There's No Place Like Home

Chinese culture emphasizes the group, and even in huge cities like Beijing the people historically have grouped themselves for generations in distinct neighborhoods called hutongs--lots of little grey single-story buildings that go on and on in a complex web, with walls, courtyards and interconnected hidden passages that only the residents can access. The hutongs are rapidly disappearing, so there is a strong movement to help preserve this way of life that is so identified with Chinese culture. To give us a look at the hutong tradition, which goes back to the 13th century, Semester at Sea’s tour organizers arranged for us to have lunch and a jiaozi (dumpling) lesson in a private home in one of Beijing’s hutongs. Dumplings are a traditional holiday food, so this tied in well with our visit during Chinese New Year.

To get into the narrow streets of the hutong, we ditched our big tour bus and rode by twos in trishaws--a modern version of the rickshaw that is powered by people pedaling bikes instead of running on foot. Our pedicab ride was a good 20 minutes long each way, so we had the opportunity to see down many alleyways and past open gates in the hutong walls. We finally arrived at the home of a Mr. Zhao, a friend of our tour guide. Using a kitchen smaller than my closet, he fixed about eight delicious courses for us. My favorite was the sautéed bamboo, which one of the students held up to her panda hat. Very cute. After we ate, we had the opportunity to make Chinese dumplings, learning the proper technique for rolling out the little circle of dough and then shaping it into a standing crescent filled with minced pork and herbs.

Why are the hutongs disappearing if they are such an integral part of city life in China? The answer is largely economics. First, there’s the price of land. Real estate in Beijing is getting so valuable that even a small shop can sit on millions of dollars worth of land alone, whether or not the building on top is a total shack. Then there’s the issue of plumbing: there is no indoor plumbing. People use pit toilets in the alleyways. In the city. And until last year when he finally got electric heat, our host heated his home with coal. So think of the pollution. It costs so much to retrofit the hutongs for plumbing and heat that they are rapidly being torn down so that high rises can go up in their place.

Like people everywhere, the Chinese love the idea of having nice new apartments with flush toilets and electric heat--go figure!

All We are Saying...Is Give Peace a Chance

(Luana:) Eskimos are mistakenly said to have more words for snow than do Caucasians, though this is apparently another urban myth. But I do wonder if the Japanese rightfully could say they have more words than we do for sadness--two of those words being Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the sites of the two August 1945 atomic bombings that ended World War II. I visited Hiroshima with three busloads of students, faculty and staff from Semester at Sea--Bob had already been and didn’t want to return--and we all agreed that it was an intense, and intensely moving, experience.


It’s hard to process the amount of destruction that the bomb unleashed. The museum exhibit showed photos from the air, and all you really see are street patterns, natural features such as rivers, and some debris. But where the museum really excelled, from my perspective, was in painting a picture of the human cost. It’s very hard to look at the clothing and school uniforms preserved by parents of dead schoolchildren and not feel sadness and discomfort.

The peace park that surrounds ground zero of the bombing does provide a sense of hope and determination that people find a way to work for peace. I’m so glad we spent a leisurely walk and took our time there. It’s a nice counterpoint to the grim reality of the artifacts inside the museum. Our group had brought boxes of paper cranes in honor of the famous book, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, about the little girl who folded 1,000 paper cranes in hopes that she would recover from leukemia induced by the bombing (she didn’t). We hung the cranes in one of the little kiosks set aside for this popular activity. Many of us took a turn at ringing the peace bell that usually is shown on the news each year on the August 6 anniversary of the blast. We also encountered a survivor of the blast who had learned English so he could talk to visitors in the park. He had lost a brother and his father, and was a survivor himself. As he told his story there weren’t many dry eyes in the group.

Later, some students stumbled on the aftermath of a press conference with the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate, a woman from Kenya named Wangari Maathai, and got to speak with her. (She won the prize for her work with the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya.) One of the students recorded the conversation, so I’m hoping it gets posted on one of the ship’s officials blogs--if so, I’ll update this. Maathai had heard of Semester at Sea and its work with Bishop Desmond Tutu, and the students loved meeting someone so special at a place that is now dedicated to peace.

In talking about the visit, many of us onboard have remarked at how we are puzzled that the Japanese didn’t seem angry at Americans, but they didn’t. Bob and I had fathers serving overseas at the time--Bob’s Dad was in Okinawa and would have probably been in danger if we had invaded Japan, so we are happy the war ended, and sometimes I think it isn‘t fair to second-guess decisions made in a different time, but it is certainly important to think about how we could work for peace so we could avoid these messes. Lots of food for thought.

