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We stood in the middle of the main plaza of Prague. A small jazz ensemble began playing the Louis Armstrong favorite “What a Wonderful World.” Suddenly we deeply understood that this world is wonderful, and we are happy to share it with you. Read more Asheboro, United States
  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 39

    Hurry Up and Wait

    October 24, 2023 in Hong Kong ⋅ ☀️ 79 °F

    We are waiting at the Hong Kong Airport. The ticket counter for Asiana Airlines does not open until 10 am. We arrived here at 9:00 am. It is disconcerting to see that the airline has only one flight daily—to Seoul and back. To meet a closed ticket counter also does not do a great deal to inspire confidence.Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 38

    Fragrant Harbor

    October 23, 2023 in Hong Kong ⋅ ☁️ 72 °F

    In Cantonese the name Hong Kong means “Fragrant Harbor.” Maybe it was that once upon a time. Every city has a certain character, an ambience that is unique. Hong Kong, a megalopolis scattered across a dozen islands with different peoples, businesses, and socio-economic levels, is a kaleidoscope that defies description. It has three languages, two ship terminals, two governments, and half a dozen different ethnic groups. Some of Asia’s richest people live next door to some of Asia’s poorest. The only country that comes close to this kind of demography is India. Miles and miles of skyscrapers are stacked together to the horizon. So are the slums. A significant portion of Hong Kong’s population is not even allowed to come on land unless they have to go to the hospital. It’s past is British; it’s future is Communist. Yet in some sense, for Glenda and me Hong Kong feels like an old friend. It is good to be This is our second trip to Hong Kong, and just for sentimental reasons we went on the same excursions today that we took last time. The view from the top of Victoria Peak is magnificent. Our ride in a rickety old sampan was just as charming. The Stanley street market was as crowded and dingy as ever. But this is Hong Kong.

    Now we are back in our stateroom starting to pack to go back home to North Carolina. Tomorrow we will leave the ship that has been our home for over a month. We have dear friends we are leaving behind. We just made two new ones as we met the spouse and daughter of one of our friends on the crew. New friends from Oregon and England have graced us with their company. As rich as this experience has been, however, it is true that there is no place like home, and we are looking forward to returning to the place and the friends we love the best.    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 36

    Bucket List 🇹🇼 Taiwan

    October 21, 2023 in Taiwan ⋅ ☁️ 73 °F

    Today I got to check off an item from my bucket list. I was a Chinese student in my early 20’s when my teachers told me about the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. When the Nationalist Chinese left the mainland in 1949, they grabbed all the national treasures they could carry. They housed them in a museum built into the side of a mountain in Taipei. Tunnels bored deep into the rock protect these ancient treasures from any assault, up to and including nuclear attack. These objects are truly part of mankind’s global cultural heritage. Seven hundred thousand artifacts are guarded here, some going back to the 8th century B. C. There are so many that they are rotated. Only two percent of the artifacts are on display at any one time, and they are rotated once every three months.

    One of my bucket list items was to see the artifacts in this museum, especially their collection of calligraphy. The items on display stagger the imagination. We saw an elaborately carved ball made of white jade. Twenty two other intricately carved balls rotate freely inside it. The whole piece was carved out of one piece of rock. It took three generations to carve—over 100 years. The Chinese are a patient people.

    An equally beautiful carved wooden box holds 121 progressively smaller carved boxes inside. In the movie The Last Emperor we see boy emperor Pu Yi playing with a pet cricket he places into the smallest interior box. What a toy!

    And the porcelain, the furniture and the paintings and bronzes!

    As if all those treasures were not sufficiently impressive, the calligraphy is beyond description. Some scrolls are fifty feet long, displayed in gleaming, illuminated cases set in dimly lit halls. Written around the time of Jesus, these scrolls are still perfectly readable to anyone who knows Chinese. As I struggled to remember characters I learned during the Nixon administration, fourth graders flanking me read these ancient analects as if they were a grocery list. The Chinese language changes very slowly. The Chinese are a patient people.

    Not only did we visit the museum, we also went to a Taoist temple, to the Chinese War Memorial, and then to the Grand Hotel, built for foreign dignitaries by Madame Chiang Kai-shek. It is the most opulent building I have ever seen outside the Vatican. Constructed according to traditional Chinese patterns, it rivals the forbidden city in Beijing. We had a lunch at a sumptuous buffet there, offering over 100 different choices of oriental and occidental delicacies.

