Chapter Two - At Sea

Trip Days 9-17 - Cruise 1 Days 7-15 - At Sea

We now had nine sea days until we reached Tokyo. Rather than bore all you dedicated readers with a minute-by-minute description of all the exciting events and activities we experienced during those nine days, I will just summarize, we ...

• Slept
• Charged iPhones
• Ate
  We noticed something interesting on the sea days. On many of our previous cruises, in warmer climes, passengers would get up early, go out to the pool area or any other outdoor area that had deck chairs, put something personal on the chairs, such as towels, sunglasses, tote bags, small children, etc. and leave the item there all day even when they were elsewhere. This is is known in biology as "marking your territory", which is a signal to others that any attempt to use, touch, or go within 15 feet of the marked territory will result it harsh retribution. Most of the cruise lines warn that they will not allow this and will remove any personal items from the deck chairs if they are unoccupied for an hour. In reality they never do this for fear of antagonizing paying customers. The paying customers know this and ignore the warnings.
  On this cruise, however, the weather was such that the outdoor deck chairs were unusable. So the intrepid Princess cruisers found an alternative. The got up very early, went to the buffet, commandeered one of the few tables next to the windows, placed their personal items on the table, only instead of wandering away for most of the day they spent most of the day camped out at the table, occasionally getting up to find something in the buffet to scarf down. Consequently, whenever we went to the buffet, all the window tables were occupied and sometimes it was hard to find any table to eat at, even though many of the window tables were occupied with people who were not eating. They were playing cards, reading books, or staring out the window, during a very crowded meal time. Ah, the human race.
• Read
• Attended Lectures on various topics, including Japanese culture and history, and Hollywood history
The lectures on Hollywood history in particular were really good. They were given by Sue Denning, an English lady and former Cruise Director. She had a great sense of humor and accompanied her talk with very professionally made slides and film clips, and lots of jokes.
• Participated in trivia contests
One was called "Progressive Trivia" where we had to create or join teams of up to six people, have a team name, and each day we would turn in our answer sheets and they would be checked by the trivia host in the evening and the points tallied and would accumulate points during the nine sea days. We joined a team called "Golden Girls and Guys" with four others. Each day there was a different theme - "Strange things that are illegal", "General Knowledge", "Nautical Terms", "Riddles", "Myths and Legends", "Sports", "Statistics", "Food and Drink" and "This Cruise". They were challenging but we had fun.
• Listened to various musical performances
• Attended evening stage shows
• Wrote award-winning travelogues, such as the one you are reading
• Stared out various windows, looking out at... water, or maybe just fog
• Occasionally listened to the foghorn
• Watched a very large number of drunks walk around the ship.
Oh, wait, maybe it was the crazy rocking of the ship that made them walk like that. Then again, quite a number of people purchase the drinks package and have to drink a lot to break even on the cost. In fact, one day at breakfast at about 9:00 AM I saw one guy with a snifter of brandy and a guy sitting right next to us ordered a Bloody Mary - an interesting alternative to morning coffee.
• Bravely attempted to fill nine whole days without access to the Internet. Eventually on sea day six we succumbed and bought an internet package. Fortunately we only had to pay for the remaining days of the cruise.
• Waited for the Elevators
The elevators on the ship were very intelligent. Whatever floor you were on, they weren't. In fact all of them were always as far away from your floor as possible, and when they finally arrived on your floor, they were always going in the precise direction you didn't want to go. Many times we would push the button calling for the elevator only to watch as several of them stopped at a floor just above or just below ours, and not move after that. We must have spent a number of hours waiting for the elevators. It was, however, a form of entertainment to listen to the other passengers complaining about the elevators.

There are also a number of things we absolutely did not attend...

