Mt. Fuji

This day we would travel for about 4 hours to  Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park to visit the tallest mountain in Japan; Mt. Fuji (3776 m or 12,388 feet).  If you have never been to a snow capped mountain up close then you can not understand how majestic it is to see.  As we were driving along the route it seemed as if all of a sudden the mountain just popped up out of no where.

By tour bus we would travel up the Yoshida route to the 4^th station 2305 meters (7562.3 feet or 1.4 miles) above sea level as close to the summit as we could get for the time of year we were visiting.  Our view of the summit was gorgeous, covered in snow, with the sun over top.  A slight wind would blow the snow causing a cloud effect.  

At this location there was a restaurant and a few shops to purchase souvenirs and a Shinto temple, from this location near the summit we could also view the mountain rage across the way, referred to as the Japanese Alps by our guide, this mountain range added to the vista.

As we left Mt. Fuji we would now go to Hakone and ride a cable car into the fog to catch another view of Mt. Fuji, however due to the fog we barely could see each other never mind any views.

Of course the fog cleared as we boarded the ferry taking us to the other side of one of the five lakes that surround Mt. Fuji.  This ride on the ferry also gave us some great views of Mt. Fuji within the mountain range, during sunset.  It was breathtaking and not even the chilly 40 degree weather deterred us from enjoying being outside.

Welcome to Japan, now be quiet

We arrived to Yokohama, Japan as with most other ports I met with ED on the outer deck to watch our entry into the port.  And watch one of the most amazing sunrises of the voyage.  

Is it any wonder the Japanese refer to their homeland as the Empire of the sun.  As the sun came up, we could see the majestic Mt. Fuji with a rose colored glow as the sun reflected its rays off the snow capped mountain.  As the ship pulled in to its birth we were met with Japanese drummers, mostly women, playing on large drums.   

We enjoyed this only for a few minutes as we were aware that the clearing of the ship in Japan was going to be a unique experience.  As a member of the Living Learning Team, it was our responsibility in most ports to assist with passport distribution and distribution of other important documents necessary for our shipboard community to travel within the country we were visiting.  In India we had to ensure each of our community members had a shore pass, as was the case in Vietnam.  If these documents (shore passes) were lost, than the person who they belonged to would not be able to leave for the ship for the duration of our stay.  This actually happened to a couple of students.

 In Japan the whole process of passport distribution and preparation to disembark was different.  Prior to our arrival in Yokohama as a team we were trained by the medical team to take the temperature of each of our community members, which was a requirement of the Japanese government.  The Japanese would quarantine any member that had an above average temperature, their prevention of spreading the H1N1 virus into their country. Once we arrived to Yokohama, the Living Learning Team was dispatched into the port terminal and given assignments.  Some were to direct students through immigration, others were to hand out their passports and custom forms in the terminal (this was usually done on the ship), and I was assigned the task of informing the members of our shipboard community the following:

“behind me you will collect your passport from another team member, as usual by you ship id number, you will then form a single line facing forward only and will be directed by another LLC to get through immigration, once you clear immigration, you will walk about 20 feet and clear customs, at that point you can wait in the terminal to re board the ship or leave the terminal, this must be done in complete silence.  Any questions you might have please direct only to a terminal agent.  Please remove your hats and sunglasses and again I remind you COMPLETE SILENCE”

I must have given those instructions 100 times at least.  Of course there were some people that objected to being quiet, I would remind them that we are here as guests and if they have questions about the guidelines they should address them with the Japanese officials.  The process took a few hours and finally our ship was cleared.  

Once we were clear I along with 4 of my colleagues headed into Yokohama on foot to get our train tickets for the Shinkansen which we would take two evenings later from Tokyo to Kobe.  On our way to the train station we passed Chinatown ( I thought to myself, damn a Chinatown in Japan, now I seen it all).  After we purchased our tickets, PL and I decided to walk to the ferris wheel and possibly go for a ride to get an arial view of Yokohama.

As we got closer to the ferris wheel the sun started to go down and it got a little colder and we realized we had no cash on us so opted out.  We walked through a mall and around the amusement park and then decided to head back to the ship, having had a full day of walking.  We very much enjoyed our personal tour of the Yokohama water front.  Tomorrow we were off on a tour of Mt. Fuji

Shang Hai so nice to meet you

Though we flew out of Hong Kong to Beijing, our return was to Shanghai, within the country of China.  While it was about 78 degrees the day we left Hong Kong, and a cold blustery average of 35 while we were in Beijing, it was a wet and overcast 50 or so degrees in Shanghai, we would have only one short day in Shanghai so we decided to make the best of it.