But where else but Semester at Sea can you go to Hiroshima one day, and then sit down to breakfast the next day with two nuclear physicists who can talk about the scientific, moral, and political decision-making that went into deciding to use nuclear weapons. This has been such a great opportunity to think about things, even if you don't come up with any ideas but one:

Pray for peace.

Land of the Rising Sun

(Luana:) It took us three mostly rocky weeks and two days to cross the Pacific Ocean, with four of those days spent in Hawaii, so there were plenty of people who were very happy to see land as we approached Japan on February 9. Talk about cabin fever! The excitement built as we maneuvered into the dock at Yokohama, where a taiko drumming group greeted us from the top of the port terminal building. We received a very friendly welcome, from the drumming as we docked to the photo opportunity as we cleared customs. Most everyone lined up to have a photo in a kimono or whatever the guy equivalent is called.

Bob and I took a city tour of Yokohama on our first day, and I continued with day trips to Tokyo and Hiroshima, while Bob went to Nara. On our last day, we explored Kobe, where the ship had moved. I’m happy with the choices we made, but I think it’s time to get more adventurous. Most of the kids on the ship--about 500 of the 700--traveled on their own and didn’t reboard the ship for the transit from Yokohama to Kobe. I’ve talked to many of them since they got back (all on time, and nobody missing!!) and I’m so impressed with the wonderful independent travel adventures they had. With budgets in mind, many had slept in Internet cafes, hostels, the little sleeping cubes in Tokyo, or in Japanese ryokans--rooms with nothing but tatami mats and futons on the floor, sometimes a little heater under a central table. They took backpacks and headed for the hills, for the mountains, for the hot springs, for the hidden corners. One group just got off at a random, unplanned train station and walked until they found something interesting; they eventually wound up at a hot springs. Universally, everyone was “templed out,” but what great stories they will bring home. (The girls in the picture are three of our "extended family" members, Taylor, Lauren and Kate--real sweeties. Their headbands say Japan.)

It’s easy to beat yourself up thinking other people planned better adventures than you did, but I’m coming to accept that each trip is its own unique experience, and I’m enjoying other peoples’ trips as much as my own. I don’t usually like bus trips but had decided to do them this time in the interest of maximizing things seen compared to time spent figuring things out. And the independent travelers in many cases mentioned that they had no idea what they were seeing and wished they’d had someone to explain things. With a bus tour, you certainly get your share of information! At any rate, this was a nice introduction to Japan. We even met one lady at a garden in Yokohama who is traveling to Portland this summer; we exchanged emails and are hoping to see her when she comes our way. The people were so kind and lovely.

My biggest surprises: (1) I had no idea that the many coastal cities are not really distinct anymore -- they all kind of run together. We left Yokohama for Tokyo on Day 2, and I have no idea where one city ended and the other began, and we drove for an hour and a half. And this was not just suburbs -- I’m talking city, city, city, tall building, tall building, overpass, overpass, etc., as far as the eye can see. When I get home and have bandwidth, I want to do a Google Earth flight along the Japanese coast. (2) I read a bit of Japan’s Shakespeare, Basho, in a lit class on board, and he talked constantly about how difficult it was to walk from town to town across Japan on a pilgrimage he made. I thought it was just because the roads wouldn’t have been good in the 1650s. But I had no clue how mountainous the country is. You would really have to be quite the adventurer to set off to walk across this country.

One statistic I found very interesting: one of my guides said 80% of Japanese are Buddhist, and 80% are Shinto. Japanese aren’t tremendously religious to begin with, but many of them observe both traditional religions. Some are even Christian and Shinto. The Shinto temples are where they go to celebrate happy occasions -- births, marriages, buying a new car -- and the Buddhist temples are for the “meaning of life” issues and to observe a death. Happily enough for our group, at the big Shinto shrine in Tokyo we had the great good fortune to observe a Shinto wedding (see photo, right). Very lovely, very quick.

Kind of like our time in Japan.

Reflections on Japan

(Bob:) I had a variety of preconceived notions about Japan from my two previous visits, with both being business (reporting) trips in the mid- to late-1980s. With two exceptions, those notions tended to be reconfirmed.

First, the Japanese are very polite and friendly to tourists. The country is clean, well-organized and extremely efficient. It was amazing to see no trace of the mid-1990s earthquake in Kobe that killed thousands and leveled major parts of the city. New Orleans won’t look anywhere near that good 15 years after Katrina.

On the negative side, it scares me little to see a culture that is so conformist that people would never jay-walk, even after standing at a traffic light for several minutes with no traffic in sight, and they say they feel guilty and won’t take all their vacations because the people left in the office might have to do a little extra work to make up for the vacationer. Now that’s really scary, but maybe I watched too many WWII movies as a child.

