Monday: September 24, 2012: At Sea
Ah, a clear day. And one can see forever? Well, not quite. But with the sea all around, it at least seems that way.
I was up early – for the sunrise at 6:45 and compulsive as I am, took many photographs. The clear day meant few clouds on the horizon so little sunrise configuration. But I decided that the occasion was beautiful in its simplicity, a quality of purity so often overlooked in our event-mad world.
I learned that the ship is less than half full, with only 154 guests – the ship holds 380 – so we have more crew per person even than the usual 1-1 ratio. The usual distribution applies: 64 Americans, 32 British and 12 Autralians, and a smattering of other nationalities. I asked Chester, our bartender (isn’t that interesting?), if when this condition exists, the company sends some of the staff home. His answer was yes; the company lowers the crew number, many going home. After Tianjin (Beijing), the ship is full, chartered by an American company (I later learned it was M Financial, whoever that is) for a cruise of 11 days, going anywhere the company wants so long as it ends up in Tokyo. I wonder how the company’s stockholders feel about that. At roughly $750.00 per person per day – well, you do the math. This smaller complement of passengers means no fighting for a chaise on deck and no waiting for a table in the half-empty dining room. It also means some decline in service – there are no waiters, for instance, outside the buffet to take your plate to your table. And a butler for our deck, but not a silent (if any) maid. These issues are hadly noticeable and where it counts, the line is still “the best in the world,” as they call themselves.
I had a nice conversation arouond the pool with Ellen and Sam, from Long Island. Well with Ellen anyway; Sam mostly took a nap. It is their first cruise with Silver Sea and Ellen was fascinated by my copy of the Silver Quiz. She helped with a couple of clues: 90=D in a RA (90 degrees in a right angle). Today’s quiz – I’m writing this on Tuesday – is in what city is each of the given structures located? Who knows about The Statue of Zeus?
It was formal night and so I squeezed myself into my tuxedo with all the appropriate accoutrements – studs, cuff links, cumberbund – and wore my red Crocs, which caused some, but not a lot ofcommentary from those who wished they could do that. Julie Cooley, the 93 year old lady still gong strong, wore red glasses with her simple black dress but was sporting a strand of huge pearls, wound around her neck, tied, and still reaching her waist. They were spectacular!
I met an Australian man in the bar, where we were waited on by Francis, another hold-over from my last cruise. The man was curious about American politics and asked several questons, the most interesting of which was about the “battleground” states. He wanted to know if these were those where there were battles in the American Civil War.
At dinner, alone. I had some foie gras, the champagne sorbet and a grilled lobster tail. Simple, and delicious. It’s not really possible to ask others to join you if you’re alone; it amounts to you asking to join them. But Tony and Kathie (from Manchester) were seated at a two-top right next to me so we had nice, if mostly mundane, dinner conversation. And again, early to bed. Even the ten o’clock show (of Motown songs) couldn’t tempt me into wearing my tuxedo a minute longer!
The computers are off this morning – something about not being on in Japanese or Korean territorial waters – so I’m writing this in tedious longhand, to be typed later, when the computers are on again. (It’s now Friday, and I’m just getting back on a computer!).
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012: Kagoshima, Japan
A port city of about 1.2 million on the southern most island in Japan, Kagoshima is known as the home of the smallest friut (an orange) and the largest radish (a daicon). It’s main tourist attraction is Mt. Sakura, an active volcano that erupts, mildly, many times a day, which while releasing no lava, rumbles, and leaves a fine layer of ash everywhere. Industrious as they are, the Japanese don’t generally have janitors in businesses or schools so the workers and children have to do the cleaning every morning. In Kagoshima, this means washing one’s car every morning. Not fun, even for a car nut like me!
From my perch where I photographed the sunrise, again beautiful only in its simplicity, I could see the mountain of course but didn’t know the clouds hanging there were really ashes. But later, on our excursion called “Kagoshima Highlights,” where we actually visited the volcano, it was clear that the mist was actually fine ash and while I was photographing, I heard a distant, crashing rumble and caught in my picture the bubbling effect of the ash rising from the mountain. While Mt. Sakura has not had a major eruption since 1947, the island on which it stands has concrete shelters, like the entrance to a tunnel, scattered around for people to flee to for protection just in case. The observation point had many levels, all reached by ash-covered stairs – I counted over 100 to reach the best place for photogaphs, a considerable workout for new knees and recovering vertabrae. But the resultant record was worth the walk and climb.
