting. I walked down to the main dining area, a MacDonald’s-looking place with many plastic tables and chairs and several walk-up counters. I stood in line and, when I got to the front, pointed to a couple of dishes on the menu that looked pretty good: noodle soup and a plate of dumplings. The woman taking my order was very helpful and escorted me to a table, where she apparently told a young waitress what I had ordered. After a few minutes, the waitress delivered my meal, including a Tsing Tao beer, and it was every bit as delicious as it had looked in the pictures. It is possible to get a good meal anywhere, I’ve learned, as long as you can smile, point, and look just a little hapless. I’m good at all three.
After lunch, I continued walking up Nanjing Road, which now had become a pedestrian mall, packed with people out doing their Sunday shopping. I learned that stores are open in China every day, Monday thru Sunday. And the Nanjing mall was as crowded as a US shopping mall in the weeks before Christmas.
I walked through a pedestrian underpass and came up into People’s Park, a green, grassy, tree-lined stretch that began where the pedestrian mall ended and continued 3 blocks or so to the ultra modern J.W. Marriott hotel and condos. Across the street from the hotel was a Starbucks, where I stopped and ordered a latte, the first latte I’ve ever had. True. Not bad, though I prefer just plain coffee. I walked back to the Radisson Hotel to finish the coffee, and, as I sat down on a wall lining the sidewalk, out of the hotel walked Jim and Shamim. They had checked in that morning and planned to stay there until ship time Monday evening.
Seeing them was a nice surprise, and the three of us walked back down Nanjing toward the river until they had to peal off to visit a museum. I continued back to the ship.
Jesse said he’d pick me up for dinner around 5:30, and, by the time I got back to the ship, it was already close to 5. So I quickly showered and changed clothes. Jesse pulled up at 5:30, and we headed to the French containment area for dinner.
From the mid 19th century to the mid 20th, various European countries had occupied China under the pretense of controlling the opium trade. During those years, each country claimed various sections of Shanghai and, in fact, all of China. And the colonial powers had left their marks. The old French area contains elegant old buildings and tree-lined streets that reminded me more of Newport Beach than Paris, and, of course, excellent restaurants.
Jesse took me to a Chinese-cuisine restaurant, where he ordered an assortment of very tasty dishes, including spicy beef, a deep-fried-and-spicy sea bass, tiny spring rolls, hot and sour soup, rice, and some prune-type fruit desserts. We sat on a balcony in the restaurant looking down on a wedding reception being celebrated on the main floor. The bride was beautiful; the food was delicious.
I returned to the ship about 10pm after Jesse drove me around the breathtakingly beautiful sights of Shanghai at night. It certainly rivals Hong Kong. In fact, Shanghai prides itself in fast overtaking Hong Kong as an economic powerhouse in China. I believe it.
On Monday, twelve of my students joined me on the faculty-directed practicum (FDP) visiting the mall where Anderson Hardwood Floors and Power Dekor maintain their joint-venture Shanghai showroom. Anderson and Power Dekor had invited the press to cover our visit, so we were treated like visiting dignitaries as we entered the huge mall that looked like a cross between Chicago’s Merchandise Mart and Orange County’s Fashion Island, the very upscale mall in Newport Beach, California, where we used to take 2-year-old Haley for a relatively inexpensive meal in their food court.
Jesse and Mr. Gore, a VP from Power Dekor, were wonderful hosts, having first treated all of us to lunch at the largest buffet restaurant I’ve ever seen, then making us feel like a part of Obama’s contingent—the President happened to be in Shanghai at the same time—with television and magazine reporters covering the event, banners welcoming “our dear American friends” outside and inside the mall, and even an “honored guest” boutonniere for me as the “distinguished professor from University of Virginia.” I was interviewed by the Chinese Financial Times broadcasting network and by a reporter from a local home décor magazine, who was very interested in how I decorated my house. I promised to send her pictures, particularly of the Anderson flooring in my kitchen and family room.