Once again some colleagues and I decided to venture out into Shanghai to see what it had to offer.  We walked for hours in the rain our first mission was to find a post office and perhaps visit a museum.  Well we found the museum and also found it closed so on to our next mission the post office.  Just then we received a FB message courtesy of my blackberry informing us that we had more time in Shanghai; due to an ocean storm our captain had delayed our departure until the next day.  Now we had a few more hours to burn in Shanghai.  So without being deterred we decided to seek out a post office, but first a side trip to McDonald’s.  We entered Mickey D’s and sat and waited a while as we were still a little early for lunch.  As we sat there waiting we noticed that this McDonald's had delivery.  YES DELIVERY!  The delivery men would pack up their McDonald’s delivery boxes and get on their mo-ped scooters and head out to deliver lunches to those that had ordered them, we thought it was a riot, so of course we took pictures.

Once that was out of the way on we were with our mission – to the Post office.  While walking we came across a Dunkin Donuts.  I was truly excited.  This was a little bit of home so far away from home.  On the other side of the world to be exact.

Im supposed to be pointing at "Providence", my home town right above where I am pointing "Sacramento"

Though we had just had a cup of coffee at Starbucks less than 2 hours before, PL and I were about to go in when the Becker’s joined us; the four of us strolled into D&D and ordered our coffee and donuts.  Now I am not a huge fan of donuts and typically will not eat them, though here I had to have a French Cruller (sp), it was very disappointing.  While trying to decide on which donuts we would ultimately have LB came across a sea weed and bacon option to which we all took a pass.  We sat there and enjoyed our coffee and donuts for what it was and then continued back on our search for the post office.   As we continued our walk we were detoured around (Shanghai is the host of the 2010 World Expo and doing a major over haul of parts of their city) and finally stumbled upon the post office, however I did not get stamps because they had run out.  We decided to continue searching and then walk towards the Pearl, one of the major skyline buildings that Shanghai was known for.   After a brief stop in what can only be described as an indoor flea market, we made a pit stop in the Renaissance Hotel to use their facilities and to ask directions.  While there the valet/concierge asked me if I wanted to mail the postcards (I had taken them out for a visual in the event the person we encountered for directions did not speak English), I informed him that they were not ready to be mailed out as they did not have stamps.  He then offered to put stamps on them and that he would make sure they were mailed out (note to those reading this, if you did not receive your postcard from my trip to China the valet/concierge at the Renaissance Hotel in China is the one to blame).  I gladly handed him the postcard and money to pay for the stamps and quickly we were once again on our way.  We arrived to the pearl and made the decision not to pay the money to go up for the non-existent view since it was overcast and rainy.

We took a few pictures at the base when 2 of our international students (the Columbian guys) happened upon us and informed us of how to get a great free view of the city and the Bottle Opener (another of the world famous sky line buildings in Shanghai, this one is one of the tallest buildings in the world).  PL and I were all over it, we decided we were going to go for it, leaving the Becker’s behind we were now on our way.  As we were detoured through a park and around a crossing we came within feet of the base of the building without finding a way to get to it and finally we succumb to the cold and rainy day.

this is as close as we got to one of the tallest buildings in the world, due to detours and traffic and mostly weather

We gave up and decided to call it a loss.  We then took a subway back to the pier area and thought we would be close enough to walk to our ship.  We arrived to our subway stop and started what we thought would be a short walk.  We walked for about 45 minutes and stopped at a convenience store to spend the last of our money on chips and beer.  We finally arrived to our ship and were pleased with the events of our day, I mean after all we had chips and beer.

this was the view Shang Hai harbor from my cabin window

The Great Wall...an experience of a lifetime

With my visit to the Great Wall of China I am able to check another item off the bucket list, the 2^nd of the Wonders of the World I would visit on my voyage around the world.  I walked, hiked, fell, but mostly climbed the Juyongguan Pass of The Great Wall China on Friday, November 13, 2009.  

As we arrived we were quite excited about what we were about to embark upon, I along with about 30 students and two colleagues dismounted our bus in about 30 degree weather, and though there was snow on the ground we started straight away to the entry way of The Great Wall.  We stopped only to take pictures as we started up the STEEP staircase, it was then that it occurred to me that I was in no Disney movie and this Great Wall hike was actually going to be more of a climb than a hike.  

