I'm beginning to lose my bearing. We left Masan, Korea, in a daze. Our impressions were mixed, but fortunately everything worked out for the better. Forever, my impression of Korea will be much endeared. Naturally I was looking forward to the last ports in Japan and heading home. The rumors on the ship are never ending. Antonio, the head steward, said that it would take less than 18 hours to get to Yokohama, and the captain informed me that we would be in Yokohama for only 24 hours, then another 24 hours in Hitachi before heading home. I'm beginning to itch for my woman, a double Jack on the rocks and a ride. The final trek across the Pacific is 23 days. OK, so let's get to the facts.

We arrived in Yokohama at 6 a.m. after two days at sea. If we arrived a minute early at the pilot station we would have been charged night duties, an extra fee for night maneuvering in the port. We were only destined to take on seven large generator components, yet the stevedores labored through very strict union hours. At 5 a.m. they're gone. It was a plodding nightmare watching the slowness of the operation. We were in port until 6 p.m. the next day. If we had stayed another minute we would have been charged extra for night maneuvering.

Yokobike: I know, bury me at sea. It's not a Harley. Actually Japan was the first country where I spotted Harleys.

Yokohama is on the outskirts of Tokyo, a city of 26.5 million inhabitants. According to my feeble atlas, it is the most populated city in the world. I think I mentioned that there is a total of 200 million in Japan on this series of lovely, mountainous islands, so the land for housing is limited. The third mate informed me today that the city of Yokohama is populated with 21 million, but I have my doubts. Holy shit Popeye, no wonder the kids are learning English so they can escape to the mighty United States.

Tokyo Bay is deep and the pilot rode on the ship for several hours before being replaced with another pilot specifically trained for harbor maneuvering. The captain pointed out that they stack up the ships and bring in 45 ships at one time for loading and unloading. They run them out of town in the same formation instead of a constant influx of new ships passing the serviced ones.

Yoko tug shot: Tug support while maneuvering a 600-foot vessel. The stevedores were waiting on the dock.

It turned out to be a reasonable port to navigate and the cabs were allowed to come directly to the ship. As usual the first day was spent trying to find our asses from a hole in the ground, getting a taxi to take us to a bank so we could grab a handful of yen. After bowing to the pleasant woman who assisted us through the process, we ran outside and paid the cabbie.

The dollar went for 127 yen and although restaurants were a tad on the expensive side, the other shopping and services seemed reasonable. As it turned out, our home base became the Grand Hotel right on the water only a mile from the ship. As usual, the hotel was of immense help even though we weren't paying guests. We supported their coffers by eating at their restaurants twice. I was in Yokohama during the Vietnam War from time to time, but don't remember a thing. I might have, if I'd stumbled into the whorehouse district. This city is modern and upscale, reminiscent of San Francisco with narrow streets winding into the cluttered hills.

Garden statue shot: A Buddhist shrine in the Sankeien Garden. Note that we were here as the plum and cherry trees began to blossom.

We took a short tour with a cab driver who barely spoke any English, but he delivered us to the cemetery where Americans from World War I were buried, to a home overlooking the harbor that was once lived in by the ambassador to the United States. It was an elegant clapboard Midwestern home. I would have liked to tour a traditional Japanese abode. We also roamed through a park that had been carved out of the city over 200 years ago.

Queens tall ship: This tall ship was on display next to the Maritime Museum, next to the Yokohama train station, across from a series of state-of-the-art high-rise shopping malls.

While the blonde of blondes got her nails done in a high-rise shopping center that was state of the art, I grabbed a massage. The next day we went to a silk museum and studied how silk garments are made. I was forced to sit at an old fabric machine and taught how to make the material at gun point. Then we stumbled into a small Angelo building that serves as the Peace Museum. It was a restored two-story brick structure on the waterfront that was established by a man who fought to keep the development of atom bombs out of Japan after the war. The display inside was devoted to Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish man who was in a concentration camp during WWII. He managed to get his wife out and she escaped to Romania. He survived the concentration camps, although two-thirds of all the European Jewish population was wiped out. When the war was over he didn't know if his wife was still alive and she suspected that he was dead. After they were reunited they had a child, who grew up to discover that she had no uncles, aunts, grandparents or other relatives. They were all killed in the Holocaust.

After the war most Jews understandably moved away from Europe, many to Palestine and many to the United States, but Simon stayed to prosecute war criminals. After a decade he finally located Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and brought him to trial. I can't quote him exactly, but he said that he was terrified of the man who killed millions, like he was some superman, tough guy. As it turned out, he looked like a frightened bookkeeper when put on the stand. During his endeavors to find criminals he discovered that his best snitches were Nazis who turned on one another readily.