The small island on which Mt. Sakura is located is reached by a fleet of small ferries that run 24 hours a day and the 15 minute ride permits time for photographs of the volcano and the city, from its upper deck. The day was warm and clear and, as usual, I took many photographs. Boarding the bus in the bowels of the ferry took me back to childhood where before the construction of the Bay Bridge, to reach the western shore of Maryland, we had to take the Matapeake Ferry to go to Baltimore from our home on the Eastern Shore.
Next was a visit to the ancient home and gardens of the Shimadzu family that ruled the southern part of Japan for many centuries. The house was in typical Japanese style, long and low, remeniscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style. The gardens, perhaps a little dowdy now, were strung across the side of a great hill and although I was game, my back and knees prevented me from going to the top where it is said that some Lord Shimadzu liked to sit and watch the bay. At the ever-present souvenir center, I did buy a small glass animal for my collection, made in Kagoshima by their world-famous glassworks, and had a cone of sweet potato ice cream, a surprising lilac in color.
The bus on which we traveled to these sites was made for Japanese with short legs, as the spaces between the rows of seats were not friendly to my longer legs, and the man in the seat ahead of me insisted on moving the backof his seat as far back against my knees as possible. I have a large black bruise as evidence of that.
Our guide, ever vivacious and, as usual, hard for my aginge ears to hear, wore a tank top but covererd herself completely when off the bus – even up to gloves for her hands and a funny snood for her head – I presume to protect her from the ash as well as the sun. Japanese men place a high premium on pale skin. I’m sure little Coppertone is sold here. She began to flag as the tour came to an end and even sang an Okinawan folk song, accompanied by a tune on her I-pod, as a farewell to us all. Don’t ask!
Back on the ship, I had a quick lunch and a necessary nap. I also found an invitation to join Elena and Yvonne for dinner but after primping for my hostesses and being seated, first, at a table for four, Yvonne appeared to tell me that the invitation was for tomorrow. My watch can’t keep up with the time changes. It was very embarrassing. Yvonne could have saved me some embarrassment by asking me to join her anyway but she didn’t ,so I had dinner alone at a four-top.
With only a half-complement of guests, the ship feels strangely empty and with only half the usual staff, the service does suffer. The Terrace Cafe was really not prfepared for breakfast when it opened at 7:30 and I had to ask for cearm and sugar four times. Very unusual. But the service is still exemplary in most ways. I didn’t win the Siver Quiz but I did learn that all the Silver Sea ships are named for Rolls Royces.
Sitting alone at dinner, I had unlimited opportunity to observe other guests. At a table near me was an interesting Indian couple. Well, he wasn’t very interesting but she was. Dressed all in black, her hair so much the same shade that I couldn’t tell whereher hair stopped and her dress began, she looked like someone (or something) straight out of Anne Rice. Aside from the black, the only color was her red lipstick and the red of her talon-shaped nails, not bright red, but blood red. She never spoke to her husband and took the food from her fork without closing her lips around the tines, a little like dumping coal into a furnace, and to protect her lipstick.
Today I learned that most Japanese are a combination of Shinto and Bhuddist, the Shinto side is thehappy, celebratory side, while the Bhuddist side is reserved for more solemn occasions (like death and funerals).
Still no internet service so long as we are in Japanese territorial waters. It may be available late tomorrow night.
Stay tuned.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012: Nagasaki
Of course the unavoidable feature of Nagasaki is the dropping of the second atomic bomb here on August 9, 1945. The impact was less disastrous here – 120,000 died in Hiroshima and only (by comparison) 75,000 here – than in Hiroshima partly due to the topography. Nagasaki is a city built on a nuimber of hills around the harbor and many of them shielded some parts of the city from the blast. At dinner this evening – yes, with Yvonne and Elena – Julie of the magnificent pearls, complained that on her tour today there was great emphasis on the atomic bomb without any mention of Pearl Harbor. As a young girl, she actually watched the destruction on December 7, 1941. After all, she remarked, the Japanese were responsible for starting the whole thing.
Our first stop today was a museum of history and culture where we learned that the Portuguese came here early in the 17th century and started a tradition of trading with the Japanese. I took photographs of many of the artifacts from that period, including many beautiful screens, but it all began to run together and I sat out the last part because I was already beginning to tire.