    Finally our bus took us to to the 350-foot-tall monument to President Chiang Kai-shek. Standing high above a 250,000 square meter park, it is also the site for the National Theater, the National Concert Hall and the National Opera. Though built according to ancient Chinese architectural styles, each of these buildings is thoroughly modern and immaculately maintained.

    Returning to the Viking Orion we prepared for a delightful dinner with six new acquaintances. After dinner we listened to our friend Sophia play quiet samba music on the Steinway. We went back to our stateroom and prepared for tomorrow’s sea-journey to Hong Kong 🇭🇰

    P. S. I was somewhat delayed in posting the last couple of footprints. The wi-fi on the ship wasn’t working. When I asked about it, a crew member told me that they hoped to have it working later in the day. I found out today that the Chinese cruiser shadowing Viking Orion in the East China Sea was radio-blocking our ship’s Starlink signal.    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 34

    Nagasaki Remembers

    October 19, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 77 °F

    By the year 1945 Nagasaki had been subjected to five different waves of conventional aerial bombing by United States air forces. Air raids had sounded a few days before each of these attacks as American airplanes flew over the city. These airplanes were not dropping bombs, however, they were dropping leaflets.

    In the Nagasaki Bomb Museum we saw the charred, framed remains of such a leaflet. It displays the face of a clock with the hands set to 11:55 pm. By each of the the numbers around the clock-face are depictions of islands that had already fallen to the allies—Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Tinian, Okinawa, and so on. At the 12 o’clock midnight position there appears a tiny map of Japan. The message is: “Time is running out. You’re next. Evacuate.” The text on the leaflet urges civilians to stop aiding the Japanese war effort and to leave the city. Such leaflets were routinely dropped on all primary U. S. bombing targets a day or two before an attack.

    Unfortunately these leaflets had become all too common in Nagasaki, so the people ignored them. Nagasaki’s factories and shipyards had been bombed repeatedly, but they were still operating. Besides, civilians disillusioned by the war dared not resist the overwhelming power of the military government. The number of dissenters was growing, but everyone had to go along whether they wanted to or not. The leaflets had little effect.

    About 8 am on Thursday August 9, 1945 Major Charles W. Sweeney lifted off his B-29 bomber from the runway on Tinian Island. The aircraft carried the new secret weapon of the allies, one 10,800-pound bomb nicknamed “Fat Man.” Major Sweeney’s primary target was the large industrial city of Kokura. Upon arriving there, bad weather prevented the bombardier from identifying his target. At the same time his B-29 started receiving anti-aircraft fire. Major Sweeney decided to deliver the bomb to their secondary target, Nagasaki.

    When the B-29 arrived clouds obscured Nagasaki as well. As the airplane approached the downtown area, Captain Kermit Beahan, the bombardier, looked for his target, a bridge over the Uragami River. Through a momentary break in the clouds, he caught a glimpse of the city’s stadium, which he knew to be near the bridge, and he pulled a lever, dropping his payload. At 11:02 am a plutonium bomb with the explosive power of 21 million tons of TNT detonated 1,650 feet over downtown Nagasaki, instantly killing approximately 64,000 civilians.

    We visited the Nagasaki Bombing Museum and the nearby Peace Park. A group of schoolchildren stood at attention during a ceremony to honor the dead. We heard a testimony from a survivor who was 3 years old at the time of the blast. Like the museum in Hiroshima, the one here does not attempt to blame or exonerate either side. The Japanese themselves are aware of the atrocities their government committed in China, Manchuria and in the Second World War. Like Americans, they are divided about whether the atom bombs were a necessary evil. The museum’s presentation does not argue the point. It seeks simply to depict the physical facts related to the bombing. The entrance to the museum holds an inscription summarizing its position: “May the atomic bomb that fell here be the last nuclear weapon ever to be used.”    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 34

    The Port of Nagasaki

    October 19, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 63 °F

    From the 16th to the 19th century the Tokagawa Shogunate decreed that the only Japanese port open to foreigners would be Nagasaki. Beginning with the Portuguese traders in the 1500’s, Nagasaki was the only part of Japan foreigners were allowed to visit. For 300 years, to the Western world, Japan was Nagasaki, and Nagasaki was Japan. No wonder Puccini set his opera Madama Butterfly here in the grand estate of Scottish trader Thomas Blake Glover, which now overlooks the Viking Orion.