There was one more display in the Peace Museum that moved me. As a kid I was told and read the story of Anne Frank, the girl who hid in the walls of a home for years before the Nazis discovered her and put her family in concentration camps. It was unbelievable to see actual pictures of the pretty little Jewish girl and her family. There were also photos of the Nazi officer who arrested them. He became an important figure since the Nazis like to spread the rumor that Anne Frank's story was a hoax. By putting the officer on trial it was confirmed that what she wrote in her diaries was the truth. Eichmann's trial accomplished the same for all of those who doubted that millions were killed in concentrations camps.

I wonder how the Japanese people explain why they attacked virtually every country around them at one time or another. Fortunately, as history often proves, greed fails. If Hitler had left Russia alone, they may have been able to own Europe, but no, they wanted to take on the world. If Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor, they might have ultimately ruled all of the Orient. Life can be a strange place.

Yokotemple: The best Chinese shopping in the world is in Yokohama, Japan, in Chinatown. This was the temple that overlooked the crowded narrow streets.

You won't believe some of what I'm going to tell you. Here we are in this beautiful coastal city, so where did we go? We stumbled into the Chinatown district for dumplings and again in search of a Hua Fu dress for Sin. Ah, but more recently another term has surfaced to describe this garment style that makes a woman look so good. In a book on Hong Kong we discovered the term Cheongsam dress. The jury is still out on that term. Unlike the last city in China, Chinatown in Yokohama was full of dress shops and I was able to score one that will hopefully pack many fantasy- filled nights.

The ship departed Yokohama, a city streaming with Mercedes, Porches and slick shopping areas at 6 p.m. sharp. We headed north out of the bay, around the corner and back into the Hitachi port at 6 the next morning. The same requirements followed us to the Hitachi port except that this is not a city harbor, but owned by the Hitachi Corporation so the stevedores were in no hurry at all.

Long before the war Hitachi was an agricultural and fishing business, but someone discovered copper and they jumped into the mining industry. Each move the business made disturbed the community and had to be adjusted for in the future. Mining ruined the fishing and farming and destroyed the air quality. Ultimately they adjusted and came back around to the beautiful seaside area that it is today. Hitachi was bombed flat during the war. The company expanded into electrical appliances because during the mining days they needed parts to fix their own generators. Electrical motor parts were manufactured in their shop, which became a separate business.

This brings up a couple more economic considerations to mull over. This ship is basically taking generator parts and turbines to the U.S. from the Orient plus a few bars of zinc. When it is finished unloading the parts for various power plants in the U.S., it will return to Europe empty.

During my stay on the ship I picked up a Time magazine that basically painted Japan as a starving country falling apart economically. It sure didn't look it, but we may be facing a similar plight if we don't watch it. If you take these ships as an economic monitor you can see what countries are building and where they're shipping it. If your country isn't building anything and selling it abroad, it aren't doin' business. Nothing is shipped from the U.S. to Europe or Asia, although I'm certain that's a broad generalization. There are no American Flag cargo ships because it's too expensive to build ships in the U.S. There are no American crews on these ships because labor is too expensive. As far as I know there aren't American officers running these ships. What does that tell you? Hell we can't even build the parts for our own power plants, we have to go outside the U.S. to get parts 'cause they're too expensive if built at home. Is that good or bad?

If you were to fly into Hitachi you wouldn't get the impression anywhere in the area that Japan is overcrowded. It's like Santa Barbara a few years ago. It's a sprawling coastline with nice homes tucked into the hills.

Hitside street shot: I don't know why I took this shot. It's not representative of the plain small city streets of Hitachi. I suppose it remind me of 20 years ago in Japanese towns of narrow streets.

This was one of the cleanest areas we encountered. The town of Hitachi was easy to get around, but perhaps the trip was getting to one passenger in particular. There are only four on board, three women and my ugly self. I've tried to watch out for them in each port, but one in particular didn't impress me. She seemed selfish and less than honest. From time to time I avoided any involvement with her at all, just keeping my distance. I tested her once in a while to see if I was off base but she always failed any test to demonstrate consideration for the other passengers. But I continued to keep up my roll as the gracious protective man, until we had a run-in during the Hitachi visit.

Hit Tiny Temple: I was moved by this temple taking up an entire precious lot on the walking/shopping street of Hitachi. Perhaps it was a prayer temple for someone who passed on or just a spot in the center of a busy part of town to take a minute out and ponder life from a more spiritual angle.

When we arrived that morning, I met with the captain and got copies of the agent's card for all the passengers. As usual, I always gave them the option to go their own way. Since I'm the only one with a costly Iridium phone, I called the agent and set up a meeting, met with him and had him write out in Japanese directions for the taxi drivers, directions back to the ship, directions to major hotels and banks. I made copies of these documents and passed them out and made the arrangements for a taxi to pick us up. In the past they enjoyed the fact that I picked up the tab on taxis all day long, kept a record of the charges and then had to work out the fee and try to get repaid. I was tired of this woman telling me she didn't have the change.