The presentations by Jesse and Mr. Gore were excellent, reinforcing much of what we had been talking about recently in class about the Chinese culture and way of doing business. But the mall itself was the star of the day. It’s one of several like it in the Shanghai area. And its 5 to 7 stories house individual stores displaying every conceivable home product, from bathroom fixtures to kitchen appliances, to dining room, living room, and bedroom sets. All of it top-of-the-line stuff. We didn’t see many patrons in the mall, but it was a Monday afternoon. Jesse told me that the mall is packed on weekends with Chinese families who are now gaining enough income to furnish their apartments and decorate them with the latest, most expensive styles. I took many pictures and videos. Again, only pictures can tell the tale.
We returned to the ship by 5pm—an hour before ship time—and found out that our departure from Shanghai would be delayed 18 hours because of bad weather in the East China Sea. It was already raining and cold in Shanghai, with winds blowing strongly out of the north. So as faculty and staff bundled up for a restful night on board the MV Explorer, many of the students headed out into the cold and rain for their bonus night in China.
The next day at noon, we untied from the Shanghai pier and headed down the Hunagpu River to the Yangzi and out into the sea for the short voyage to Japan.
As I think I said earlier, anyone who doubts that the 21st Century will be the century of Asia and, especially, China, should visit Hong Kong and Shanghai. The human rights record of China is poor. But what they’ve accomplished in the past 30 years is incredible. An example: 10 years ago, Shanghai had no rapid transit system. In the next 5 years (completed in 2004), they built an ultra modern, 15-line subway system on 3 levels that runs throughout the city. Meanwhile, it took the city of Los Angeles at least 10 years to build a single 10-mile, above-ground people mover from downtown LA to Long Beach. And the Big Dig in Boston still isn’t completed after . . . what? . . . almost 20 years.
Of course, China has the advantage of a very low-paid, huge workforce, and a centralized government that says “jump,” and the people reply, “of course.” At least they do today. Still, while the U.S. is debating over a watered-down national health plan (the Chinese abandoned their plan in the late ‘70s and are now reinstating it for all 1.3 billion citizens) and whether to spend stimulus money to rebuild crumbling bridges and roads or to cut taxes for people already earning more per capita than 99% of the rest of the world, the Chinese are building the new century. We may not like their political system. But that system is unlikely to change as long as the Chinese people continue seeing their living standard rise nearly every day. The people on the streets in Shanghai look very well fed.
Read Thomas Friedman’s “Advice from Grandma” op-ed in the Sunday(?) NYTimes.
More on the Japan stop when we’re enroute to Hawaii.
We’re sailing toward Kobe at a blistering 11 knots, scheduled to arrive at 7am tomorrow. Bob and Maria Chapel have been traveling overland between Tokyo and Kobe, and will rejoin the ship in the morning. Then Maria will go to Kyoto, and Bob I’ve-seen-all-the-temples-I-want-to-see Chapel and I will board a bullet train for the 75-minute trip to Hiroshima. We’ll spend our last couple of days in a non-US port visiting the site of the first city to have suffered an atomic attack. I imagine it will be sobering. It’s on my bucket list.
Back to Shanghai.
Shanghai
I think I said this already, but visiting Shanghai is visiting the future. We docked on the northwest side of the Huangpu River, about a half-mile north of the Bund district, which is the old financial area of colonial Shanghai. The Bund riverbank is lined with buildings from the ‘30s and ‘40s that look a little like the older buildings that line Grant Park in Chicago. Behind the classical façade rise the steel, brick, and glass skyscrapers of the newer Shanghai.
But the newest skyline of Shanghai is on the south bank of the river. Jim and Shamim were in Shanghai on their honeymoon in 1987, only 9 years after Deng declared that China had suffered enough years of poverty and that the time to make money had arrived. In ’87, the south bank of the river was nothing but rice paddies. Today, the south bank resembles the waterfront of Hong Kong: high-rise buildings of every style, from retro art deco to ultra-modern avant garde, each one trying to outdo the other in height, curves, glass, and lighting. And dominating the skyline of the south bank—the Pudong region—is the Oriental Pearl Tower, which looks a little like a giant toothpick that someone had used to spear two enormous olives. Each olive contains several hundred hotel rooms. It all looks like a scene out of the old Flash Gordon serials I used to watch at Saturday matinees in Birmingham, Michigan. “Ming the Merciless” was the inscrutably Chinese villain in those 20-minute episodes. I imagine that politically incorrect character is still lurking the towers of Shanghai.
