There are Rules

The trip to Osaka was a whirlwind. Within a short space of time, we managed to experience the Metro, take in a visit to Osaka castle, and ride the giant Ferris wheel with its amazing views of the port.  Without passing judgment let me just say that Japan was a world away from life back in Shanghai.  We’d grown accustomed to the rebellious culture of the US and Shanghai where rules are seemingly made to be morphed.  In Osaka the case was different.  Just as in Shanghai, people we met were extraordinarily friendly but here they were especially polite and courteous exhibiting a “you first” kind of mentality.   

We visited the indoor lap pool to burn off some steam after the long ferry ride across the sea. It was here that we encountered a long list of rules pertaining to hotel pool use.  (Rule number 7 was particularly noteworthy and made me giggle: “People with tattoos may not enter the pool”).  And then there was this: the lap lanes were doubled up but one at the end was free save for a “CCC club members only” sign.  I waited awhile for a lane to liberate itself, but, being a brazen American, I eventually hopped into the members’ only line and free-styled my way across the blue.  Within minutes a pool employee came out to politely inform me that the lane was for club members only.  I attempted to explain that I’d leave when a club member arrived, to which the worker added: “I’m sorry, but those are the rules”. It was then that a kindly older Japanese woman in the adjacent lane waved her hand, beckoning me into her already full lane with a grin. 

I know it’s easy to distill cultures down to stereotypes with glib black and white statements based solely on anecdotal evidence.  But most people we met in our short time in Japan were extraordinarily friendly (Casey spent a few months in Chiba after high school and his positive experiences then confirm this).  And the landscape here was simply magical, especially as our ferry departed Osaka and for one full day navigated its way through a maze of emerald islands shrouded in mist, dotted with tiny homes and fishing boats, villages of refuge.  No matter how many videos or photos I snapped, it was impossible to capture the serene beauty of Japanese waters.

Once we reached the open ocean, the ferry began to pitch and roll and became wonderfully turbulent. We had to buffer E in his bed so he wouldn’t pinwheel his way across the floor.  It was as if the sea was bracing us for the maelstrom we’d soon face back in thriving, humming, frenetic Shanghai.

Right before we disembarked a backpacker from Chicago asked us what we thought of China. For some reason his question made me think of the grocery store worker at our local market clipping his nails before bagging my fruit and vegetables.  I insisted he keep the plastic bags and that a price sticker would suffice. I told him I’d had an arrangement with other clerks at the same market. His response: a waving of the nail clippers and a decidedly prompt and boisterous “no!” I shot back with a Norwegian curse word, and had I known enough Chinese I would’ve ratted him out to a supervisor.

Our response to the backpacker: Most people we met have been extremely friendly! 

The Su Zhou Hao is now an hour from the Shanghai and from our window we watch boats of all sizes shoehorn their way into the shipping traffic of the Huangpu River.  The ferry experience has been poetically slow and dreamy but we knew it’d eventually come to an end. 

Photos to follow in the next post.  Ciao!