Charlie here. Having had only a small editorial role on our previous blogs, I thought it was high time to switch roles and write one.

So here is our 3 day trip Beijing to Kobe ....

I was gutted. I had sneaked out of our room in Lucy's house at 6:30am to go and watch the tai chi in the park, and I stepped outside into a wall of strong wind - stronger than I had felt for ages. This was worst case scenario. We were going to be on a ferry for the next two days, private cabin, honeymoon, stunning views of China and Japan, and a wife who had a track record of unpleasant ferry journeys that I was trying to help her overcome (so that maybe one day she'll agree to share a small cabin on a yacht with me across an ocean or two). But Neptune seemed to have decided that - no - our ferry journey from Tianjin to Kobe was to be a tippy bumpy nauseous affair instead, and there was very little I could do about it.

The ferry website had been unclear about whether we should pay in Japanese Yen or Chinese Yuan so I was keen to have enough of both - just in case. Changing money was aided by Lucy who found us a bank without a long queue, and joined in a heated and long discussion with three bank staff about how the transaction should take place. I had no idea what they were saying but it all took a long time to change my Chinese cash into Japanese cash. Right at the start, when we were asking which queue to join to change money, a few random customers had joined in the conversation. This reminded me of quite few times when we had been chatting to official or locals in Beijing, and other people had come to join in or just to watch and listen. So, I asked Lucy about this: had she noticed that Chinese people seem to like to get involved in each others' conversations or arguments? Her answer was very quick and decisive: 'No. no. no. not at all'

I was surprised, she seemed almost offended. She continued: 'Not any more. People are too busy to stop and join in. They are too busy making money'.

And such is the way in new China.

After the bank was the supermarket, where all the meat was at least two months past its sell by date, so we left it alone. Having heard the ferry restaurant wasn't much cop, we stocked up on pot noodles, biscuits, bread, jam, fruit and chocolate. For protein, Lucy recommended the freeze-packed, cold, pickled, hard-boiled eggs. I wasn't so sure they would help with the whole stopping Louise getting seasick thing, so politely declined.

Just before leaving, Lucy also told me an old Chinese saying: 'If you are going to help someone, then you should always see it through to the end'.

So she insisted on taking us to the station and putting us on the right train to Tianjin. We decided to taxi it with our heavy bags, and whilst we walked to the main road, we noticed quite a few small round piles of ash dotted along the pavement. In fact, we'd seen these little pavement fires the night before, with people pouring water around the edges to stop the fires spreading. Lucy told us it was the full moon festival, a certain ethnic group (I couldn't ascertain which) were supposed to return home to their ancestors graves and burn offerings for them to have in the afterlife. Nowadays, city migration has made this difficult, so people are allowed to make little fires on the pavement ... but only after dark.

After an hour negotiating the 4 million cars and 9 million bicycles in Beijing (thank you Katie Melua) we arrived at the airport-looking Beijing South train station, bought a ticket, said goodbye to Lucy, passed through security, and boarded the 'fastest train in the world'. When the line opened on August 1, 2008, it set the record for the fastest conventional train service in the world, and reduced travel time between the two largest cities in northern China from 70 to 30 minutes (thank you Wikipedia). It was nice to save 40 minutes on our journey; bloody shame we had to wait 50 minutes for a taxi in Tianjin when we arrived then. Right at the front of the train, out of a huge front windscreen, the first class compartment had a panoramic view of the landscape whizzing past at 327kmph. I've no idea how much these tickets cost, but it looked well worth doing for the amazing fairground-ride view. We were stuck behind the intervening opaque doors, with only occasional glimpses as the staff popped out to refill the coffee pots.

As soon as we got off the train the army of cleaners were already flipping the seats around and eagerly squeejying the carriage windows for the trip back (I guess flies make quite a splat at 327kmph), this was evidence of China's combination of high-tech intellectual property and cheap labour upon which its vast manufacturing economy has been built.