My first job after docking was to try to reach Jesse Xia. Jesse is president of Anderson’s Asia/Pacific region and would be my host for our FDP on Monday the 16th. Don Finkle, Cousin Nancy’s husband, had told me about the challenges Jesse and he had faced setting up their joint venture with the Chinese company, Power Dekor, and I thought seeing the operation and hearing the stories firsthand would be a good experience, especially for my business comm. students.
To my amazement, my cellphone worked in China even though the country is on a different system than the CDMA cellular system of the US. After several false starts—probably expensive false starts—I finally reached Jesse, who invited me to join him for dinner that night. I accepted, of course.
Next, I bundled up in sweater and UM windbreaker and headed out into the streets of Shanghai. The weather was chilly—probably in the high 40s Fahrenheit—but dry, so I was comfortable as I walked out the entrance to the dock area and was immediately accosted by vendors trying to sell me “Rolex watch, very cheap.” My destination was Nanjing Road, the famous shopping district of Shanghai, about a half-mile away. That half-mile was a maze of construction as the city prepares to host next year’s world’s fair, Expo 2010. So I negotiated through the traffic and over fences until I finally turned north onto Nanjing Rd.
I spent the next 3 hours walking down Nanjing. The street and stores that line the street could have been in any large city in the US. Except, of course, that the signs were written in large Mandarin characters. But the store windows were full of mannequins dressed in the latest Paris fashions, furniture and appliances of the latest designs, and brand names one can see on store fronts along 5th Avenue in New York or Boul Mich in Chicago: Gucci, Tiffany, Prada, Rolex . . . they’re all in China.
About an hour after leaving the ship, I was getting hungry, so I walked into a restaurant that looked inexpensive and inviting. I walked down to the main dining area, a MacDonald’s-looking place with many plastic tables and chairs and several walk-up counters. I stood in line and, when I got to the front, pointed to a couple of dishes on the menu that looked pretty good: noodle soup and a plate of dumplings. The woman taking my order was very helpful and escorted me to a table, where she apparently told a young waitress what I had ordered. After a few minutes, the waitress delivered my meal, including a Tsing Tao beer, and it was every bit as delicious as it had looked in the pictures. It is possible to get a good meal anywhere, I’ve learned, as long as you can smile, point, and look just a little hapless. I’m good at all three.
After lunch, I continued walking up Nanjing Road, which now had become a pedestrian mall, packed with people out doing their Sunday shopping. I learned that stores are open in China every day, Monday thru Sunday. And the Nanjing mall was as crowded as a US shopping mall in the weeks before Christmas.
I walked through a pedestrian underpass and came up into People’s Park, a green, grassy, tree-lined stretch that began where the pedestrian mall ended and continued 3 blocks or so to the ultra modern J.W. Marriott hotel and condos. Across the street from the hotel was a Starbucks, where I stopped and ordered a latte, the first latte I’ve ever had. True. Not bad, though I prefer just plain coffee. I walked back to the Radisson Hotel to finish the coffee, and, as I sat down on a wall lining the sidewalk, out of the hotel walked Jim and Shamim. They had checked in that morning and planned to stay there until ship time Monday evening.
Seeing them was a nice surprise, and the three of us walked back down Nanjing toward the river until they had to peal off to visit a museum. I continued back to the ship.
Jesse said he’d pick me up for dinner around 5:30, and, by the time I got back to the ship, it was already close to 5. So I quickly showered and changed clothes. Jesse pulled up at 5:30, and we headed to the French containment area for dinner.
From the mid 19th century to the mid 20th, various European countries had occupied China under the pretense of controlling the opium trade. During those years, each country claimed various sections of Shanghai and, in fact, all of China. And the colonial powers had left their marks. The old French area contains elegant old buildings and tree-lined streets that reminded me more of Newport Beach than Paris, and, of course, excellent restaurants.
Jesse took me to a Chinese-cuisine restaurant, where he ordered an assortment of very tasty dishes, including spicy beef, a deep-fried-and-spicy sea bass, tiny spring rolls, hot and sour soup, rice, and some prune-type fruit desserts. We sat on a balcony in the restaurant looking down on a wedding reception being celebrated on the main floor. The bride was beautiful; the food was delicious.
