Shanghai & the Ferry to Japan

Once my friend Owen flew into Beijing we started our journey to Japan. The ferry from China ran once a week from Shanghai to Osaka so we caught an overnight train to Shanghai, his gave us a day there to check out the sights.

The train was brand new, including air conditioning, and TV's at the foot of our beds. We arrived early the following morning well rested, an ready to go find our hostel. There again the tube system cost a matter of pence to use, and after a bit of figuring out we found our way to the hostel, that was in a pretty nice area of the city.

One thing you find in China is that the cars will always beep to tell you they're close to you, so it gives you plenty of warning, but when you consider the sheer millions of bicycles going around the cities, you soon realise they're more deadly than the cars, they're like 2 wheeled ninjas that come out of nowhere, so you find that you start looking everywhere you go, out of sheer paranoia, either way, we survived with no injuries.

Shanghai whilst we were there was as people described it to me, very very smoggy, so smoggy infact you couldn't see the tops of skyscrapers most of the time. Then on top of that, an most likely a result of the smog is the unbearable humidity mixed with the high temperatures. It was not something I was used to and I'm glad I wasn't there long, because it really affected me.

We managed to find the ferry terminal and get on the ferry the following morning. The ferry was pretty well equiped, it had a restaurant, lounges, shop etc... It also had a bar that was open in the evenings, with one drawback...it was a kareoke bar!

I'm not the best singer in the world, actually lets rephrase that I'm about as talented at singing as...*insert funny anocdote here* Well you get the point.

So the nights were filled with moving back and forth from the bar to a lounge seating area, we'd get a couple of beers then the sound of drunken Japanese people singing would over power you (and your eardrums), so you'd retreat to the lounge area and wittle the evenings away.

On the boat there were a selection of books that previous travellers had obviously dumped there, the only one which was in English happened to have two copies there, it was a fiction novel called Twilight, it happens that it was made into a film not long ago, so I thought it'd be a good way to use up some of the time on the ferry. It was an interesting book about vampires, but definately aimed more at the teenager/young adult market, little did I know that when I read this first book there were a further three sequels that had been published, and that I'd suddenly have an desire to read them, because they all end on cliff hangers. This story continues in Japan, so you'll have wait and see what happens.

We met a couple from Chile on the ferry and a German student studying in Japan, we all spent an evening exchanging travel stories and plans for Japan, so was a nice way to spend our time there.

Before we knew it the ferry journey was over and the time not only passed pretty fast it was also pretty enjoyable.

Only one thing caused us trouble on te ferry, and it was very annoying! Every morning over the tannoy system they'd annouce in a variety of languages that breakfast was available, this would inevitably wake us up, but just to drive it home and make sure that at 7.30am you were definately awake they'd play really bad melodies over the tannoy system, loud enough so you couldn't possibly get back to sleep. This wasn't just for a minute or two, oh no, a whole 20mins, they were making sure that on a boat where there's very little to do, that you enjoyed as much of that time as possible!

So other than the unneeded wake up calls all was fine and dandy, so we made it to Osaka, Japan 9.30am two days after we first set off. Ready to take in the land of the rising sun!