Day Five at Sea

When I was in high school I had a fantasy that I would get a job on a ship and travel around the world.  In my fantasy, I worked my way around the world by carrying crates on and off the ship.  I never imagined that in reality I would work for my passage by taking photos and writing to promote peace.

 

From Japan we headed south to a warmer climate where we can enjoy the pools and jacuzzis on deck.  Now we are heading southeast toward Tahiti.  I've been busy taking photos and writing about the guest educators that are on the ship with us for this portion of the voyage.  Over the next week we will have an onboard global conference to promote a nuclear-free world.  The conference will include Japanese survivors of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Tahitians opposed to France's testing of nuclear weapons in Tahiti, and aboriginal Australians who oppose the destructive mining of uranium which causes their traditional lands to be contaminated with radiation.  We will learn about all stages of the nuclear fuel cycle.

 

I'm enjoying getting to know the volunteers, staff and participants who are onboard, and we've had parties, dances, games and general fun.  The volunteers come from around the world.  Last night we had a Fiesta Latina, and the day before we saw a Tahitian and Hawaiian dance and music performance.

 

When I stand on the deck I see nothing but water in every direction.  I haven't even seen any other ships.  The horizon is all around me.  I can hear the sloshing of the waves against the ship. 

 

I haven't had any motion sickness so far, but I'm drinking ginger tea, a natural remedy, just in case.  I share a cabin with a roommate.  She grew up in Japan and New Mexico!  Our cabin is a bit smaller than a college dorm, but we each have a bed, closet, safety box, drawer, and there is a bathroom and shower for us.  We are on the fourth deck, out of 11 decks.  We do have two windows in our room, but we can't open them on the open sea.  We may be able to open them when we are on the Mediterranean Sea since it will be calm. 

 

For breakfast and lunch, we have buffet-style meals, and every day we have a nice dinner that is served as in a nice restaurant.  Sometimes the restaurant serves Japanese food, and sometimes it serves western food.  We have two swimming pools, three jacuzzis and a gym, which I have been using every morning.  We also have several auditoriums for lectures and parties, and every day is very busy! 

 

One fact of traveling around the world eastbound is that nearly every night we must set our clocks one hour ahead.  I had better start getting used to 23-hour days!

 

I've been writing about and photographing the many events on board, and my first report was posted on the Peace Boat website yesterday.  You can follow my reports at http://www.peaceboat.org.  Click on the link for the 72nd (current) Voyage.  I'm writing this blog entry offline, and when I go online to upload, it will be my first time trying to use satellite internet from the ship.  Satellite internet is slow and expensive, so please understand why I haven't answered any emails. 

 

 

 

 

 

Departing for a voyage around the world!

In two days I'll be leaving for an 86-day voyage around the world working as a volunteer web reporter on Peace Boat, a Japan-based NGO that works to promote peace, human rights, equal and sustainable development and respect for the environment. I'll be writing articles and taking photos for Peace Boat's website, and you will be able to read them here:

 

http://www.peaceboat.org/english/index.php?page=view&nr=96&type=4&menu=64

 

They will be posted toward the bottom of the page.

 

In addition, I will update Peace Boat's Facebook page every few days, so if you would like to see where I am and what I am doing, "like" Peace Boat on Facebook.  Let me know if you don't find it and would like me to send you an invitation.

 

Aside from my duties as a web reporter, I will have limited internet access during the voyage.  I will post a blog entry from time to time at http://travelingkimi.blogspot.com/, which will be automatically posted on Facebook, but aside from that my use of Facebook will be very limited, so please contact me by email, and don't be surprised if it takes me awhile to answer.  I'll try to check in about once a week.  Nonetheless, I look forward to hearing from you!  I will return to Japan on April 18.

Happy New Year!

It's a winter wonderland in Nasu where I am working. Wishing you all
the best in 2011!

"Just lynching"

I read an article about Japanese girl gangs that engaged in lynching. The article, about the world’s five most bizarre gangs, said that sukeban, or Japanese girl gangsters, modified their school uniforms, used yo-yos as weapons, and sometimes engaged in lynching.



I asked Itsumi about sukeban. She said that when she was in high school in the 80s the sukeban were the girls who drank and smoke and maybe shoplifted, but they weren’t really so bad. They were well-liked, and sometimes stood up for other kids against the school authorities.

I asked Itsumi if the sukeban ever did anything violent, and she said not really, by today’s standards. But sometimes there was conflict between different groups of sukeban or within the group, and they burned each other with cigarettes. I asked if there was anything else, and she said not really, just lynching.

“JUST lynching?” I said. Occasionally, she said, but it wasn’t too serious.
Japanese borrows many words from English, and sometimes uses them in novel ways. For example, in Japanese, a “mansion” is an apartment building with more than four floors. And “lynching,” it turns out, means several people beating one person up, and it’s usually not a very serious beating.

In English, unfortunately, lynching means “to put to death, especially by hanging, by mob action and without legal authority.”

Machine demolishes landmines, as more are installed

Hitachi Construction Machinery Company has built a machine that can hammer its way across the countryside, smashing landmines to pieces.

The machine is so sturdy that exploding landmines seldom damage it. Larger mines, the type designed to destroy tanks, cause minor but reparable damage to Hitachi’s machine.

