What does it mean to be Collegiate Traveling Faculty
Having completed another term, it was time to move again before summer term. As a side note, completing the term by submitting grades was postponed a few days since one of my students left the day before the final with an Air Force team that flew to Nepal to help with relief efforts. We are obviously "encouraged, i.e. required" to accommodate all military-related absences. She managed to take the final exam over the internet while overnighting in Singapore on the way to Nepal so her grade didn't turn into an "Incomplete" like I thought it might. I teach two eight-week sessions in Fall term, two eight-week sessions in Spring term, and one eight-week session during summer term. As traveling faculty, we can be moved between any session but fortunately for me, my moves occurred between terms which allowed a little more time for the move. However, the final weeks before a move are hectic with the end of class assignments and grading combined with the preparations for a move. In my case, Ellen had flown back to the States to help with family matters, so I was alone in my preparations. Once I learned that my summer assignment was to be back in Okinawa, I waited before making any concrete plans for housing and transport with the hopes that word would come down from headquarters about Fall assignments. However, everything was on hold regarding the Fall term because UMUC's seven-year contract with the Department of Defense officially ends July31. So we all waited with confidence that the major renewal of the contract would be awarded but knew that nothing in writing could proceed. As a side-note, on May 7th we were officially notified that the DoD had awarded UMUC with another seven-year contract to teach what we were teaching before with the addition of a contract to offer MBA programs (University of Phoenix was not renewing their contract for Masters programs, your guess is as good as mine why they withdrew--but if you follow the news about for-profit colleges........). The announcement was 2-3 months late in coming but that's Government!
Get moving
One day I finally decided that I would have to plan for the summer move so within a few hours, I bought a ferry passage for myself and our trusted pink Fit, reserved temporary on-base lodging for the first two weeks in Okinawa, and initiated reservations for off-base housing for the rest of the summer with an option to stay through the fall. Financially, it's a challenge to pay $700 for ferry passage upfront (a reimbursable moving expense), $1300 down payment for the off-base housing, and be in a position to pay the first month's rent of $1300 on move-in day all in addition to the regular monthly expenses. But that's just one of the challenges. Theoretically, we are transient with very little belongings to move, but by the time Ellen had packed away her fabric, sewing knick-knacks, sewing machine, iron, lamp, sewing table, and winter clothes before she left, I was realizing that we were a little over our two-suitcase goal. (Ellen never agreed to that as a goal!) But I have to admit, I love her finished products as exemplified in these three Japanese-themed wall hangings.
Anyway, during the last week before the move, I mailed six "large" boxes to the UMUC offices in Okinawa thinking they would take several weeks to arrive, only to find out that by dropping them off on a Friday, it gave the Military Postal Service two days over the weekend to have them delivered on Monday. Why is it that whenever you don't want packages to travel quickly they do? Or the opposite? I had to send them on Friday because the postal service on base was closed on Monday and Tuesday was departure day.
Everything else, that didn't go in those boxes had to fit in the Fit and I worried all weekend that I would end up looking like the Beverly Hillbillies as I drove towards Osaka to catch the ferry. After all, the two large size suitcases could easily fill the majority of the cargo compartment. For those of you not familiar with the Honda Fit, over here it's a nice mid-size family car. The same vehicle in the States is one of the smallest cars on the road, just a tad bigger than the Mini Cooper and certainly the smallest car Honda sells. So, although a Hatchback, it's not a moving van!
I guess it's good that Ellen didn't need a ride!
The Pacific Typhoon Season Starts in June
Not only was I worried all weekend about fitting things in the car (actually, I hauled most of the stuff down on Saturday so I wouldn't worry about it) but I had been made aware by one of my colleagues that an early Super Typhoon was down in the mid-Pacific threatening the Philippines and its projection was headed right for Okinawa then Japan. Now, last fall we sat through a super typhoon in the solidly built apartment in Okinawa and can attest that architects and engineers know how to build for the weather, but this typhoon was heading right for the part of the ocean that I was planning to traverse on a mid-size ferry. The open sea is NOT where you want to find yourself in a typhoon. So I kept watching the movement and kept reassuring myself that it would lose energy quickly when it hit the cooler waters of the northern Pacific. But my ferry departure on Wednesday, July 13 didn't sound very reassuring when the typhoon was scheduled to hit Okinawa on Tuesday, July 12. And to think, the official typhoon season hadn't even begun yet. Of course, people in the US didn't hear much about the typhoon because millions were being disrupted by nasty tornadoes at the same time!
