Yokohama to Seattle on the Hanjin Madrid

I don't know where I first heard about passengers traveling on cargo ships. It's something you encounter often in old novels and literature, but I think most people assume it's firmly a bygone-days thing. But somehow I had the idea that it was something that a small number of people still did, and sure enough, with only a little googling I was soon in contact with several shipping companies who offered passenger service on their vessels. I was living in Japan, teaching English in the Kyoto/Osaka area, and after 2 1/2 years I was planning to return to the US. Returning by ship was attractive for a number of reasons.

1) It was an adventure- it seemed like a fun thing that few people did, but that everyone would want to if they knew about it.
2) It was more environmentally friendly than flying. If we are to be serious about addressing climate change, it seems to me that we will have to alter our lifestyles in terms of travel, and may have to reconsider what we take for granted in terms of speed. Perhaps in the future going around the world in less than a day will not be the standard way of doing it. As someone deeply concerned about the environment, I would like to urge people to consider and accept drastic changes to their way of living, and this would be me putting my money where my mouth is.
3) On the subject of money, although ship travel is more expensive than economy class air travel, at the time I booked the ticket the price of oil was so high that fuel surcharges on air tickets came close to making up this difference. This made the decision much easier, and although before the departure date came the price of oil plummeted and air tickets were once more cheap, by that time I was quite wedded to the idea of going by sea, and had no regrets.
4) I had a lot of luggage to take - far more than a baggage allowance on any airline. It would be prohibitively expensive either to pay the extra bag charges, or to ship my things by anything but the slowest ground delivery. By ship, I could carry many more bags and then ship them to my home state much cheaper domestically once I arrived in the US.
5) Finally, and perhaps most importantly, after 2 1/2 years, I was firmly adjusted to Japanese life, and indeed Japan felt like my home. I knew that, if I was to get on a plane and be deposited back in the US literally overnight, the reverse culture-shock might well be devastating. But watching Japan slowly, slowly get smaller and smaller, then disappear over the horizon, spending 10 days with nothing but water and sky, then seeing America appear as a speck and get bigger and bigger until I was there - when I arrived I would be ready for it.

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