The Peace Park, built near the site of ground zero, was much more interesting, a huge plaza with a giant bronze (now that beautiful green) statue of a seated man, one arm pointing up (for the bomb) and one pointing at right angles to his body (to symbolize a future of peace). On either side, at some distance away, are two shrines, alike, shaped like praying hands, open at the bottom and filled with colorful strings of folded origami cranes. The story is that a survivor of the blast was told by her family that she would live if she folded 1000 cranes – a symbol of life - and so now school children make long strings of cranes and hang them in the shrines. They’re very colorful and look something like boas, hanging from a pole, red and green and my favorite turquoise. At the opposite end of the plaza is a large fountain, the spray in the shape of two wings – to take flight – and around it many sculptures, often of a mother and child, donated by many countries of the world and all dedicated to peace.
Of the 1% of Christians in Japan, 12% of them live in Nagasaki where Christianity was introduced by missionaries who accompanied the early traders. There is a brick cathedral here – the Urakam Cathedral – first built in 1925 and restored after the war. We were allowed, briefly, to go inside where the stained glass windows are very modern, surrounded not by clear glass, but blue glass, which gives the interior a lovely blue glow similar to the blue glow in a chapel that replaces the Kaiser Wilhelm cathedral in Berlin. Since we weren’t allowed to photograh inside, I took some closeups of the outsideof the windows with very interesting results, all blurry and bright. The cathedral is slung on a steep hill and getting to it on a very steep incline was precarious for someone with artificial knees.
But this was not as challenging as the approach to the ropeway (a cable car) to the top of Mt. Inasa where all of Nagasaki could be seen, spread out below. The view was truly amazing and well worth the climb. The landscape was formed by ancient volcanic activity, rocks and lava flung into the sea and forming long fingers of land. Very impressive! The city looks so peaceful from here that it’s hard to imagine a bomb destroying the city on a calm summer morning over 60 years ago.
As we prepared to leave Nagasaki, a high school band of maybe 40 enthusiastic students, all dressed in their school uniforms, played Western music on the pier. As we pulled away, they unfurled a long banner that said, “Come back soon to Nagasaki.” Very sweet, and very good.
Elena and Yvonne had asked Julie and Nancy and Neville to also join them for dinner. We had lively conversation – Nancy’s husband, now gone, pioneered a procedure for Dyputrine’s Syndrome, a curling of the fingers, called the Gonzales Method. Neville, always loquacious, waved his hands in the air and although I couldn’t hear every word, I could follow the gist of his conversation by reading his hands.
We’ve now left Japan, with much seemingly unnecessary government procedure – passports and immigration forms – all very typical of Japanese efficiency. On to a resort island in South Korea.
Stay tuned.
Thursday, September 27, 2012: Jeju, South Korea
[The internet is still not connected so I’m again writing this in longhand – a pain in the fingers – with the hope that I can soon catch up. But I’m so far behind, it may take me one whole day at sea (tomorrow) to catch up. Patience please! And if I type all the missed days together, they will be out of order. But they’ll be there!]
Jeju (pronounced Jay-Joe) is a small island off the sourthern coast of South Korea. We docked at Jeju City, in the north, and spent most of the day in the Jungman Resort area, a popular honeymoon and convention spot about 40 kilometers away on the south coast. This is a kind of Disneyland for adults, with numerous attractions, including museums, restaurants and hotels and a convention center. Our first stop was at the Yeomiji Botanical Garden. At the center of what is thought to be Asia’s largest botanical garden, is an oddly-shaped building with a tower at the center of radiating fingers of glass that contain specific garden types: a flower garden with lots/masses of orchids and begonias; a water garden with broad pads and exotic water lilies; a tropical garden with fruits that grow there displayed in glass cases (the limes are yellow) and a cactus garden similar to one in Cabo San Lucas, although not as extensive. I should have had my long lens – left in the bus to lighten my load – in order to take what I call flower portraits. But I did the best I could with my wide angle lens. After wandering around the inside of the building, we took a Disney-like train around the outside of the building where there are more extensive gardens, even a formal French one, all geometric and primpted to a fare-thee-well. Again on foot, we crossed a typical oriental bridge, sloped steeply on each end and very difficult for keeping my balance, and then many steps down and back up to visit a waterfall. I passed, and while I was waiting, met Janet who lives in Silver Spring and commuted every day to teach management at Towson State College. Small world again. She was surprised that I lived so close, in Baltimore, and when the tour returned, introduced me to her husband, Lou.
