This Regent Seven Seas Explorer trip was memorable, but certainly not as meaningful as others I've had. For nostalgic Tuesday, I return again to that once-in-a-lifetime adventure I had around the time of the 11March2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake because, save for that cruise itself, was somewhat similar in location. I left Honolulu on March 1, 2011 for Bangkok.
I did not get home until April 10, so the length was similar to my recent trip. On the final day in Tokyo I felt several serious tremors, one around 7.1, which no doubt was more intense than 95% of you have ever experienced. A couple of days earlier I wrote an article for the Huffington Post on a similar earthquake. I did visit Shinjuku Park that final day, for this would be a night flight.
- The Great Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Catastrophe occurred on 11March2011, the eighth day of my trip when I was in Bangkok. I was scheduled to fly to Japan the next day, and did. This is now a nuclear accident level 7 disaster, equal in severity with Chernobyl.
- I spent almost half my travel time on train trips. Paul Theroux wrote two books about his train adventures: The Great Railway Bazaar and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. His seats were usually on the lowest class possible, and food was an afterthought. The second book, in particular, was grimy. My train trips were at the opposite end of the comfort scale: the Eastern and Oriental Express from Bangkok to Singapore featured the highest cuisine imaginable with some very fine wines, while two weeks on the Green Car (first class) Shinkansen per se were mostly bentos (Japanese box lunch), beer and sake, but, at each stop, I asked the concierge, what was the best restaurant in town. On this tour I focused on the latest, cutting edge fusion establishments. One problem with train trips is that you have some baggage, you must be careful about falling asleep because the stop is only for a minute, and if you don't get off, it could be 100 miles to the next station. All told, I caught 26 trains of one hour or longer, and made only one mistake.
- This summary went on to wax about the various fusion meals, sakura blossoms, and hotel stays. I did not say much about the suffering and sense of hopelessness of the people in Tohoko, many who are still in despair today. Today, 42,565 people still haven't be able to return home.
- That tragedy caused by this 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami destroyed more than 120,000 buildings, killed almost 20,000, with 2500 still reported missing, caused a 128-foot high tsunami (and 11,000 miles away in Chile resulted in a wave height of 6.6 feet), caused the Fukushima nuclear calamity, shortened the length of the day by a microsecond, resulted in 5,000 aftershocks the following year, one with a magnitude of 7.9, dropped the Honshu coastline by 2 feet, moved the island of Honshu eastward by 8 feet, with a 5-foot wave height, killed 110,000 nesting birds at the Midway Atoll, radioactive water in more than 1000 huge tank still to be treated, and 4000 workers will need another 30 years to clean up the nuclear site. The cost to Japan will be around $300 billion.
- I can save $500/day by staying home.
- I bought a nearly 5 pound bag of Niigata koshihakiri rice from Uonuma for the equivalent of $7/pound to take home to Honolulu. For what I paid, I could have gotten 20 pounds of domestic rice. I also previously had left over some rice from Akita (said to be #2 to those from Niigata), and with a taste including California Calrose, involving friends, we couldn't tell which one was definitely the best with Zippy's chili.
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