The two biggest changes I noticed concern public restrooms and women in the work force. Twenty years ago the public restrooms, as in many countries, were to be avoided. Now, the women’s at least, I am told, are worth a tourist stop, with multiple buttons on the toilets controlling multiple interesting functions, including heated seats. I’ll let Luana go into detail on this -- perhaps in private after the trip. These bathrooms were a great topic of conversation among the women on the ship.

Second, women in the work force have really increased in the last 20 years according to a lengthy conversation I had with a woman tour guide. But most of the jobs have been “temporary,” no pension benefits and subject to firing at any time. This has been a big change in Japan as lifetime employment is phased out. This has also given women economic freedom, and they are much less likely to get married. Some 30 to 40 percent of women aged 30 are single and for men the figure is even higher.

The tour guide said women don’t want the hassle and cost of marriage and kids unless the guy is really well off and not the first son, since the first son has to take care of his mother. The current population projection is that Japan will lose 25 percent of its population by 2050 because people are having so few kids.

Japan is also very expensive, probably always among the top three countries in the world in cost of living and much more expensive than the U.S. The average cost of a home is 10 times the average annual income, and food and transportation are also high-priced: upscale Kobe beef restaurants in Kobe have $200 and up dinner entrees.

Tours in Japan, other than the extremely important one to Hiroshima, invariably involve four things: Shinto temples (the first one is interesting, the second one much less so, etc.) Buddhist temples (ditto), old Japanese-style castles (ditto) and going up in a tall building to photograph what’s below. (Buildings are capped at about 70 stories because of earthquake concerns.) The Japanese seem to think that even though their mile after mile after mile of cities are crammed together and ugly they will become photogenic from 70 stories up. They don’t. All the American brands are here, including AM/PM and 7/11 stores on every block and McDonald’s on every other block (They serve hot dogs in Japan, according to their signs.) There is a giant ferris wheel in every port.

All that said, I really enjoyed my visit to the temple city of Nara, which has the world’s largest wood structure serving as a Buddhist temple. It’s truly spectacular, and on the grounds are hundreds of miniature deer, which you can buy food to feed. They are quite aggressive at pursuing the food and trying to take it out of your pocket, but it’s a lot of fun and provides great photo ops.

Now I’m really looking forward to arriving in China tomorrow. It will all be new and exciting. Luana says I can’t wear my “Free Tibet” tee shirt. What a killjoy.

A Typical Day

(Bob:) When we started this voyage Luana and I were worried that we might get bored during the days at sea. In fact, we even brought along cards and Scrabble in case that happened. Our children will be relieved to hear we have not played a game of Scrabble yet, since we have kept our days full. Our games of Scrabble usually end with passion (a poor word worth nine points) with me saying, “Luana, you’re cheating,” her storming out of the room and returning with a meat cleaver (much better, 13 points), threatening to kill me.

But we haven’t had to resort to Scrabble. That’s because we nap seven hours a day. Just kidding. Our days at sea go like this: Luana gets up at 6 a.m. most days to exercise in the fitness room. We have breakfast together during the breakfast time between 7 and 8:30. I exercise by walking on a certain area of the deck (90 steps a lap, a lap every 50 seconds, 35 to 45 minutes of walking, but who‘s counting) and read on the aft sun deck, all between 9 and 11. However, on days when the sea is extremely rough (see today’s photo of the sea spray hitting deck 6), there is no exercising on deck.

We audit two to three classes a day (most classes run on alternate days, seven days a week when we are at sea) between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Classes are 75 minutes long. We do squeeze in naps in the afternoon, or more reading.

A class both Luana and I audit, and which is required of all students, is Global Studies, which focuses on the countries we are visiting, the oceans we are traveling through and the patterns that connect them. One recent session dealt with Japan, China and India. Ahhaa, you say, I see the pattern already: All important Asian countries have five letters. That was confirmed when Burma changed its name to Myanmar, which translates from Burmese as “Unimportant Asian Country.” Yesterday, I also sat in on an interesting session about Vietnam joining the five Asian Tigers: the region’s fastest growing small economies. They are South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Tony, I think, but I may have dozed off in that one.

At 5 p.m. most days, the Old Coots group holds a meeting in the faculty lounge (Happy Hour) run by a ship’s staffer to discuss upcoming events and problems. (“Has anybody got their computer to work right yet? I can’t get mine turned on.”)

Dinner is from 5:30 to 7:30. All meals are informal and buffet style, and these are very social affairs. We usually sit down with faculty members or other adults and get to know them and discuss world events and philosophy (“What’s the Super Bowl point spread? I wonder who was on Oprah today?”) Occasionally students will even join us for meals (“Hey, let’s go to that table and count the Old Coots’ nose hairs.”)

There are also seminars and other group meetings between 7 and 10 p.m. Usually there are 3 lectures a night to choose from. Luana and I have also been sitting in on a free class: Chinese for Beginners, or as we call it, The four ways to pronounce ‘ma.’

