The ferry ride to Honshu was an experience not to be missed while in Japan. The crossing is an 8 hour trip from eastern Hokkaido to northeastern Honshu. We boarded the ship at about 11:30 on Thursday night and arrived at 8:30 the next morning. The ship was smaller than the Spirit Class BC ferry and maybe about the size of the Queen class boats. It has 3 vehicle decks and a couple of passenger decks. The passenger decks have virtually no seats (I was told that you have to pay extra to sit in the few chairs that were available). Instead there are large carpeted areas where everyone sits on the floor and eventually streches out and sleeps (photo above, sorry about the poor quality, but I think it was weird enough taking a photo of people sleeping so I didn't improve on it). The only provision is a weird vinyl block pillow. It seemed like you could rent blankets if you needed to (although they kept it hot enough in there that I can't imagine why you would pay for a blanket).
The trip along the exposed Pacific coastline can apparently be pretty rough so I took a couple of gravol just in case and tried to settle in to sleep. The fact that they chain every vehicle to the deck of the ship demonstrates how rough of seas they expect to encounter. Here is a photo of a transport truck chained down to the deck.
Despite my efforts at a drug induced slumber, I only slept sproradically throught the night. A man about 5 feet to my right was snoring like a chain saw - nevermind that he was also ripping off booming flatulence for most of the night. People's phones and alarms were ringing through the night too and that was a repeated source of sleep interruption. Needless to say, I was glad to arrive at our destination. We had a 4 hour car ride from the port to the marine station (this time a station associated with Tokyo University) so I made up some sleep while the students drove.As an aside, I should note that Japanese people have an impressive abiltiy to sleep despite the conditions or location. I have now, on many occasions, seen people sleep through what I find difficult and uncomfortable to be awake through. Not only can they sleep anywhere and anytime (at their desk, on the subway, standing in line...), they also can somehow wake up at precisely the right moment (their stop on the train, the instant that it is their turn in line...). It is a desirable skill in a lot of ways I think. Anyway, back to Sanriku field work...
This station, called the International Coastal Marine Research Station, seems to be a much nicer lab facility and fits more closely with my expectation of a Japanese Marine Research Station. The dormitory is nicer than the previous one too, although the kitchen is still lacking and smelly to say the least. The first night of work started slowly for me with constant errors on my part. I took photos of one site with the camera settings wrong so had to delete and start over. Then took the photos over with the incorrect grid pattern (this field site uses a differnt grid than we did at the last two locations - thanks for the heads up on that one!) so had to delete another 40 photos and start again. Once I finally got rolling things went quickly. The weather on night one was very cold but at least it wasn't raining or blowing. I was bundled up in 4 layers of pants and 5 layers of shirts so only my hands were cold - credit to the hundreds of cold nights of outrigger practice for steeling me to dark and cold ocean work.
The weather has improved and last night's work was fast and productive. We will finish sampling tonight but our group will be unable to leave because we have to wait to have a piece of equipment delivered that was left behind. So we will be delayed by one day to download temperature data that we can only do with this specific piece of equipment - bummer. The real kick in the behind is that we will wait around for another day after that so that we can take another midnight ferry ride back (the students prefer the night ferry trip over the daytime one that would get us back 12 hours sooner - we voted and I was outnumbered 3-1).
On this trip we had a group from Chiba University (north of Tokyo) here helping with the work. They are from the lab there that is collaborating on this project. Many hands made light work and we were able to complete the work in half the time. The professor from that lab was here too and he speaks excellent English (did his PhD in the US) and is comfortable speaking. It was surprising to me how much of a difference that made to me. Not only could he accurately communicate to me what needed to be done and what time things were happening, he was also forthright in doing so. Wow! Who knew that it could be this easy! The students are great and I appreciate their efforts, but because they don't like to speak with me (they are nervous about it or plain tired of it - who can blame them) I am left to bumble around without the information I need to actually make effective use of my time. Only one more round of field work (we have to re-do the site where we had bad weather) and then I can work on my own again for a few months.
Here is a photo of the Marine Research Station and dorms (dorms are the white building on the furthest right). One of the research plots is located on the far right rocky bit of shore shown in the background of this photo. At this location we have 5 of the 150 plots involved in this project. There is a jetty (foreground of the photo) directly out from the station and at the end is a Shinto shrine on a tiny island. I walked out to the shrine and looked out over the bay that is full of shellfish (oysters, scallops and mussels) aquaculture . Here is a photo of the the shrine at the end of the jetty. I have seen many Shinto shrines here and most are on tiny little islands like this or other scenic coastal locations. It would be nice to come back and see them again in daylight.