The steps were in no way uniform not one step was the same height as the next but the one thing they did have in common was that they were all very steep.   Also due to the snow that had fallen just days before our arrival they were covered in snow and ice which made the hike up much more treacherous.

Though I started my climb with 4 layers (2 outer and 2 inner layers) I was down to my 2 inner layers as the first 20 minutes of the hike had me quite warm.

About an hour into the hike, I could hear some of our students yelling “Here comes Ana the LLC, Here comes Ana” I then realized it was our international student from the Basque region and he along with another student.  They had commandeered one of the forts of the wall and were dropping snowballs, throwing them on all the passers-by yelling “in the name of the Basque country, go home you filthy Mongols”

It was a bit funny, he and his snowball throwing partner were throwing snowballs at everyone, even if they weren’t with our group; everyone enjoying this break from the serious climbing and joining in the impromptu snowball fight.  I managed to keep walking by unscathed.    Though how he and got ahead of me without my noticing is beyond me.  But up on the next tower were my colleagues the Becker’s with some students who had commandeered another fort.  They had an arsenal of snowballs and were just getting everyone as they came up the hill towards their tower.  I was grazed once or twice.  I entered the ground floor of their fort and I could hear them plotting.  As I crept up the stairs and around corners.  Then I heard a small commotion, it seems that LB lost control of a snowball and ended up pegging a Chinese man that was on the fort with them. He realized it was all in fun, then he and his friend joined the Becker’s and our students and engaged our students on the ground in an International snow ball fight on the Great Wall of China.  The students on the ground were the International student from the Basque region joined by some French folk and other Semester at Sea students.  It was so much fun.  Later on the bus on the way back to our hotel I thanked the student from the Basque region, telling him the snowball fight indeed made my Great wall experience a different experience. 

After the break we finished hiking the wall, it was steep everywhere, just as we thought the worst was over because we had reached the tallest part of our section of the wall and we would start our descend, it occurred to us, we have to climb down this thing, and the part that we descended on was not easy.  On our descend we remarked just what a marvel of engineering this wall is, the angles and slopes on the side of these mountains literally made you feel as if you were about to fall off the mountain.  We came to the realization that even climbing the stairs up you had to look down at your steps because they were uneven in nature, is it any wonder the Mongols were kept out of China, and if they tried to cross in the winter as we experienced, at times this would make them sitting ducks because the snow would only dampen their effort.   Most of the time we were literally walking backwards as we held on to the hand rails, as if we were repelling off a mountain side, It was more snowy and icy on the climb down than it had been on the hike up.  It was treacherous.  

We descended for about an hour when we started to see that the end of our hike was nearing.  As we arrived to the platform on the bottom we saw just how steep the Wall had been.  Our Great Wall experience was over and it had been Great, it felt like an accomplishment.  

A whirlwind tour of Beijing

In the early hours of November 13, 2009 a group of 30 or so members of the Semester at Sea community woke up at 4am to meet and head out to Beijing, China from Hong Kong.  

We boarded our flight by 730am and were delayed due to weather, in my usual form as I do on airplanes, I immediately fell asleep and was only awaken by one of my colleagues a few rows away telling me to make sure I ate the meal they were about to serve since we would miss lunch due to us being late.  Yes we were served a hot meal aboard this China Air flight, it was pretty good.  We were about to be on a 4 day excursion to Beijing sponsored by Peking University.  In the next 3 nights and 4 days we would visit the Summer Palace, the Ming Dynasty Tombs, the Great Wall, Tienanmen Square, The Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. 

First stop the Summer Palace (in winter)

The Ming Dynasty Tombs,

 where we had to come back through the gates and announce that we were back (among the living) so that our spirit would not remain with the dead.  A superstition

The Great Wall 

Tienanmen Square

The Forbidden City

Temple of Heaven

I would also partake of some of the best Chinese food I have ever had (of course it’s the best since Im in China), though I am not a fan of Chinese food.  Including the adventurous visit to Ghost street, (rightly named because the restaurants that line it are open into the wee hours of the morning) where we ate Hot Pot, literally a pot of soup that had everything in it including 4 whole frogs and was so spicy it made us sweat.  

 

 It would be a whirlwind tour and truly amazing.  The only one of these visits that I will blog about separately is The Great Wall.  For the rest I hope you enjoyed the pictures.