It Begins!

Hello!

I started writing this yesterday on the boat when I ha no internet access; here is what I wrote;

I'm on the ocean somewhere between Japan and China and it is cool. deep, no? word.

we started The Trip on Tuesday night when we finished throwing out the last of our garbage, packed our backpacks and walked to Tokyo station for an overnight train to Nagoya; not the most comfortable sleep ever; no beds and the lights were on, but it was a fun experience; we spent 2 days in Kobe and Osaka, our old stomping grounds.
It was pretty incredible revisiting them after the perspective shift of living in Tokyo for 2 1/2 years; everything felt smaller but we really loved being there again. Kobe in particular is a beautiful city and while Osaka is not a beautiful city, but it does have its own charm and Dotonbori is a fantastic area and a lot of fun at night.
Friday morning we woke up and headed to the International Ferry Terminal and, after getting turned around by the confusing streets for an extra 20 minutes, we finally boarded the ferry out of Japan!
we've already met some really cool people and had a lot of fun watching the Japanese islands float by and did a little karaoke with a group of really drunk Chinese guys, we were able to communicate a bit in broken Japanese with them, which was a little difficult but really entertaining.
Its now about 11am on Saturday, though I won't be posting this until tomorrow evening sometime once I get internet connection again.

It is now tomorrow evening sometime; we had a great last day on the boat, very chill and beatiful. The ony time the waves were a problem was for a couple hours last night when the current had s rocking a little too much for comfort, but we were already in bed at that point, so just had to power through and try to get some sleep. Due to that we're a bit tired today but have had a very, very memorable day nonetheless.

When we woke up, we were surrounded by huge shipping freighters as far as you cold see in the foggy morning, all on their way into Shanghai, the world's largest port...and that's exactly how it felt.
For about three hours we cruised through the port and up river into the heart of the city. Huge boats were everywhere and the shoreline was in a constant state of construction on all sides; there were massive building being built everywhere, old building being torn down, abandoned warehouses probably waiting for the same fate, and gentle drizzle raining on us as we stood on top of the deck and watched the very weird, unique, futuristic skyline slowly appear out of the haze.

There were about 6 of us that had no chinese money (yuan) and so decided to set out togehter once we hit land to find a bank, 2 of the girls were actually staying at our hostel as well, so we were able to navigate the confusion of a new country together.

Once off the boat, we really saw how different Shanghai is vfrom everywhere else we've ever been. We walked for about 2km from the port to the train station and literally the entire way was a construction zone. apparently shanghai is hosting a world expo in 2010 and they are undergoing massive renovations to ensure the city is world class, probably not unlike what they did to Beijing before the Olympics.
we were walking through a fairly constant stream of rubble, surrounded by construction workers, with an alien skyline hovering above us...then I slipped and stepped in wet cement, hopefully implanting my footprint permanently on the streets of Shanghai.
The subway is very clean and modern though, at least as nice as Tokyo's and we were able to get to our stop quite easily. Thankfully the hostel was just outside the station and Alicen and I have a really spacious, private room with private bathroom and shower for about 20$ a night. We went for a bit of stroll around the neighborhood and found a nice family restaurant where we had a really great dinner of dumplings, green tea, and a lovely beef and potato in sauce dish that made me vry happy...all for less that $10...i think it looks like we've calculated our budget pretty well so far, ghopefully that remains the case!

Since it is a sunday, we're a bit wiped, and we want to get a lot of sightseeing done tomorrow, we're gonna chill out for the rest of the night and get up bright and early ready for a reat day.

oh, also; it's really cold here...just FYI.

weak...the internet connection is reall spotty in the hostel; I've been trying to pload pictues, but looks like that might have to wait a bit longer....sorry, get them up soon as I can...there are some good ones! I'll see if i can get some up on Facebook right now too....

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