Driving from the Kanto Plain to Osaka
So on Tuesday morning, while the weakened Typhoon Noul was passing over Okinawa and quickly becoming a tropical storm, I started my drive from Fussa, Japan to Osaka through the mountains by Nagano--a six hour journey on the Expressways. After 3 hours, the winds and rains of the "tropical storm" were hitting central Japan and I plowed through stopping only for a lunch/gas break at a Expressway rest-stop. While in the rest area eating, my phone received a call from a number that I didn't know so I called it only to hear a sweet voice in Japanese answer back "no she couldn't speak English". Later, when I was safely in my Comfort Hotel room I looked up the number. I found that it was the Ferry company, probably calling to tell me that the scheduled departure was changed--but I was just guessing. Fortunately, I was able to get Google Translate to tell me that a message on the Ferry's website said that the ferry had to make an unscheduled stop in the southern-most port of the mainland on its way back from Okinawa to "sit out the typhoon" and would be arrive in Osaka late. But no departure time was given, so Wednesday morning I ate the "Continental breakfast" (definitely a different Continent) and proceeded to drive across Osaka to the ports looking for the Ferry Terminal.
Large port cities have more than one ferry terminal.
I was trusting GoogleMaps which had done remarkably well getting me all over the Kanto Plain during the previous four months, so when I plugged in Osaka Ferry Terminal and started the journey I thought it would get me where I needed to go. Unfortunately, it took me to the wrong ferry and I was quickly shown the way off the property in my car. The guard, seeing I had a navigation system on my dashboard, gave me a telephone number to use. That's the most accurate way for Japanese navigation systems to find the locations of businesses since street addresses don't translate into usable navigation points. But he didn't realize that my navigation system was American with an extra Japanese map, and although I paid $110 for the map, it really didn't work too well so hadn't been turned on for months. But the AppleMaps program on my iphone did locate the correct ferry terminal and I proceeded on my journey. I was just glad that I started the search for the ferry terminal 8 hours before the actual departure time. Once I got near the terminal, I parked in the first parking garage I could find. It turns out I was in the parking for a Pachinko Slots gambling facility and a large indoor car dealership. That's quite a combination--make a huge winning at gambling and buy a car to go home in! Anyway, I walked over to the terminal and found the A-Line ferry desk locked up but with a sign in Japanese that even I could translate (since I had seen similar notices on their website) saying that the window would be open from 4pm-5pm with boarding beginning at 5:30 and a departure of 6:30. It was noon, so I had four hours to spend but was totally exhausted from trying to navigate myself around docks and streets that had many large warehouses and too many large trucks (remember, I'm driving in my "small" Fit).
Osaka Aquarium
I first started by getting some "comfort" food to calm my anxiety. I used the subway to get there so I wouldn't have to drive the streets anymore.
Then I jumped back on the subway and rode to another "man-made island" where the aquarium was located. This turned out to be a nice, relaxing walk from the top of a seven-story building on a winding walkway surrounding a central aquarium with many smaller (still huge) aquaria with other exhibits.
The theme is the "Rim of Fire" referring to the Pacific Rim with exhibits from various locations around the Pacific Rim including the Arctic Ocean, Great Barrier Reef, South American waters, Monterey Bay, and of course, seas around Japan. It is a huge Aquarium, one of the largest in the world, but last fall we learned during our visit to the Aquarium in Okinawa that it used to have that title until the Atlanta aquarium took over. Whatever! It is still huge!
Driving on the Ferry
I rode the 15 minute subway back to the Ferry Terminal in plenty of time to get there for the opening of the A-Line window and was the first person to be assisted. It's really amazing how much transaction can take place without using much language. I used "nanji desu ka? (what time)" and "doko desu ka? (where)" in Japanese and they used a few English words, plus the help of an iphone translation to tell me that the ferry would be "stopping in Kobe after our departure instead of coming from Kobe". That seems fair to use an electronic translator for something that complicated. But handwaving was more useful in adding the instructions that I would have to take my car off the ferry in Kobe and put it back on--something that I wasn't really crazy about doing because the ferry ramp is a cross between an off-road jeep trail in Colorado and NYC Times Square with gigantic forklifts whizzing back and forth. I had watched with amazement on our ferry journey in January how efficiently the Stevedores did their work and was just glad that my car was loaded first and tucked away in the corner before the beehive awoke. Then came the instructions with the help of a little map with lots of squares and stop-light symbols and it became apparent that although we were at the "ferry terminal" our ferry wasn't actually there and I would have to drive to a different wharf with my car. I counted the traffic lights and the number of turns and said "hai, hai" several times reassuring the man that I understood I needed to drive somewhere else, all the while wondering if I really did understand. Of course, I had about an hour to contemplate the next step and sat in the car thinking about how stressful this really was and asking myself why I didn't just pay a transport company to take the car and deliver it at the other end with me catching a two hour flight? But where's the adventure in that? At a quarter hour before the designated time to show up with my car, I followed the map and found myself on an empty wharf without a gigantic A-line ferry in front of me, but fortunately, because the ferry is quite large, I saw it docked just a few hundred meters down the wharf and drove back out to the street and drove to the correct entrance. Near the end of the street, a man was waving with incomprehensible hand gestures which I eventually interpreted correctly and lined my car up alongside a stack of containers. I put my ferry sticker in the windshield and sat and waited and waited and waited.