    The traders established shipyards here, some of which still operate. Although foreigners were required to live on an island outside the city, they could come into the town during daylight hours to trade. And how they did trade! There were so many foreign merchants in Nagasaki that they actually changed the culture. In Japanese there was no word for “thank you” until they heard Portuguese traders saying “obrigado.” The Japanese elided that word into “arigato,” and so it stands today.

    Because Nagasaki was such a busy trading center, shipyards sprung up on both sides of the long estuary to the south. First, sailing ships and later iron, coal-fired steamers were built, as Japan frenetically attempted to catch up with Europe. A major shipbuilder, Mitsubishi Corporation, diversified in the 20th century to build cars, weapons and airplanes. The Russo-Japanese War, World War I and the invasion of China in the 1930’s caused the conglomerate to expand exponentially. By 1935 nine-tenths of Nagasaki’s adult population was employed by Mitsubishi. The town was one of Japan’s most prosperous.

    What can be a blessing in one season can become a curse when seasons change. The shipyards of Nagasaki made it a prime target in World War II. Nagasaki’s shipyards were subjected to five different conventional bombing raids before the attack on August 9, 1945 made the name Nagasaki synonymous with “holocaust.”

    Despite the monumental tragedy, the postwar American occupation officials under General Douglas McArthur did not dissolve Japanese conglomerates. They realized that to restore the nation economically, the vigorous business generated by companies such as Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Toyota and Toshiba would be important.

    Those companies are still here, and so is Nagasaki, thriving and beautiful. The city is still challenged by Japan’s current economic woes spawned by mismanaged prosperity in the 1980’s. Judging from the way she has recovered from cataclysmic setbacks in the past, however, I would bet that Nagasaki is not out of the game yet.    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 33

    Miss Cherry Blossom 🌸

    October 18, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 75 °F

    Ever since we left Tokyo I have awakened every morning thinking, “Today can’t possibly be as good as yesterday was.” Yet each day we have found that every new place we visit has its own special charms. I will confess that while yesterday’s “Blood Pond Hell” may not be everyone’s cup of tea, the people of Beppu and the welcome they gave us will stay in my heart forever.

    I had the same thoughts when we sailed into Kagoshima this morning, “There is no way today could be as good as yesterday,” but as soon as I awoke, I threw open the curtains and saw a mile-high smoking volcano staring me in the face. Mount Sakurashima dropped into our bedroom to say hello, and I knew this would be no ordinary day.

    At first I thought the clouds surrounding the summit were just—well—clouds, until I realized that those clouds were going UP out of the mountain. She was venting steam and pumping out pumice ash. Suddenly I thought, “I don’t care if the mountain’s name means ‘Cherry Blossom Mountain,’ this girl is locked and loaded.” This lady could be lethal.

    She was alone on her own island until 1946 when she spewed out enough lava to make a bridge to the mainland. So now, even though the locals talk about Sakurashima Island, technically it is not an island anymore.

    Later in the morning as we were on the way to the Kagoshima Museum our guide told us that the local weather report gives a daily index of the volcano. Level 1 means the Lady is asleep. Level 5 means “Get the heck out of Dodge.” The guide told us that today the mountain is at level 3. He said “There will be some ash fall today. If the wind is from the west there will be no problem, but if it comes from the southeast, we will all be sweeping our walkways tonight.” In Kagoshima the residents are accustomed to living with Miss Cherry Blossom 🌸.

    Despite her tantrums, however, and largely because of Miss Cherry Blossom, Kagoshima is one of the most beautiful places on earth.    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 33

    The Big Picture

    October 18, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 73 °F

    If one were looking for a place to live, he would be hard pressed to find a better place than Kagoshima. This area not only has a rich history, it has one of the most varied economies in Japan. Rich volcanic soil grows record levels of produce and livestock for the Asian market. Access to the ocean provides seafood for all of southern Japan. Careful to husband all renewable resources, local industries harvest trees from the deep woods carpeting the multitude of nearby mountains and islands. Perhaps most importantly, all of these assets combine to assure that tourism is among the major concerns in Kagoshima Bay. Good highways and airline service, along with Japan’s famous bullet trains make all of Japan’s major cities accessible.

