Japan and beyond

Hi everyone~
I finally got to see my aunt and uncle on Thursday~ Rakibe Apa took me around town to some of her favorite shops for okaki (japanese crackers) and japanese tea and we also stopped and had coffee at her favorite coffee place, which had been there since the 1950's. We then took the train out to Rocco area, where they live and met up with Ferid Abe and had dinner at one of their local favorite spots-clearly the sake speciality place as seen here and we enjoyed each others company and got to catch up a bit...another wonderful meal to boot-thank you Rakibe Apa and Ferit Abe-I really enjoyed spending the day with you!

And the ending day in Japan was fabulous...I did not have duty the last day and contemplated about just hanging out close to the ship, partly because it was raining, partly because I was just plain tired! And then the morning presented itself with Tim Trevan coming to Purser's square and joyfully talking about heading out to Osaka for the Danjin festival. A professor had put up information about this annual festival and how cool it was, so whala, I threw my sneakers and slicker on and found Debbie and Andy the videographer and off we went...we must have changed 4 trains at 5 different stations, got a little turned around at a few but ended up in the little outskirt suburb of Osaka where clearly the entire town as well as many visitors from all over Japan gathered for this festival...not really sure as to what it was, we found ourselves there early...we proceeded to find a lunch place,and of course to my likings, found a yaki soba and place-my fellow neopytes of Japanese food went along with the choices and we had a filling lunch with beers. We then headed down to the main street to wait the beginning of these races around the city. there were many people who were dressed in these hapi coats but again not being sure what was about to happen, we hung out and tried to get more information...all of a sudden we heard all this rumbling and right down the street we saw this line up of people holding these ropes attached to these huge wooden structures that were pulled around the corners at warp speed, shouting and chanting what sounded like "toga, toga"~but clearly something else. We did find out that each represented a different war and family groups-where kids as small as 6 were part of the pulling teams~riding on the wooden structures were the elders.

We came back and headed one more time to the 100 yen store, where we found lots of students buying last minutes dollar gifts and then headed back to the ship for an early on-ship time...

Because earlier that morning, the Captain met with Bob and I to share with us that we would be diverted to Hong Kong and miss our stop in Quindao due to a HUGE typhoon that was headed toward Japan. So, he wanted to get out of dodge as quickly as possible and headed straight south to avoid even the tail of this typhoon! We got off right at 8pm or 2020 and headed for the seas...we had an all ship meeting to let folks know what was going on~and had the Captain explain the course of action to avoid rough seas! Although I must say, we still hit rough seas all night last night and most of us did not sleep very well, being woken up by things flying off the shelves and rockin and rollin happening all night long-the swells increased most of the day and most folks are looking a little tired and wiped out today! Because we will now be on the ship for the next 5 days, we will be having 2 days of no classes along with 2 days of actual class days...I think this will be best in terms of folks needing a little rest before heading to China. Our trips in China are obviously be diverted by Semester At Sea while we are at sea and we will have 1 1/2 less days on our trips to China...but all of this said, I am feeling much better about this than being anywhere near a typhoon!

Ok, we are really rockin and rollin right now-just about fell out of my chair in the office writing this~ I am heading to bed early tonight so I can hopefully catch up on some sleep! It really is a different feeling when the ship is really moving, trying to do anything with 'normalsy', but surely all part of the adventure...until tomorrow then~
love, ro

picture on first day w/Kobe tower in background...