For at least an hour and half I was entertained by the organized chaos of loading containers and cars and motorcycles and trucks and everything else you can imagine up the ramp into the ferry. Finally, the man motioned for me and the one other car that was lined up behind me to proceed onto the ferry. Up the ramp I went, rumbling and shaking, hoping I had enough horsepower for the incline and parked nicely in the middle, not the corner this time!
Is this what a cruise is like?
I pride myself on never having taken a cruise so I can only imagine what true hospitality is like. (Yes, I know, Ellen deserves at least one cruise!) On this cruise liner, the host pointed down a hallway and I looked into my comfy confines which I would share with 60-80 other passengers, each having a small space just large enough for a thin mat. There are more private quarters available for 4-12 people but I haven't figured out how to reserve those rooms without adequate Japanese language ability. I quickly learned that all of the other passengers (not more than two dozen) had been previously transported from the terminal by bus and had already staked out their territory.
I was fortunate to find an empty corner that actually was next to a wall that had a shelf where I could put my bag (mat #1). I'm still not sure what people would do if the ferry was actually at capacity and every mat was filled because there literally is no space for bags (or you just lie on your mat wrapped around your bag) but perhaps these ferries are never filled and that's how they get away with this configuration.
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| They definitely look better than they are! |
Where I definitely figured out that this wasn't a cruise ship is that this ferry, unlike the one we rode in January, didn't have a cafeteria. They had four counters with stools attached to the floor. This is where you could sit and eat your food from the vending machines. However, the space between the stool and the counter didn't quite fit my abdomen so I had to eat elsewhere until I found that two stools would actually move!
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| My first meal. |
A voyage with sleep apnea
Most passengers sat on their mats for the majority of the journey. Since it was nearly midnight by the time we pulled out of the port in Kobe, most of us just retired to our mats and started snoring. A lesson I learned from our January ferry trip was that even though you might be fortunate enough to stake out territory near an electrical plug, the power to the plug disappears when the lights go out so I knew I needed to prepare to use my CPAP, especially since this journey involved two nights. Hence, my pre-trip preparation of making a battery pack out of a cheap sealed car battery, a few gadgets including a solar trickle charger, and a transformer I bought from the CPAP company to run off of 12volts.
Calm seas
Fortunately, the swells in the ocean from the typhoon had disappeared as quickly as the storm did and we had smooth sailing. The morning after the first night, I was ready for a shower. Although there was actually a shower room, I didn't pack a towel (although there were several tucked away in the suitcase directly below me in my car--off limits) so I didn't want to take a shower and then drip dry. The day was pretty dull. Cloudy skies that blended into grey seas so I didn't spend much time on the deck. Besides, there were no benches or chairs to sit on. I did have the time to listen to the 24 hour audiobook that I had previously downloaded and spent the day listening to the book while walking on the deck, sitting on the only soft bench which was located in the smoking section (when no one was smoking), or sitting/lying on my mat. There were three of us who weren't Japanese on the ferry. The other two a young German couple who were backpacking throughout Japan during their vacation time from work. They both spoke flawless English so I had to actually ask if they were Americans.
Finally the second night came around and I went to bed. It took awhile to go to sleep, even with the aide of melatonin, because my body felt like it had already been on that mat most of the day. It was while laying their wishing I had even more fat to cushion my hips and sides that I kept reminding myself, "this is a job, not a vacation!"
We made two stops during the night but sleeping with my mask and a shirt over my head, I didn't realize that we had stopped and taken on new passengers until I got up and put my contacts in the next morning and saw new faces. By then, we were already passing along the northern edge of Okinawa and people were busy getting ready for disembarkation. The end of the journey was not nearly as stressful as the beginning. Prior to docking, an announcement came on and three other men went down the stairs (actually an escalator) and disappeared into the car/truck storage so I followed them. We sat by or in our cars and trucks until the ferry was docked and then a worker came and took the blocks out from behind my tires and said something to me while pointing so I started the engine and quickly drove off the ferry. Since I was the first one off, the ramp was still being lowered as I got down the incline towards the ramp. I started to hesitate but they motioned me forward and my wheels touched ground about the same time as the heavy metal ramp did. I then looked for an exit from the mountains of containers and found a street and was quickly on my way toward the Okinawa Expressway. And that's how easy it is to travel with a car by ferry from Mainland Japan to Okinawa.
