Photos from the Shanghai Ferry

Something's up with my photo uploader, and i can't situate any of my photos properly in my posts.  I wanted to put a few of these photos in with yesterday's, but here they are instead. These are from the Shanghai Ferry as we leave Japan.

In Transit

Stuffed/crammed into the middle seat, between two aisles, and the seats in front and behind, I sit partially reclined with my feet in a small cubby, in the dark, with the bus stopping and starting, or turning, and people waking up to use the washroom -- Janice one of them, crawling over top of me, before arriving in the sunlight of Osaka at 7:30 in the morning, where we enter a massive train/subway station with standing room only, for men and women in suits going to work, eyes forward, hips swaying, nobody talking -- one train after the other unloading and loading, wave after wave of people flooding spaces between pillars, up escalators, through turnstiles; we wait in line and the doors open and we walk in, and then we are pushed further in, and then more people wedge themselves in; the next train the same: i hesitate to step on and the man pushes me in the back -- when i turn around there is nobody behind him -- he's pushed me on onto the train on his own accord and now his back is toward me, silent and unapologetic.
    We step out of the station and it's hot and it's humid, and we have no concept of direction, and we get directions from a bald man in glasses who is eager to help and to practice his English, but we're in a hurry and when we get our information, we run.
    "Thank you," we say with a wave and then we're off to find our boat.
    The international ferry terminal is air conditioned and not many people are there yet. "Wait a minute, please," says the man at the counter.
    We sit down in a row of seats near the tall windows, looking out at the gangway and the massive boat, and cargo containers stacked everywhere, and everyone around us, over the age of 8, is quiet and sitting still. People under the age of 8 are running, climbing, laughing, and adventuring. I try to be all smiles, but nobody responds.
    I make eye contact with a a French-Canadian guy, but both of us seem unsure. Maybe next time, i think to myself.
    I ask Janice what language the couple beside us are speaking and she says, "Czech." They're old-school with aluminum poles sticking out of their packs and socks pulled up to their knees. Across the way, a girl walks to her seat in tight spandex shorts -- they don't leave much to the imagination. I tell Janice, but she already knows, and i'm impressed.
    Customs is easy, boarding is easy -- wait, except for the man yelling in Japanese at the counter -- something about not having a boarding pass. He eventually gets it and seems happy. Talkative even.
    We find that our room sleeps 4, but we are only two. Soon, a French couple joins us in our room and they've been cycling Japan (Tokyo to Miyajima) for the past two months and are on their way back to France, via the surface. We make friends easily and the guy leaves his wallet in the open, on the top bunk while he takes a shower.
    On the deck, the air is still humid, but the breeze is nice. The water is beautiful and Japan's shorelines are endless and serene. I wait for the openness of the ocean, but i don't want Japan to disappear just yet. We cross under bridges and i hold back on taking too many photos -- in order to save space on the memory card.
    The cafeteria food is great -- the first thing I eat is boiled duck, and the beers are huge and they only cost $1.50.
    Eventually the sun goes down and everybody heads to the deck to see the show. The air has cooled a bit, and the sun is orange and spectacular as it sinks behind the mountains.
    The moon is equally magnificent on the other side of the boat (portside) as it reflects, sparkling, off of the water, and lighting the deck. A very drunk Japanese man joins us and he tells us about his import/export business and that he "loves Japan."
    I tell him I do too.
    Soon, he leaves us, and Janice and I share a kiss in the moonlight, and a stranger stumbles upon us only to run away when he sees us.
    Eventually we're back in our own bunks to talk with the French about China.

