Japan in review.

It will take at least 10 blog entries to say enough about Japan.  We are now pulling out of the port at Kobe with Osaka in sight ahead--moving slowly.  We got drummed out of Kobe. By that, I mean that we had a group of Japanese drummers playing for us as we cast off the lines, fired up the side thrusters and moved away from the dock.  It was quite stirring and got a great cheer and round of applause from the ship folks.

Nancy and I left Kyota early this morning so she could come to Kobe to get on a bus that would take her back to Kyota for a tea ceremony.  Yeah, we thought it made more sense to just meet them in Kyota, too, but this way, they can give an empty seat to someone if the ticket-holder doesn't show up.

The tea ceremony was fascinating for her, and I'm glad I didn't go because they had to sit on the floor again.  I drank coffee in Kobe instead.  The train ride was pretty interesting and was almost a continuous metropolitan area all the way.  Much of the housing is apartment buildings, and at least three-fourths of them had laundry hanging on the balconies. Even the single family dwellings had laundry hanging out. They sure make use of solar power.  I can only imagine what the electrical usage would be if all those dwellings were running a clothes dryer. I know that hanging laundry wouldn't fly with all our subdivision covenants in the U.S. ,but the heterogeneity is a huge part of  an interesting montage that is Japan.

The other thing I noticed was the number of school baseball fields, and everyone of them had teams practicing.  Like our trip to Takayama, there were gardens growing everywhere.  They take a 4X 10 little area between the street and the railroad track and put in a garden of rich dirt.  There is not a lawn in sight, so the lawn service guys in Virginia would not like this.

We got to Kobe and finally found the ship after a false start--thanks to a considerate concierge at a hotel who overheard us asking another guy. One thing that we learned throughout our travels is that most Japanese study English in school.  Most of them can read a little English but not speak it, so if you wrote down where you were going, they could help you.

While Nancy was doing the tea ceremony, I went walking with my friend Stuart Schwartz who teaches psychology on the ship and is a fellow dog lover.  We wandered around the shopping area and finally could not resist any longer the Kobe beef  restaurants.  It had been almost 2 hours since we had lunch on the ship, so we were ready to eat again.  What a treat!  We sat at the counter and were entertained by the chef making our (second) lunch. This was heavily marbled, very tender beef that he cut after grilling, and I ate with chopsticks.   I would have eaten this without teeth. Yum. I would have taken pictures, but I used up all the memory in my camera.  We ambled (Stu's word) back to the train to the ship and joined a bunch of students .

Once again all the students made it back to the ship on time.  Dinner tonight was mostly "what did you do?" conversations, and there were quite a variety of accounts.  The folks who visited Hiroshima said it was pretty intense.  Interestingly, the ship that we couldn't wait to leave  had a pull to it as we had all lived out of backpacks for a few days.  There was not a girl at dinner whose hair was not wet from having just been washed.  This sounds like "Survivor" but new alliances were made. Kids found out who they could travel with and who they did not want to travel with.  Nancy and I found out that we can do this intense travel as a team and enjoy it.  The students did great at their budgeting.  One girl say she only had 10 yen left. We had a lot more, so we hope to do some currency exchange when we hit China.  It felt strange to not be using chopsticks to eat with--just when I was getting able to get the food into my mouth and not on my shirt.

Japan is a currency country--not credit card--so you had to have enough currency to buy transportation to make it back to the ship.ATMs are not nearly as common as in the U.S. The major place to find them is at the Post Office.  Go figure.  Or at a 7-11, and I'm pretty sure there was a hefty charge for that one. Once back at the port, any leftover money got spent on vending machines or in the port shop.

A few random  hypotheses.  Bowing became a custom when there was a tall emperor who kept hitting his head on doorways (like I did) and finally learned to bow as he entered a room.  Public restroooms don't have paper towels, so everyone brings a small hand towel.  This is to help the textile industry.  There is no two-ply or single ply toilet paper in Japan--only half-ply. They think that makes a roll last longer.