I returned to the ship about 10pm after Jesse drove me around the breathtakingly beautiful sights of Shanghai at night. It certainly rivals Hong Kong. In fact, Shanghai prides itself in fast overtaking Hong Kong as an economic powerhouse in China. I believe it.
On Monday, twelve of my students joined me on the faculty-directed practicum (FDP) visiting the mall where Anderson Hardwood Floors and Power Dekor maintain their joint-venture Shanghai showroom. Anderson and Power Dekor had invited the press to cover our visit, so we were treated like visiting dignitaries as we entered the huge mall that looked like a cross between Chicago’s Merchandise Mart and Orange County’s Fashion Island, the very upscale mall in Newport Beach, California, where we used to take 2-year-old Haley for a relatively inexpensive meal in their food court.
Jesse and Mr. Gore, a VP from Power Dekor, were wonderful hosts, having first treated all of us to lunch at the largest buffet restaurant I’ve ever seen, then making us feel like a part of Obama’s contingent—the President happened to be in Shanghai at the same time—with television and magazine reporters covering the event, banners welcoming “our dear American friends” outside and inside the mall, and even an “honored guest” boutonniere for me as the “distinguished professor from University of Virginia.” I was interviewed by the Chinese Financial Times broadcasting network and by a reporter from a local home décor magazine, who was very interested in how I decorated my house. I promised to send her pictures, particularly of the Anderson flooring in my kitchen and family room.
The presentations by Jesse and Mr. Gore were excellent, reinforcing much of what we had been talking about recently in class about the Chinese culture and way of doing business. But the mall itself was the star of the day. It’s one of several like it in the Shanghai area. And its 5 to 7 stories house individual stores displaying every conceivable home product, from bathroom fixtures to kitchen appliances, to dining room, living room, and bedroom sets. All of it top-of-the-line stuff. We didn’t see many patrons in the mall, but it was a Monday afternoon. Jesse told me that the mall is packed on weekends with Chinese families who are now gaining enough income to furnish their apartments and decorate them with the latest, most expensive styles. I took many pictures and videos. Again, only pictures can tell the tale.
We returned to the ship by 5pm—an hour before ship time—and found out that our departure from Shanghai would be delayed 18 hours because of bad weather in the East China Sea. It was already raining and cold in Shanghai, with winds blowing strongly out of the north. So as faculty and staff bundled up for a restful night on board the MV Explorer, many of the students headed out into the cold and rain for their bonus night in China.
The next day at noon, we untied from the Shanghai pier and headed down the Hunagpu River to the Yangzi and out into the sea for the short voyage to Japan.
As I think I said earlier, anyone who doubts that the 21st Century will be the century of Asia and, especially, China, should visit Hong Kong and Shanghai. The human rights record of China is poor. But what they’ve accomplished in the past 30 years is incredible. An example: 10 years ago, Shanghai had no rapid transit system. In the next 5 years (completed in 2004), they built an ultra modern, 15-line subway system on 3 levels that runs throughout the city. Meanwhile, it took the city of Los Angeles at least 10 years to build a single 10-mile, above-ground people mover from downtown LA to Long Beach. And the Big Dig in Boston still isn’t completed after . . . what? . . . almost 20 years.
Of course, China has the advantage of a very low-paid, huge workforce, and a centralized government that says “jump,” and the people reply, “of course.” At least they do today. Still, while the U.S. is debating over a watered-down national health plan (the Chinese abandoned their plan in the late ‘70s and are now reinstating it for all 1.3 billion citizens) and whether to spend stimulus money to rebuild crumbling bridges and roads or to cut taxes for people already earning more per capita than 99% of the rest of the world, the Chinese are building the new century. We may not like their political system. But that system is unlikely to change as long as the Chinese people continue seeing their living standard rise nearly every day. The people on the streets in Shanghai look very well fed.
Read Thomas Friedman’s “Advice from Grandma” op-ed in the Sunday(?) NYTimes.
More on the Japan stop when we’re enroute to Hawaii.
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