And so we bid farewell to the Land Of the Rising Sun and make our way instead to the Land of the Middle Kingdom. Goodbye Japan, hello China.
I find myself hoping it’s not an omen that we are blowing into China on the heels of a super-typhoon by the name of Lars. We were only on the fringes of it, but it was enough to knock everyone awake at 5am, and enough to cause me to worry deeply about my guitar which has been safely tucked in a closet since last night when we got the rough weather warning. Everything else that is loose or valuable has been tucked safely into drawers (which have a tendency to open and close on their own in rough weather, I swear when the sea is rough we get ghosts on board! Moving everything!)
It will be two days until we get to China, hopefully not with weather like this. But it seems at least that the seas are calming down some.
Sea days mean more classes, but also later mornings and earlier evenings. More time to practice my guitar and try (unsuccessfully) to win more than one hand in a row of poker.
I’ll miss Japan dearly, I have rarely felt as at peace in a foreign country as I did there. I don’t speak the language, but there is something about the culture that speaks clearly for itself. Perhaps it’s the apparently willingness to accept people as they are, or perhaps it’s the sense of honor that has held with that culture for generations. Who knows, perhaps it’s just the bright colours that seem to blend up against the breathtaking history. Either way, I feel like I’m leaving a little bit of myself in the land of the rising sun…
And maybe, just maybe, that really is what travelling is supposed to be about.