Janet and Lou and Yvonne and I shared a table at lunch at the Seven Seaes (yes, spelled that way) Hotel, perched picturesquely on cliffs overlookingthe sea. Cellophane noodles with bowls of condiments – peanuts, squash, cucumbers, all pickled – and a Korean beef stew, a far cry from Julia Child but still delicious, flavored with ginger. I found I’m becoming quite proficient with chopsticks, the only implements presented.
Next, to the edge of the sea to view the pillared rock formations of Jusangeoilli, designated a cultured monument of Jeju Island. These rock pillars, like cubes or hexagons of various sizes, were formed from the lava flow from Mt. Hallasan, and spew water from the sea up to 33 feet high. Black rocks and white foam = many pictures, all taken from a boardwalk-like wooden walkway perched precarioujslly on the cliffs, 65 feet high.
The afternoon sights ended with the Yakcheonsa Bhuddist temple,a huge structure with one storey below ground and five above, all painted ith delicate geometric designs. I balked at the climb up many more steps but finally decided that not being here again – and having paid to see all of this – I should charge on. I’m very glad I did. The inside of the temple with three statues of Lord Bhudda, was outstanding.
There was the ever-present stop at the end of our tour for the necessary gift shop where I found a beautiful box for my collection, all mother of pearl and colored lacquer. In the process of my day, I learned: that the Korean language has only 41 characters made up solely of straight lines, circles and boxes/squares; that Jeju City of about 580,000 has no unemployment; that there is a scarcity of women so many come here from Japan, China or the Philippines to marry Korean men; that the island has plenty of oranges (one variety the size of a watermelon); lots of wind; and if you don’t remember how to say “good morning,” or “thank you” in Korean, you have only to bow and smile.
At cocktails, I was taling to Lee and John from San Luis Obisbo (a travel agent and her real estate developer husband) when Nancy Gonzales (of the Gonzales Method) asked me to join her for dinner. I was highly complimented. She’s very chic, although tonight somewhat in her cups, and talked on and on almost as though talking to herself. I just focussed on listening and smiled a lot. There wasn’t room to bow.
(And now, at last, I’m up to date.)
Stay tuned.
I was up early – for the sunrise at 6:45 and compulsive as I am, took many photographs. The clear day meant few clouds on the horizon so little sunrise configuration. But I decided that the occasion was beautiful in its simplicity, a quality of purity so often overlooked in our event-mad world.
I learned that the ship is less than half full, with only 154 guests – the ship holds 380 – so we have more crew per person even than the usual 1-1 ratio. The usual distribution applies: 64 Americans, 32 British and 12 Autralians, and a smattering of other nationalities. I asked Chester, our bartender (isn’t that interesting?), if when this condition exists, the company sends some of the staff home. His answer was yes; the company lowers the crew number, many going home. After Tianjin (Beijing), the ship is full, chartered by an American company (I later learned it was M Financial, whoever that is) for a cruise of 11 days, going anywhere the company wants so long as it ends up in Tokyo. I wonder how the company’s stockholders feel about that. At roughly $750.00 per person per day – well, you do the math. This smaller complement of passengers means no fighting for a chaise on deck and no waiting for a table in the half-empty dining room. It also means some decline in service – there are no waiters, for instance, outside the buffet to take your plate to your table. And a butler for our deck, but not a silent (if any) maid. These issues are hadly noticeable and where it counts, the line is still “the best in the world,” as they call themselves.
I had a nice conversation arouond the pool with Ellen and Sam, from Long Island. Well with Ellen anyway; Sam mostly took a nap. It is their first cruise with Silver Sea and Ellen was fascinated by my copy of the Silver Quiz. She helped with a couple of clues: 90=D in a RA (90 degrees in a right angle). Today’s quiz – I’m writing this on Tuesday – is in what city is each of the given structures located? Who knows about The Statue of Zeus?
It was formal night and so I squeezed myself into my tuxedo with all the appropriate accoutrements – studs, cuff links, cumberbund – and wore my red Crocs, which caused some, but not a lot ofcommentary from those who wished they could do that. Julie Cooley, the 93 year old lady still gong strong, wore red glasses with her simple black dress but was sporting a strand of huge pearls, wound around her neck, tied, and still reaching her waist. They were spectacular!