Upon arrival at the hotel, I asked her and her partner to pick up the cab fare this time and she went off like a high school brat not getting her way. She went psycho. Damn, what a piece of shit. I was right from the start. Fortunately there are only a couple of weeks left before I can get the hell off this ship and back to the real world. For you who didn't know, one of the major reasons for this voyage was companionship and security for my 79-year-old mother (the blonde of blondes), who is damn spry, especially since I've forced her into an upper body strengthening routine. Obviously, I was watching out for her constantly. I suspected this fat broad was not a good person, but was unaware of her mental instability. Of course, with a name like Robina, what can you expect? We went our separate ways.

Hit drinking fountain: I couldn't resist this amusement part drinking fountain.

On the other hand, another female passenger receives breathy calls whenever we're in port as if that indicates that the source is not a crewman. It happens at every port. So I shouldn't complain about the homosexual advances I had to deal with from one of the officers when we first left Europe. Talk about adventure. I got a couple of calls in the middle of the night and told the sonuvabitch to approach me in the daylight. He never had the balls. What the fuck was he thinking? There are only 25 crewmembers. It's not too difficult to pinpoint a problem within the five officers. I never heard another word.

The day we were scheduled to leave, the cargo superintendent was a nervous wreck. Another Rickmers ship was due to arrive and they wanted us out of the way. The Hitachi stevedores had another plan since the weekend was upon us. We only had five 200-ton items to load on board and the port demanded that we utilize their permanent 400-ton crane. The ship's cranes were forced to stand idle. In addition, special I-beams had to be welded to the twin-decks for cargo lashing. During the last trip the welding was not monitored correctly and cargo caught fire.

Hit Temple: Strolling through a hillside park in Hitachi, we came across one of many temples.

The captain was called to duty to arrange for fire watches below the twin-deck to be welded. Asbestos tarps and wet tarps were used to protect the crates and plastic sheeting that some of the large industrial sized generators were covered in. The process was slow and lumbering and the harried schedule bounced from noon on Friday to almost 4 p.m. before we pulled out. Shortly before we departed I looked out the brass porthole to the bow of the ship below to discovered a stevedore pissing on the deck. I didn't think that was cool.

Hitcrew shot: Here's a handful of the hard-working crew struggling with the mammoth mooring lines as we pulled out to sea. A great group of guys who rarely get ashore.

As we dropped off the pilot after motoring out of the easily maneuverable port and passed the jetty, a heightened level of swell stormed the hull and the ship was tossed severely although we were loaded down. The captain indicated that the swells were normal for the northern Pacific in this region, but no preparations were made to sustain the damage from the rolling and shit flew everywhere, including the barbecue, benches and tables on the stern bridge deck. The chief mate's offices were in shambles by the next morning.

My own cabin was prepped for swells. I had moored the computer Richard Kranzler loaned me for just such an occasion and it didn't budge, but my stack of documents and research material from the various ports was scattered. No big deal.

Bibi shot: Here's the sister ship to the Leon, the Bibi, also originally a Mexican cargo ship. It's the only one that retains its original name -- the name of the Mexican owner's girlfriend.

An hour out we passed the sister ship to the Leon, the Bibi. It is identical and has endured much the same history. The Hitachi port wouldn't work over the weekend so that meant more coin for the dock space and additional costs for running a ship for two days dead in the water. That's one of the reasons they try to keep these ships moving and running in and out of ports during working days.

That's it. It's been rolling for a couple of days and in a couple of hours we will pass over the date line. It's Wednesday and tomorrow will also be Wednesday and finally I will be back on track with the coast. This has been quite an adventure, but I miss you guys. I miss my small abode and my babe in San Pedro. I miss wrenching in the garage and building another scooter. I even miss the assholes who owe us money and are making life at the front difficult. I just can't wait to fire up a scooter on Sunday and roll down to Walker's Café for a beer.

Oh, on a positive note, last night I finished the first draft of the book I wrote based on this trip. Currently I have written over 103 articles and chapters. The book alone is 156,000 words or more, about 500 pages. OK, goddamnit, I'm tooting my horn, but fuck, I'm proud and excited to have written my best book yet. Hell, I've read five books during the trip and learned something from each one.

I'm hoping to say that there are only 15 days left. Rumor has it that we picked up some gear for a port in Mexico. The port of Altamira is on the east coast near the cities of Ciudad Madero and Tampico. Yesterday we received the agent's number in Altamira, but to date it's not confirmed that we will stop. The cargo is small and it may not be worth the time and expense. Altamira is only 400 miles from Houston and another rumor has it that there is some cargo aboard that has a strict deadline in Houston. One more hectic consideration is being mulled around in the captain's psyche with his desire to return to Poland. Apparently the Bibi is picking up cargo in Hitachi and following us to Houston and home to Europe. He wants to get there first, get off the ship and go home. If he is not first, he may be loaded again and sent directly back to the Orient and perhaps destined to go home the opposite way west. That doesn't suit him and I'm all for the most hasty approach to Houston and the airport. Let's rock and roll. Next stop, Panama Canal.

On to Part 18