Our taxi driver spoke no English, so we showed him our printed map and the words 'Ferry to Japan' written in Chinese for us by Lucy, and very soon we were off. All too easy. He drove away from the station, called someone on his mobile, and then pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. What was going on? He hung up, turned to us, and it quickly became clear that he had absolutely no idea where we were going. To be fair to him, we were tourists with luggage on our way to Japan, and surely must be going to the airport. It was as if two Chinese people had got into a cab at Paddington and asked for the Southampton Ferry to Nice - kind of unlikely. The ferry terminal is in a place called Tanggu, an hour and a half's drive away from Tianjin, and the ferry goes once a week, so I doubt it is well known. He had to check he'd understood correctly. He started by making a brilliantly ambiguous arms outstretched rolling motion, which could so easily have been waves on the sea - or perhaps it was a banking aircraft ... it didn't help. So it was our trusty iphone to the rescue...

"quick, look up boat ....um, here it is .... chwan, um ... we want chwan .... chwan please" but he was none the wiser.

Then we pressed the audio button and the iphone said 'ch - waaan'.

"Aaaaah! 'Ch - waaan'" followed by much nodding, much laughter and we were on our way.

He set off and then proceeded to phone pretty much all his friends and family one by one to tell them the story. To us each call had a unintelligible few minutes, and then he'd say 'Aaaaaah ch - waaan' into the phone and laugh. I think we made his month.

Tanggu was an amazing place. When I worked in Australia a couple of years ago, there had been much talk about the fact that the Chinese were building a city the size of Brisbane every week. Tanggu is actually Brisbane, and looks like it was put up in a week. It all looked so new. High-rise apartment heaven and wide, clean, neon-lit, sea-front boulevards with modern seaside town wavy-line architecture, where half the buildings are supposed to look like boats or sails or waves or something. A McD and KFC on every other corner - next door to a Chinese equivalent, complete with a picture of a smiling Chinese Colonel Sanders (I have yet to visit either - with thanks to my best men). Starbucks of course, and shopping malls full of recognizable brands, king of which emblazoned across the top of at least three malls we passed in big red letters was, surprisingly, Tesco. Every little helps.

Also emblazoned on the odd building, even in this new capitalist city, were uplifting slogans straight out of Terry Gillingham's film Brasil. One example was 'Living in the same country building a better place together' along the top of a 10 story building. And this was written in English. I am not sure who the intended audience is, and if it supposed to make people feel good, but it made me feel really quite uneasy.

Our laughing cabbie navigated his way through Tanggu by cruising up next to local taxis and asking the way, and drove us straight to our terminal. He was brilliant. We paid him the 150 Yuan (15 quid) and walked into the terminal nice and early. The short queue took ages and once Louise got to the front - I was guarding the bags a little way off - it was a little tight for time. A long conversation ensued, and then 'Um Charlie, can you come over here... how much Chinese money have we got, they wont take Yen and it is twice as expensive as we thought?'.

My first big administration mistake of the trip, assuming a room rate, not a per person rate, we had half as much cash as we needed; and it said very clearly on their website they don't take credit cards and there are no ATMs at the ferry port. The next ferry was in a week, it looked like we were about to get to know Tanggu really quite well - maybe I could visit some of those Colonel Chang restaurants, and we could stock up on Tesco's finest...

The ticket seller had been inflexible on the currency front but then suddenly he backed down. To give him his dues, I think he realised quite how much trouble I would be in if we didn't get this ferry and very kindly got out his calculator and started working out the balance in Yen. Thank heavens I had had enough cash to pay in either currency, I didn't realise it would need both.

After that we breezed through exit procedures and were on to the boat.
Our two person cabin was spacious, clean and comfortable and, if a bit rocky, was a lovely home for the two of us for the next two days and three nights. Unlike a lot of our recent accommodation, it even had an en-suite loo and shower. The communal areas on the boat were also sadly the smoking areas, so we spent most time in our cabin or on deck gazing at the beautiful seascapes and rolling waves.

There was a lot of attention to safety, with lots of notices in Chinese, Japanese and English. My favourite was the translation of 'In case of emergency, don't panic' to 'In case of emergency, don't get excited'! I was bursting with excitement at the prospect of getting into a lifeboat.