• Exercise classes, such as Tai Chi, Zumba, StretchLab, Yoga Six Flow, Club Pilates Mat Flow, etc.
• Meditation classes
• Bible Study
• Bingo
• Karaoke
• Spa treatments
• Dance classes
• The Cruise Long Scavenger Hunt
• Sales pitches disguised as lectures for things like jewelry, watches, perfumes, liquor
• Anything to do with the onboard "Art" auctions, otherwise known as scams
• Health related lectures/sales pitches (more scams), e.g,
  • Healing Chronic Pain with Acupuncture
  • Complimentary Footprint Analysis
  • Wrinkle Remedies with Dr. Gustavo
  • Secrets to a Flatter Stomach
  • Tighten Your Skin with Thermage
  • Non-surgical Face Lift with Dr. Gustavo
  • Eat More and Weigh Less
• Iris Photography?
They take close-up pictures of the Iris of your eye and blow it up to a big print. What? Why? Yuck!
• Participate in the "Officers vs Guests: Axe Throwing" event. (I am not making this up. It really happened. We didn't hear who died.)
• Sample a taste of the twenty-foot-long sushi roll that we watched the cooks assemble in the Piazza
• Get-togethers
They had many get-togethers during the sea days, This is when an area was set aside for people with like interests to sit and chat. There were quite a few, including Teachers, Singles and Solo Travelers, LGBTQ+, Knitters and Knatters (I don't actually know what a Knatter is), Healthcare Workers, Creative Writers, Car-enthusiasts, Photography Lovers, Technology and AI buffs, Aviation buffs, Theater Fans, and Business people.
• etc., etc.

On some days there were more interesting occurrences...

• On Sunday, October 5th we sailed right near the Aleutian Islands. We could see them from the ship.
• Again on October 5th we were invited to the Captain's Cocktail Party which was different from the Captain's Circle Reception. This one was by invitation only, and included free drinks, free snacks and the actual Captain. The party was at 7:30. When we went down there were at least a hundred people ahead of us so we joined the end of the line. When we went in we passed the reception line and we shook hands with Captain Tony. At one point the Future Cruise Director lady gave a short talk and mentioned some interesting facts:
  • There were over 800 Platinum level members, which included us. They had over 50 days or 5 cruises on Princess.
  • There were over 900 Elite level members. They had over 150 days or 15 cruises on Princess
  • If you included the lower level members, who had sailed at least once before on Princess, there were over 2700 Captain's Circle members
  • She also mentioned the people on board who had sailed the most with Princess. The longest cruiser was a lady who had 2430 days on Princess. Yikes!
• On Tuesday, October 7th we crossed the International Date Line, so we never experienced October 8, 2025, conversely when we flew home we had two November 3rds. A tip of the hat to Phineas Fogg and Jules Verne. Later we received signed certificates stating that we had crossed the date line. We already had two others from two previous cruises, one from LA to Auckland, New Zealand and one from Sydney, Australia to LA. We also had two certificates for crossing the Equator, from the same cruises, and certificates for crossing the Arctic Circle. I guess we now have to visit Antarctica.
• On Thursday, October 9th we heard from the Captain that in the evening we would be experiencing 19 foot waves and 75 mph winds. He also mentioned that the typhoon off Tokyo was now a Super Typhoon. Wonderful! In the afternoon the rocking of the ship was such that walking was difficult. Looking out of the windows was a frightening experience.
• On Friday, October 10 we were awakened early, around 4:30 AM. What awakened us? There was loud banging and creaking from all over the stateroom. The ship was rocking and rolling and the winds were howling outside our balcony. We also discovered the entire huge ship was listing several degrees to port. We tried going back to sleep. After breakfast it calmed down a little. Later we decided to buy onboard WiFi for the remainder of the cruise. We now had Internet. Later it got rocky again. The Captain announced that the current weather would continue for at least another 24 hours. Amazingly, we never got seasick or even felt queasy or ill in any way.
• On Saturday, October 11 the weather was still not great. It was very windy - 33 mph with gusts up to 44 mph, with a wind chill factor of 14, and yet we saw people in the outdoor area near to the pool in the hot tubs, with cold wet winds whistling around their heads. Since we had finally decided to purchase internet access, we figured out how to set the time zones on our phone correctly. We had to tell the phone that we were in Magadan, Russia. That was the only place the iPhone had for that time zone.
• On Sunday, October 12 the Captain gave a talk in the theater. He mentioned some interesting things...
  • In his 36 years at sea he had never experienced seas as rough as on this cruise
  • The highest wind speed during the cruise was 110 mph
  • The largest waves encountered were 33 feet high
  • One night the ship was listing to port by 7 degrees
  In the afternoon the Captain made an announcement. He said that some of us may have noticed that the ship slowed considerably at one point. He explained that as the ship moved from colder to warmer water, the engine cooling system encountered a large quantity of mussels, which subsequently died and then their shells opened, clogging the system. Fortunately, he said, they were able to remove the clog. We avoided eating mussels at dinner.
• On Monday, October 13 we had our final Progressive Trivia quiz. Our final result was that we tied for second place among 58 teams - not bad.

Even though the nine days at sea were a bit rocky and a little boring, overall the cruise was a most pleasant way to go to Japan.