Tell Us About Your Travels!

? My most fantastic voyage was my time in Japan (2 years) and the voyage home on the USS Wilson one of the last US registry ocean liners. The voyage home was 15 days and sea with a three day lay over in Hawaii, aka, paradise.

So many great experiences in Japan it is hard to choose one. But I guess one highlight would be when my mother was visiting. I Kyoto we stayed at a Japanese Inn and one night decided we would walk to the Noh Play. The inn keeper wrote in Japanese the name and address of the Inn so that we would not have trouble getting home.

But the trouble we got into was on the way. We soon were lost of course. And as we wondered through the streets we finally came upon an open door. As the Japanese were always so friendly and helpful I walked in. Soon a Japanese man came scurried up to me - Oksan, oksan, this is not the place for American woman. I told him where we were going and he gave good directions we were very close.

As we walked off he popped out of another door in the building and gave us two lovely fans (it was a very warm July evening). At the play many Japanese smiled and giggled at us (you get used to that in Japan) and I did not think a thing about as we fanned ourselves with our lovely fans. On the way home we called a cab, the driver really giggled at us. When we arrived back at the inn we found out why. Our beautiful fans had on one side the name of the geisha house we had almost invaded and on the other side the name of two particular women.

The Inn keeper wanted all the details because she said we had been to a real geisha house, one reserved for wealthy Japanese men. Both of us had a great laugh at ourselves, and kept our fans as a fond fantasy adventure.

Another most fantastic trip was a train trip for Oakland, CA to Dothan, AL. Or was that particular trip and odyssey

I hear that It's so hard to navigate the streets in Japan that cabbies usually have to radio in for directions.



Sigh...I guess I'll have to go fetch Cicerone.

I read in one of the threads that c.i. has been ill try the SF gather thread or the Floridia gathering thread that is were I think I saw the post.

Ahh....I'll wait then

I've had a few that I may elaborate on later.

To begin with, a trip my Sr. Year of High School to France and Spain where it felt like my textbook had magically come alive.

A "spur of the moment" trip to Kentucky to watch my Alma Mater play a football game in which the opponents 28-game home winning streak was snapped(courtesy of a 14 point 3rd quarter).

And the newest was my pilgrimage to Kent State to view a memorial to the student protestors killed in 1970.

NG the trip to Kent State must have been so emotional. I will never forget that horrible day.

JD(Sine we seem to be abbv):

It was.

I came back with this odd notion that "We gave too"(as in protestors giving thier lives).

It was also odd to see how the site was paved over mostly, save for a marker. I saw it as a metaphor for what a lot of people in America want to do to Vietnam(PS. My dad served and I'm still surprised he hasn't functionally disowned me for dissent).

But the pics are gonna become a collage that I plan on submitting to a "Peace and Justice" arts exhibit.

Just what I need--something else to add to my "things I've done list".

PS. The Vietnam Memorial, Ground Zero, and the Flight 93 memorial(once the get it built) are on my future excursion list.

Wow sounds like a good project. Are you going to be able to go to Japan and visit Peace Park in Hiroshima? Or any WWII sites in Europe.

Joanne, that coming home from japan on the ocean liner, with a layover in hawaii, sounds spectacular! Sorry to shift the focus but, let's talk about THAT!

ci's around - have you pm'd him?

JD, When we visited Japan earlier this month, we stayed in the Gion District of Kyoto (the hotel name is Gion Hotel) where the geisha houses are - about six blocks from the rive where it splits the Gion District from the 'modern' area. On our first visit to Japan back in the early eighties, we stayed in the "modern" section of Kyoto, but we saw a cultural show in the Gion District. Back in the early eighties, most young Japanese have never seen caucasians in the flesh, so they were 'special' guests in Japan. When we were on a boat on Hakone Lake, the children would surround the caucasians and keep saying "I love you!" Since we look like the natives, they expect us to speak perfect Japanese, so we just keep out mouth closed.

For those of you interested in a short commentary on our recent trip to Japan can visit this link. There's some pictures too. http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23016
Let me know if you'd like more pictures posted.

Out of curiosity c.i., why do you suppose the children responded with "I love you" to the caucasians?

I could never figure that one out; but if I had to guess, it would be that they see caucasians as beautiful - with light skin and some with blonde hair. It may also had to do with their education in learning English. It's one of those experiences in my many travels where I have observed what seemed unusual, and it remained in my memory.

That's amazing! Oh how I wish I could have gone...

Please tell us more...we should definitely do this in some sort of chronological order.

JD:

Maybe another time:(

NeoGuin, We have a friend who served in Vietnam as a nurse. She was very active in the building of the Vietnam memorial in DC. Her name is Carol Tanaka.

One of my few heros/heroines, trust me, I don't have a bunch, is Maya Lin. I read around the time the original memorial buzz came out that she was in either an undergraduate but senior class, or grad class, at Harvard (Princeton?), and had the project as an assignment, which I identify with, that is what you get in school - it is both terrifying and fun at first and as you go through different projects, invigorating, very what - personal wave producing in that at one moment you can't think of a damn thing and the next you make some leap to just do the assignment, and ... if you are already surviving in class as the semester or quarter goes on, you start to riff on the assignments. This is a kind of personal nirvana that you don't necessarily notice as you are going through it.

I don't know MLin's early history, but that she got a B- for this particular effort, at least I read that around the same time.

But, I have read about her since then and think she has a very sane head on her shoulders. She does understand urban design, did have very useful comments re the WTC site - useful? I agree with all she said -
but she didn't want to get into memorial designing more.

Very good article on her in, I think, the NYer about two years ago now.

I think I read even this week how her Vietnam memorial echoed Richard Serra. Maybe. I haven't seen Serra slice earth like that... people don't seem to notice the subtle grading on the site, for good reason, the names being the focal point. Still, I think she was ahead of Serra there, and in a few other ways.

Here's a short biography on Maya Lin. http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/
As I recall, she beat out some famous architects in the design of the Vietnam Memorial.