Land, I see land!

Land, I see land!

Ok, it was still dark outside, but LIGHTS, I see LIGHTS!!  We’ve decided to make it a thing, that no matter how early, or how cold it is outside, we were going to wake up before sunrise and see the ship sail into each port.  (Although I completely skipped over it, sailing into Hawaii was actually spectacular.  It was the first time we had seen land in over a week, the air was warm, humid, and salty, and as the sun began to rise behind us, the light hit the volcanic mountains of the Big Island revealing what minutes earlier had been darkness, but now the welcoming sight of beautiful lush U.S. soil.  As the sun continued to rise, whales, like 6 or 7 of them, started to breach the surface all around the ship. It was incredible).  Sailing into Japan was not so warm, humid, or salty, but spectacular nonetheless.  Despite the cute nickname, the land of the rising sun, no sunrise was to be had, as the intense fog (probably smog, but lets go with fog) blocked it out.  We had done it.  We had crossed the pacific. The north pacific. In winter. Some may not have admitted it, but I’m pretty sure every single person on board let out a little sigh of relief when they first saw land in Japan.  This was the end of our long, long time at sea.  Never again on this voyage would we be as far from land as we had been for the last 10 days.  Now, on the other side of this passing, I can invite you to google ‘semester at sea, the wave’, and you‘ll better understand my sigh of relief.  Actually, on second thought, if our journey makes you even a little skittish for our wellbeing, don’t google it.  Ok, I warned you, you can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube.  We’re safe, that was 10 years ago, we made it across the pacific.     

Japan was amazing.  We were on land for 5 days, only three nights away from the ship but I felt like we were gone for a lifetime!  We did amazing things, ate amazing food, and experienced the single most Japanese thing I could ever imagine.   I hate saying words cant describe the experience, but they can’t, I’ve tried, so: google ‘robot restaurant Tokyo’ and watch a video, (I wanted to insert a link here, but we don’t really have internet service, so telling you to look it up, and putting this sentence in blue text is about the best I can do).  We kareoke’d until the sun came up.  ( ok, the sun wasn’t coming up, but after going to bed before 10 every night for the last thee weeks, being awake until 2:30 a.m. felt like the sun should have been coming up),  and got super lost on crazy fast trains.

I’ll better describe Japan in a post soon, but were quickly approaching China, where the internet is censored (THE INTERNET IS CENSORED!!!!!!), and google/blogger is blocked, so I wanted to get something up before big brother told me I couldn’t.

For now, Sianara, or however you say it in Chinese I guess.