And every announcement was translated into English as well - just for us (out of a hundred odd people we were the only westerners on the boat), and lucky they did because at one point there was an abandon ship drill, and if they hadn't forewarned us in English I would have been rather alarmed by the '7 short blasts followed by 1 long one' standard international abandon ship signal. In truth, Ken who took this ferry last year had warned us they might do an emergency drill, and said that he and Laura had had to don lifejackets and meet at the emergency point on deck. So I duly checked outside, saw a few people in their life-jackets and got Louise and I dressed up. It turned out it was just the crew who had to do this emergency drill and not the passengers. Louise and I walked out to join in dressed like chumps in our big bulky lifejackets, to see the rest of the passengers wandering around as normal. She scampered back to the cabin before anyone saw her, and was sure I had made the whole thing up and dressed us up like idiots on purpose. Personally, I blame Ken...

Louise was a star on the ferry. It was strong wind force 7, with a wind-streaked bumpy sea. We rocked and rolled, even occasionally struggling to keep our feet in the cabin, but the sickness never came and in the end it proved a fairly comfortable and very restful two days. Luckily the wind was northwest, so even before we got to the inland sea in japan we were mostly in the lee/shelter of China or Korean mainland. Louise even joined me and the rest of the passengers in completely ignoring the 'absolutlely no passengers beyond this point' signs to enjoy the view from the top deck for a while as we steamed up to the Japanese coast. Although she did think I was mad spending hours and hours on deck watching the sea as we passed Chinese, Korean and Japanese islands, and didn't get quite as excited as I did to get up very early for the ocean dawn.

We arrived in Japanese waters at dusk. The underside of the cloud cover over Japan was eerily glowing in the far off urban lights - an early taste of the Japanese population density.

Having had a northwesterly for the whole two days, out of nowhere and for a good 45 mins came a huge offshore southwest blast of wind. The Japanese have a word meaning 'Divine Wind' which comes from two Spanish Armada type incidents in 13th Century where Japan was saved by divine intervention from Mongol naval invasions, first by thunderstorms in 1274 and then by a typhoon in 1281. The Japanese protective spirits were just sending a little puff to let us know they were awake. The word for 'Divine Wind' is 'Kamikaze'.

After a night of cruising through the Japanese inland sea, and a free sausage and dumpling breakfast courtesy of the crew of the good ship Yan Jing, we arrived in Kobe. We were all photographed by immigration and then kept for an hour on the ferry whilst they searched for stowaways. One official behind the front desk was staring intently at one of the passengers, concentrating hard and taking notes on the pad in front of him for quite a while. What had this guy done wrong? We were intrigued. Surreally, it turned out he was doing a caricature of the bloke which he proceeded to give to him, and then everyone else queued up to get one too. Go figure!

It was sad to get off the boat. Like the trans-Siberian train, the trip was over too quickly. We were just starting to get into it, and were both feeling great ...but Japan awaited.

Like most countries the first people you meet are immigration and customs officers. Our officer meticulously, but very politely, unpacked Louise's bags and spent ages going through them item by item asking about each one. He was only the first Japanese person we'd met, but I reckon "meticulous and polite" pretty much sums up the nation's psyche.

But that blog is yet to come...

Tit-bits/memories of the ferry journey:

1. Regular trips to the boiling water tank for teas, coffees and noodles
2. Hilariously 'Titanic' was one of the films on offer for the on demand TV
3. The boat was pretty sparse for facilities and communal areas, and my boat-wide exploring found little but bizarrely a ping pong table four decks down in the hold, next to a room full of disused gym equipment
4. Chinese islands wind farm, with over one hundred turbines and they were all turning.
5. Lots of shipping, mostly oil and freight, and a long line of thirty or forty tankers anchored off the NE cape we rounded, awaiting their cargo
6. Gang of men painting the deck of the ship as we went. They had put up a helpful 'SOTP' sign to sotp us from entering
7. Hundreds of beautiful islands off the south coast of Korea - would love to have time to visit
8. I tried the shower, it was freezing cold and a dribble - fair enough we were on a boat. After I had had my 2 minute cold water marine shower I turned off the tap, turned it the wrong way and it gushed out gorgeously hot water. Louise had a lovely long wash.
8. Japanese drive cars on the left like the Brits, but strangely have the same "red right return" wrong way round navigation buoy system used only by the US. Very useful lit up numbers on the navigation buoys though
9. Having left Tanggu at 3am and arriving at Kobe at 9am, meant we had little daylight to see China and Japan in - it was a particular shame to not be able to enjoy the 9 hours travel through the islands and under the bridges on the Japan Inland sea.