Last Days II

     I suspected that the landlady had changed my door code to the same "1234" that it was when i first moved in, but i figured it best that i not go where i wasn't wanted. The air conditioning was probably disconnected anyway.
    It was 36 degrees by 9 in the morning that day, and almost 40 degrees by noon. In my hand I had a shopping bag with the remaining contents of my fridge: 2 water bottles, a bun, a quarter bottle of tomato juice, and a quarter bottle of peach vegetable juice.
    I still had my phone connected, so i phoned James who was often at home when he should be at work. It turned out he was at work at the time, and he didn't answer his phone on account of a free cell game.
    I figured i better drink the peach vegetable juice while it was still cold.
    Eventually my phone rang and it was James. We had circled around to his school by this time, to the gym where the band was playing "A Whole New World." James could hear them too and he sung a few of the lyrics for me before telling me that his apartment was unlocked and that we could hang at his place for an hour until he got off. He had lost his key, so his place had been unlocked for the last few days.
    James and Lauren weren't leaving Japan for another week, so their apartment looked the way mine did the week before -- maybe a little worse. James had lived there for 3 years, and  he had a bit more baggage to take care of.
    We had some time to kill, so we sat on the balcony with a can of Asahi that i had left there from the night before. The fourth floor was nice. It had a breeze and a good view of my neighborhood.
    We eventually went inside and I played guitar for a bit and looked through some of the books on the coffee table. I started to look at a book on India, but Janice wouldn't approve of any destination-based literature until we got back to Vancouver.
    When James arrived home, it was time for me to meet Shike Sensei to tie up loose ends and then to meet with everyone again for a last sushi dinner. James found his apartment key at dinner -- it was buried in his wallet.
    We rushed a bit for dinner and said some hurried goodbyes in order to make it to the staion by 8, but it turned out that our bus didn't leave until 8:45.
     "Get used to it," I told Janice, as we prepared to start the first leg of our next month in China together.

 

Last Days In Japan

    Underneath the hot sun, Janice and I sat on the bottom steps with our packs on the asphalt in front of us. We had over six hours to kill before our bus left for Osaka. Within 3 days, we would be in Shanghai.

    My supervisor told me to wait at my apartment until 2 p.m., when utility people would come to shut off my gas, water, and electricity. He also told me to have money ready in case I needed to pay any bills up front. It was good to know that these things were going to be taken care of.
    During the morning and early afternoon, Janice and I still had some packing/throwing-away-of-things to do. There was food left in the refrigerator that was going to get us through the afternoon. Everybody wanted to throw away my cooking oils and spices, but when you put them all together, they amounted to quite a bit and I wanted to leave them for my successor. Most of our things were packed and ready, but there were boxes laid everywhere that needed to be taken to the school for when the cleaners would come the next day. Lots of furniture had to be moved out of the apartment as well, so we had to figure out what was allowed to stay, and what had to go. And then the things that were to stay, had to be put in certain places. I remember someone posting on their Facebook at the time, "when you're moving out, everything is burnable."
     I also had to cancel my phone and pick up some pension forms. One of my teachers, volunteered her time to help us move some of our things around and to deal with various Japanese Language-oriented errands that we still had to run. If this early part of the day sounds like it was chaotic, that's because it was. I also realized that I left something out of my cover letters that I uploaded the day before for some jobs in Vancouver. This meant that i needed to do some re-writing and some Internet time.
    It was 2pm exactly when my doorbell rang and the 2 teachers (my supervisor had also showed up to help) were in my bedroom packing futons into the closet. I was just putting together my last cover letter, but I went and answered the door. I expected utility people, but it turned out to be my landlord who stepped into my apartment. She wore the same business suit and heels that she did the day before when she checked my apartment and said that there were no problems. She didn't speak any English and my Japanese was terrible, so I let my teachers deal with her while I put the final touches on my application. Apparently, she was here to check my apartment again.
    At 2:03, I clicked the button to finish uploading my files and then turned off the computer. When I turned around, I noticed that many of my possessions had in the meantime been gathering a lot of kinetic energy. Many of my things had either been put outside, or thrown away.
    It was about this time that my supervisor told me that everything needed to be removed from the apartment and that once the landlady finished her check of the apartment, I would have to leave my apartment, and that I "could not come back." I think that technically, I had paid my rent for the day, and that i should have been able to live there for a few more hours, but it turned out that this wasn't the case.
    From the bottom steps leading to my apartment, while we listened to my landlady change my door code -- so that we wouldn't be able to get back inside, I looked up to the windows on the second floor and said goodbye to what was my home for the last 12 months.