I met an Australian man in the bar, where we were waited on by Francis, another hold-over from my last cruise. The man was curious about American politics and asked several questons, the most interesting of which was about the “battleground” states. He wanted to know if these were those where there were battles in the American Civil War.
At dinner, alone. I had some foie gras, the champagne sorbet and a grilled lobster tail. Simple, and delicious. It’s not really possible to ask others to join you if you’re alone; it amounts to you asking to join them. But Tony and Kathie (from Manchester) were seated at a two-top right next to me so we had nice, if mostly mundane, dinner conversation. And again, early to bed. Even the ten o’clock show (of Motown songs) couldn’t tempt me into wearing my tuxedo a minute longer!
The computers are off this morning – something about not being on in Japanese or Korean territorial waters – so I’m writing this in tedious longhand, to be typed later, when the computers are on again. (It’s now Friday, and I’m just getting back on a computer!).
Stay tuned.
A port city of about 1.2 million on the southern most island in Japan, Kagoshima is known as the home of the smallest friut (an orange) and the largest radish (a daicon). It’s main tourist attraction is Mt. Sakura, an active volcano that erupts, mildly, many times a day, which while releasing no lava, rumbles, and leaves a fine layer of ash everywhere. Industrious as they are, the Japanese don’t generally have janitors in businesses or schools so the workers and children have to do the cleaning every morning. In Kagoshima, this means washing one’s car every morning. Not fun, even for a car nut like me!
From my perch where I photographed the sunrise, again beautiful only in its simplicity, I could see the mountain of course but didn’t know the clouds hanging there were really ashes. But later, on our excursion called “Kagoshima Highlights,” where we actually visited the volcano, it was clear that the mist was actually fine ash and while I was photographing, I heard a distant, crashing rumble and caught in my picture the bubbling effect of the ash rising from the mountain. While Mt. Sakura has not had a major eruption since 1947, the island on which it stands has concrete shelters, like the entrance to a tunnel, scattered around for people to flee to for protection just in case. The observation point had many levels, all reached by ash-covered stairs – I counted over 100 to reach the best place for photogaphs, a considerable workout for new knees and recovering vertabrae. But the resultant record was worth the walk and climb.
The small island on which Mt. Sakura is located is reached by a fleet of small ferries that run 24 hours a day and the 15 minute ride permits time for photographs of the volcano and the city, from its upper deck. The day was warm and clear and, as usual, I took many photographs. Boarding the bus in the bowels of the ferry took me back to childhood where before the construction of the Bay Bridge, to reach the western shore of Maryland, we had to take the Matapeake Ferry to go to Baltimore from our home on the Eastern Shore.
Next was a visit to the ancient home and gardens of the Shimadzu family that ruled the southern part of Japan for many centuries. The house was in typical Japanese style, long and low, remeniscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style. The gardens, perhaps a little dowdy now, were strung across the side of a great hill and although I was game, my back and knees prevented me from going to the top where it is said that some Lord Shimadzu liked to sit and watch the bay. At the ever-present souvenir center, I did buy a small glass animal for my collection, made in Kagoshima by their world-famous glassworks, and had a cone of sweet potato ice cream, a surprising lilac in color.
The bus on which we traveled to these sites was made for Japanese with short legs, as the spaces between the rows of seats were not friendly to my longer legs, and the man in the seat ahead of me insisted on moving the backof his seat as far back against my knees as possible. I have a large black bruise as evidence of that.
Our guide, ever vivacious and, as usual, hard for my aginge ears to hear, wore a tank top but covererd herself completely when off the bus – even up to gloves for her hands and a funny snood for her head – I presume to protect her from the ash as well as the sun. Japanese men place a high premium on pale skin. I’m sure little Coppertone is sold here. She began to flag as the tour came to an end and even sang an Okinawan folk song, accompanied by a tune on her I-pod, as a farewell to us all. Don’t ask!
Back on the ship, I had a quick lunch and a necessary nap. I also found an invitation to join Elena and Yvonne for dinner but after primping for my hostesses and being seated, first, at a table for four, Yvonne appeared to tell me that the invitation was for tomorrow. My watch can’t keep up with the time changes. It was very embarrassing. Yvonne could have saved me some embarrassment by asking me to join her anyway but she didn’t ,so I had dinner alone at a four-top.