    After looking intensively at the history and economy of this area we had the opportunity to go to an observation point high above the city. It is difficult to take in all of the potential, much less all the beauty of Kagoshima. I leave this place somewhat embarrassed that I had not previously given the city of Kagoshima much thought. After being here, though, I will long remember this magnificent city and its remarkable people, both past and present.    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 33

    The Naples of the Orient

    October 18, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 68 °F

    Kagoshima is often compared to the Italian city of Naples. The climate is about the same, both towns are festooned with palm trees, and both sit at the foot of an enormous, gorgeous volcano.

    One could argue that Japan would not be Japan without the city of Kagoshima. The streets are peppered with statues of famous men who have changed the history of this nation. Saigo Takamori was the scion of a wealthy samurai dynasty ruling here for over 200 years. He was instrumental in securing the victory of the Emperor who began the Meiji restoration in the late 19th century. In a strange chain of events, however, he ultimately rebelled against the Emperor and was killed in the revolt. We passed by the spot where he was killed in battle in 1877. Check out Tom Cruise’s movie “The Last Samurai” to get a clearer sense of the history. In the movie the character Katsumoto roughly corresponds with the life of Saigo Takamori. He was not the only hero here, however. The first Japanese physician to practice Western medicine called Kagoshima home. The list of Kagoshima’s residents who have affected the course of world events is long.

    The story I like best deals with the 17 teenagers from the 19th century who saw hints that the West was way ahead of Japan scientifically, industrially and militarily. They ignored a ban on foreign travel, escaped Japan and visited the West. Spending several years in England and the United States, they brought back the news that their homeland had some catching-up to do. Japan embraced modernization with a vengeance and and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries conducted its own Industrial Revolution on steroids.

    Our visit into this remarkable town was eye-opening. Yasu, our guide, has an excellent command of the English language and led us through one of the most interesting museums I have ever visited. In the atrium one walks on a sheet of lucite over a three-dimensional topographical map of Kagoshima Bay. The hallway is an exact reproduction of a prehistoric cavern, complete with stalactites and stalagmites. The passageway leads to the exhibit of the most ancient artifacts discovered in the area. As one passes through the museum, he advances in time until he comes to the present. Art, tools, music, writing, medicine, politics and technology are all presented in very attractive displays.

    Wandering through the well designed exhibition hall makes it easy to understand why the local residents are so proud of their homeland. Without Southern Kyushu, Japan would be radically different and not nearly so interesting.    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 32

    Time to Say Goodbye

    October 17, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 73 °F

    The Japanese people are the kindest people in the world. This morning when the Viking Orion docked at Beppu, the loudspeakers on the pier played happy, upbeat rock music in Japanese with a few great American oldies thrown in. Just now Viking Orion gave three blasts of the horn indicating we were leaving. All of the workers on the dock and in the passenger ship terminal, with quite a few local residents gathered on the pier to wave goodbye. The music changed to a plaintive farewell, and as they waved and the music played, I wiped away a tear.Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 32

    Decorative Language

    October 17, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 72 °F

    It is trendy in Japan to use English words not to communicate but to decorate, especially on clothing. One can see T-shirts here with the strangest English. I saw one with the inscription “Texas Excite Extreme Moving.” Another T-shirt declared, “Eight Bank Tofu.”

    Glenda found one with the inscription “Precise Dwarf Bravery.” Another reads, “Don’t Choice I Wicked Want Funny.”

    Finally,

    IT IS THE EVENT OF ANCIENT TIMES—LONELY GRANDMOTHER

    Words used often include “Texas,” “Luxury,” “Big,” “Increase,” and “You.” How about: “BECAUSE YOU ARE SLIPPERY, DO NOT ENTER POOL.”

    Sometimes even when the Japanese are trying to make translatable English, something falls through the cracks. A business we passed had a sign declaring it was “A Technology World’s Large Front.” I’m still not quite sure what they sell.

    Of course, we in the West do the same thing. Back in North Carolina we went into a restaurant where a waitress sported a tattoo of a Chinese character on her forearm. Although I could read the character, I asked her what it meant. She said, “It means ‘harmony or love.’”

    I did not have the heart to tell her it actually means “teaspoon.”    Read more

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