In the evening you can also go to your room and watch the small TV with its 6 channels, two of which are usually old movies that relate to the countries we are visiting. Another channel has environmental stuff (screened by Al Gore to guarantee boredom), one has been Chinese history documentaries, and two are related to ship’s operations, administrative matters (Picked up your malaria medication yet?), etc.

The faculty lounge is open for drinks from 9 to 11 most nights, and the drinks are priced very reasonably. We usually go to sleep relatively early, although sometimes we stay up to read. I must say I am reading many more books on this ship -- three already in three weeks.

So there you have our exciting days at zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Water, Water Everywhere

(Bob:) On the umpteenth day of our crossing of the Pacific (seven days to Hawaii, eleven days to Japan, not counting the tragedy of the skipped day described below), one becomes acutely aware of the immense size of the Pacific. One professor onboard said all the continents would fit into it, with some water left over. We have traveled 24 hours a day at about 17 mph on and on and on. The water in most places is 16,000 to 18,000 feet deep and has been uniformly about 70 to72 degrees most of the time. We have only seen a couple of ships (of course Luana and I sleep 22 hours a day so our viewing time is limited.), a few birds and some flying fish.

Now I know there are many of you reading this blog thinking, “I wonder what’s on TV right now, but there might be a few of you thinking “It’s too bad we can’t do something useful with all that water.” (Fish don’t think that.) Well we can, Ancient Mariners. Unlike the line from “The Ancient Mariner,” it turns out there are plenty of drops to drink. This ship, like all modern cruise ships, desalinates ocean water to get its water supply. The ship can purify up to 150,000 gallons a day, using both a sand filter and reverse osmosis (like synchronized swimming) through several other filters. It costs $600 to $700 in fuel oil a day to run the desalination plant.

While at sea, we on board use only about 50,000 gallons, mostly for showers. Only about 500 gallons is used by the ultra-low-flow, vacuum-powered toilets. (Flush that at the wrong time and you’re singing tenor for the rest of the cruise, matey.)

A problem occurs in port, since they can’t desalinate water there since it’s usually too polluted. So the ship stocks up our storage tanks prior to port. Also, in-port usage drops way down since guys would rather run ashore and pee on trees than risk these toilets. The ship also can’t send out its “used” water in port -- only at least 12 miles at sea. So no laundry gets done in port. (Laundry is $3 or $6 a bag for those who want to know, with the cost difference coming for stuff that gets ironed.) Fortunately, for Luana, she is washing her unmentionables by hand. Oops, I wasn’t supposed to mention that.

For those of you concerned about the environment, the ship does not send toilet water directly into the sea, although it does do so with laundry and shower water. The systems have separate drainage piping, so the toilet water gets treated to remove the “solids.”

This, of course, is an excellent time to return to my previous mention of the poop deck in an early blog. In fact, it’s the deck at the rear of a sailing ship above the large cabin that usually housed the captain. The phase was coined by the famous French mariner, Capitan LePoop.

Luana says I now have to eat in the room for 2 weeks, and no more potty humor in the blog. Life just isn’t fair.

February 3, We Hardly Knew Ye

(Bob:) On Feb. 1, at about 1:15 p.m., we crossed the International Date Line. That statement is revealing a deep, dark secret about this ship, but more on that later.

They were ready for our crossing. The line was all lighted in neon and there was a big sign that read: “Welcome to tomorrow, Semester at Sea.” Below that was a small reader board advertising bingo night at a nearby Indian casino, but we didn’t have time to stop.

Of course, there were a few people on board who claimed to have crossed the date line before it became overly commercialized, but those are the same types who don’t appreciate the natural scenic grandeur of Disneyland.

Now back to the cover-up. We passengers were expecting that we would skip Feb. 2 (Groundhog’s Day) and go immediately to Feb. 3. But noooooo! The captain or whoever the dictator is who is controlling the ship’s calendar decided we would sail merrily on all of Feb. 1 and 2 pretending nothing had happened and then we would skip Feb. 3. Perhaps the powers-that-be thought if we skipped Feb. 2 we would have 12 more weeks of winter -- or worse yet, of the never-ending crossing of this ocean. So they pulled their great day switcheroo. But there are those of us who plan to report this to the proper authorities in Greenwich. You never saw Captain Kirk switch days on the log of the Starship Enterprise when he crossed the date line; we will not let this injustice stand.

But that’s not the end of it. There is talk that they may show a live broadcast of the Super Bowl on board, since we still won’t be in Japan. But we will be watching it on Monday! Super Bowl Monday? Oh the horror! God will come down and smite this ship with a giant bottle of Bud Light. I hope we survive.