With only a half-complement of guests, the ship feels strangely empty and with only half the usual staff, the service does suffer. The Terrace Cafe was really not prfepared for breakfast when it opened at 7:30 and I had to ask for cearm and sugar four times. Very unusual. But the service is still exemplary in most ways. I didn’t win the Siver Quiz but I did learn that all the Silver Sea ships are named for Rolls Royces.
Sitting alone at dinner, I had unlimited opportunity to observe other guests. At a table near me was an interesting Indian couple. Well, he wasn’t very interesting but she was. Dressed all in black, her hair so much the same shade that I couldn’t tell whereher hair stopped and her dress began, she looked like someone (or something) straight out of Anne Rice. Aside from the black, the only color was her red lipstick and the red of her talon-shaped nails, not bright red, but blood red. She never spoke to her husband and took the food from her fork without closing her lips around the tines, a little like dumping coal into a furnace, and to protect her lipstick.
Today I learned that most Japanese are a combination of Shinto and Bhuddist, the Shinto side is thehappy, celebratory side, while the Bhuddist side is reserved for more solemn occasions (like death and funerals).
Still no internet service so long as we are in Japanese territorial waters. It may be available late tomorrow night.
Stay tuned.
Of course the unavoidable feature of Nagasaki is the dropping of the second atomic bomb here on August 9, 1945. The impact was less disastrous here – 120,000 died in Hiroshima and only (by comparison) 75,000 here – than in Hiroshima partly due to the topography. Nagasaki is a city built on a nuimber of hills around the harbor and many of them shielded some parts of the city from the blast. At dinner this evening – yes, with Yvonne and Elena – Julie of the magnificent pearls, complained that on her tour today there was great emphasis on the atomic bomb without any mention of Pearl Harbor. As a young girl, she actually watched the destruction on December 7, 1941. After all, she remarked, the Japanese were responsible for starting the whole thing.
Our first stop today was a museum of history and culture where we learned that the Portuguese came here early in the 17th century and started a tradition of trading with the Japanese. I took photographs of many of the artifacts from that period, including many beautiful screens, but it all began to run together and I sat out the last part because I was already beginning to tire.
The Peace Park, built near the site of ground zero, was much more interesting, a huge plaza with a giant bronze (now that beautiful green) statue of a seated man, one arm pointing up (for the bomb) and one pointing at right angles to his body (to symbolize a future of peace). On either side, at some distance away, are two shrines, alike, shaped like praying hands, open at the bottom and filled with colorful strings of folded origami cranes. The story is that a survivor of the blast was told by her family that she would live if she folded 1000 cranes – a symbol of life - and so now school children make long strings of cranes and hang them in the shrines. They’re very colorful and look something like boas, hanging from a pole, red and green and my favorite turquoise. At the opposite end of the plaza is a large fountain, the spray in the shape of two wings – to take flight – and around it many sculptures, often of a mother and child, donated by many countries of the world and all dedicated to peace.
Of the 1% of Christians in Japan, 12% of them live in Nagasaki where Christianity was introduced by missionaries who accompanied the early traders. There is a brick cathedral here – the Urakam Cathedral – first built in 1925 and restored after the war. We were allowed, briefly, to go inside where the stained glass windows are very modern, surrounded not by clear glass, but blue glass, which gives the interior a lovely blue glow similar to the blue glow in a chapel that replaces the Kaiser Wilhelm cathedral in Berlin. Since we weren’t allowed to photograh inside, I took some closeups of the outsideof the windows with very interesting results, all blurry and bright. The cathedral is slung on a steep hill and getting to it on a very steep incline was precarious for someone with artificial knees.
But this was not as challenging as the approach to the ropeway (a cable car) to the top of Mt. Inasa where all of Nagasaki could be seen, spread out below. The view was truly amazing and well worth the climb. The landscape was formed by ancient volcanic activity, rocks and lava flung into the sea and forming long fingers of land. Very impressive! The city looks so peaceful from here that it’s hard to imagine a bomb destroying the city on a calm summer morning over 60 years ago.
As we prepared to leave Nagasaki, a high school band of maybe 40 enthusiastic students, all dressed in their school uniforms, played Western music on the pier. As we pulled away, they unfurled a long banner that said, “Come back soon to Nagasaki.” Very sweet, and very good.