I recently had a chance to see and climb into this machine at a Universal Design exposition that Itsumi attended for her work. I saw a display of some common landmines, including mines produced by the U.S. (below photo, third from left).This photo shows landmines produced by the U.S., Russia, Iran and China. The large ones on the right are designed to destroy tanks.

There are more than 200 types of landmines. While some are designed to injure or kill adult civilians, others are specifically designed to target children. Today, there are hundreds of millions of land mines waiting to explode in some 120 countries. In Cambodia and Angola, for example, there are two landmines for every child, and forty percent of the victims of landmine explosions are children.

Detonating mines by hand is very slow and very dangerous, causing many deaths every year. Hitachi’s machine uses flailing hammers to detonate mines while the operator is safely inside a sturdy cab. On the back of the machine, a tiller prepares the de-mined area for farming.

So far, seventy of Hitachi’s machines have been delivered to Angola, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Colombia and Nicaragua. The focus has been on demining fields that surround schools and housing areas.

It takes only about $5 to install a landmine, but removing it is incredibly expensive. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be just to transport and maintain demining machines in countries that have few roads. When I visited Laos, I learned that per capita Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world. More than 1.3 million tons of ordnance were dropped on Laos between 1964 and 1973, mostly cluster bombs of which 30% did not detonate. Ten of the 18 Lao provinces are severely contaminated with land mines and many other types of UXOs.

The U.S., responsible for this contamination, has still not signed the Ottawa Treaty against landmines. Parties to the Ottawa Treaty agree to destroy landmines within their possession, clear their territory of mined areas, provide assistance to mine-affected persons in their own country and provide assistance to other countries in meeting these treaty obligations.

The U.S. should sign the Ottawa Treat, and take action to stop the production of landmines.

I can see clearly now...

The morning before my intra lasik surgery, I read and signed the doctor's informed consent form, which made it explicitly clear that by undergoing this elective surgery I could become permanantly unable to drive, or even go blind. Contemplating this, I took what potentially could have been my last look at some photos of my family before taking the 40-minute train ride to the clinic.

The surgery was quick. Throughout the process I was supposed to look up at a light. I continued to do so but for a few minutes when my corneal flap was open I was not able to see much but gray, even though my eyes were open. The other disconcerting thing during surgery was that I could smell my eyeballs vaporizing, which smelled like burning flesh, and I have to admit that, thinking about that informed consent form, I was pretty terrified. But the doctor continually talked to me in English during the surgery, encouraging me, and I was glad that I could only hear his words and couldn't understand what was said among the technicians and assistants in the room. I didn't really feel pain during surgery, since my eyes were numbed by drops.

The hours immediately after surgery were uncomfortable, so I went to bed as soon as possible, wearing goggles to prevent me from rubbing my eyes.

The next morning, I could see at a distance but everything, near and far, was blurry. This worried me, but when I went back for my next day checkup Dr. Aoyama assured me that the blurriness is caused by dryness, because the layer of tears is gone from my eyes, and that it is normal and temporary.

Something that surprised me was that, after surgery, ordinary things like beverage cans and letter-sized paper and magazines seem much bigger than before, so much so that I have to read the labels in order to know what size things are. This is because I am suddenly free from glasses, and glasses cause things to appear smaller.

I need to take good care of my eyes in the coming months so that they heal properly, but I am looking forward to

1. buying my first pair of fashionable sunglasses
2. going scuba diving for the first time, and
3. seeing the inside of showers.

This morning, two days after surgery, I have already done two of those things, and I woke up singing "I can see clearly now ..." Everything looks clear and wonderful!

Orlando

I just learned that my good friend Orlando Martinez passed away.

Orlando, then around 70, kept me company through law school, informing me at great length about communism, capitalism and all sorts of topics, and reminding me of things other than the narrow world of law school. Orlando often brought me a bowl of homemade chicken soup and a welcome break from my studies.

At that time Orlando was my neighbor, an artist and writer, writing for leftist publications like the Montelibre Monthly and trying valiantly to get his books published. He sometimes took care of my kitty Elfi when I was out of town, and he even painted a portrait of her as a gift for me. I treasure it. Orlando gave our apartment building a sense of community.

Once, Orlando agreed to visit my law school class as a volunteer juror for jury selection practice. He dominated the event and gave the law students some real world jury selection practice of a kind they couldn’t get from the standard law student volunteers. I don’t think anyone else got a word in, and I think Orlando enjoyed the disruption he created! I enjoyed it too, as I think law school students should be disrupted and made to think outside the textbooks a little more often.

One winter Orlando rescued a kitten and its mother who were in danger of freezing on the back porch of our apartment building. Together Orlando and I caught the mother kitty, which wasn’t easy because she was wild, and the pair lived in Orlando’s closet until the kitten, who Orlando named Bucky Linn, was old enough to adopt out. We found a home for her with a law student.

Orlando moved to Albuquerque, but we kept in touch and I visited him one year at Christmas time. We had Christmas dinner at a youth hostel in Albuquerque, and I enjoyed watching Orlando entertain the other guests.

In his later years Orlando became an advocate for the rights of medical patients, and he was a generous donor to the scholarship fund for Lidia, a young woman who I met in Bolivia. Thanks to the donations of Orlando and many of my friends and family, Lidia has completed more than half of her five-year nursing course.

Orlando was a regular reader of my blog, and he often chided me when its contents were not political enough.

Orlando delighted in making people think, and in helping others. I will miss him dearly.