Elena and Yvonne had asked Julie and Nancy and Neville to also join them for dinner. We had lively conversation – Nancy’s husband, now gone, pioneered a procedure for Dyputrine’s Syndrome, a curling of the fingers, called the Gonzales Method. Neville, always loquacious, waved his hands in the air and although I couldn’t hear every word, I could follow the gist of his conversation by reading his hands.
We’ve now left Japan, with much seemingly unnecessary government procedure – passports and immigration forms – all very typical of Japanese efficiency. On to a resort island in South Korea.
Stay tuned.
[The internet is still not connected so I’m again writing this in longhand – a pain in the fingers – with the hope that I can soon catch up. But I’m so far behind, it may take me one whole day at sea (tomorrow) to catch up. Patience please! And if I type all the missed days together, they will be out of order. But they’ll be there!]
Jeju (pronounced Jay-Joe) is a small island off the sourthern coast of South Korea. We docked at Jeju City, in the north, and spent most of the day in the Jungman Resort area, a popular honeymoon and convention spot about 40 kilometers away on the south coast. This is a kind of Disneyland for adults, with numerous attractions, including museums, restaurants and hotels and a convention center. Our first stop was at the Yeomiji Botanical Garden. At the center of what is thought to be Asia’s largest botanical garden, is an oddly-shaped building with a tower at the center of radiating fingers of glass that contain specific garden types: a flower garden with lots/masses of orchids and begonias; a water garden with broad pads and exotic water lilies; a tropical garden with fruits that grow there displayed in glass cases (the limes are yellow) and a cactus garden similar to one in Cabo San Lucas, although not as extensive. I should have had my long lens – left in the bus to lighten my load – in order to take what I call flower portraits. But I did the best I could with my wide angle lens. After wandering around the inside of the building, we took a Disney-like train around the outside of the building where there are more extensive gardens, even a formal French one, all geometric and primpted to a fare-thee-well. Again on foot, we crossed a typical oriental bridge, sloped steeply on each end and very difficult for keeping my balance, and then many steps down and back up to visit a waterfall. I passed, and while I was waiting, met Janet who lives in Silver Spring and commuted every day to teach management at Towson State College. Small world again. She was surprised that I lived so close, in Baltimore, and when the tour returned, introduced me to her husband, Lou.
Janet and Lou and Yvonne and I shared a table at lunch at the Seven Seaes (yes, spelled that way) Hotel, perched picturesquely on cliffs overlookingthe sea. Cellophane noodles with bowls of condiments – peanuts, squash, cucumbers, all pickled – and a Korean beef stew, a far cry from Julia Child but still delicious, flavored with ginger. I found I’m becoming quite proficient with chopsticks, the only implements presented.
Next, to the edge of the sea to view the pillared rock formations of Jusangeoilli, designated a cultured monument of Jeju Island. These rock pillars, like cubes or hexagons of various sizes, were formed from the lava flow from Mt. Hallasan, and spew water from the sea up to 33 feet high. Black rocks and white foam = many pictures, all taken from a boardwalk-like wooden walkway perched precarioujslly on the cliffs, 65 feet high.
The afternoon sights ended with the Yakcheonsa Bhuddist temple,a huge structure with one storey below ground and five above, all painted ith delicate geometric designs. I balked at the climb up many more steps but finally decided that not being here again – and having paid to see all of this – I should charge on. I’m very glad I did. The inside of the temple with three statues of Lord Bhudda, was outstanding.
There was the ever-present stop at the end of our tour for the necessary gift shop where I found a beautiful box for my collection, all mother of pearl and colored lacquer. In the process of my day, I learned: that the Korean language has only 41 characters made up solely of straight lines, circles and boxes/squares; that Jeju City of about 580,000 has no unemployment; that there is a scarcity of women so many come here from Japan, China or the Philippines to marry Korean men; that the island has plenty of oranges (one variety the size of a watermelon); lots of wind; and if you don’t remember how to say “good morning,” or “thank you” in Korean, you have only to bow and smile.
At cocktails, I was taling to Lee and John from San Luis Obisbo (a travel agent and her real estate developer husband) when Nancy Gonzales (of the Gonzales Method) asked me to join her for dinner. I was highly complimented. She’s very chic, although tonight somewhat in her cups, and talked on and on almost as though talking to herself. I just focussed on listening and smiled a lot. There wasn’t room to bow.
(And now, at last, I’m up to date.)
Stay tuned.
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