We checked out of the hotel at around eleven. There was a slight mixup about which pier in the Yokohama cruise port the ship was docked at, and we needed to tell the taxi driver where to go. The mixup got resolved quickly. A hotel staff member even escorted us down to the parking garage to our taxi. As the taxi pulled away, he bowed. I love Japan. Have I said that already?
We arrived at a very nice cruise terminal and experienced the fastest cruise check-in ever, partially because we were entitled to priority check-in, being Platinum members on the Princess Line. Once onboard we quickly learned that all the announcements onboard were in Japanese and English - all signs and menus also. We did the mandatory safety stuff and relaxed until our room was ready. For some unknown reason our room had been upgraded from a regular balcony room to a mini suite. We didn't complain.
We had a late lunch in the buffet. The buffet was smaller than on the Discovery Princess but there was a lot more seating. We explored the ship and found many more comfortable seating areas than on the newer ships.
After doing laundry we went to the nightly Captain’s Circle event for Elite and Platinum mucky-mucks. It was on the 18th floor at the Skywalker’s lounge which was a very glitzy nightclub that was only open to regular guests starting at ten PM. It was reached from the 16th floor by an escalator!
We had scrumptious little snacks - bruschetta, cheeses, pork dumplings, vegetable samosas - very tasty and very nice. Of course chopsticks were available as they were wherever there was food on this ship. After stuffing our faces, we went to the Crooners Bar to listen to a pianist. Then we had a nice dinner at the Pacific Moon dining room (one of five dining rooms on the ship!) and then went to the theater to watch Tibor Szabo, a juggler. The show was fun. The ship however was rocking. Not again!
The ship was still rocking. We had breakfast in the buffet. At 7:00 AM there were plenty of empty tables. The food selection was smaller than on the bigger ships but that was to be expected. The coffee didn’t taste as good as on the Discovery Princess.
We thought that today was going to be a “down” day when we could relax and recharge but we had no less than eight events bookmarked for the day including three talks and lessons on calligraphy and origami. Some even overlapped so we had to choose between them.
On the previous cruise we hadn’t booked any excursions because the ship only stopped in three places in Alaska which we had already been to. This cruise was all about seeing the sights of Japan so we booked excursions in every port except Nagasaki where there weren’t any excursions we were interested in.
The first talk we attended was about Akita and Fushiki, our first two ports of call. Then we attended a talk about Japan - "A culture of respect and harmony". The only new things that we learned were that there are 80,000 shrines and 77,000 temples in Japan - amazing.
Sadly, at noon the Captain came on the PA system and told us that due to high winds the visit to Akita was cancelled. We were very disappointed. Later we learned from our room steward that Akita had been cancelled on the previous cruise also.We had a tasty lunch in the buffet then we searched for and found the tiny library, which had three chairs, all occupied, so we ended up relaxing in the comfortable Wheelhouse Bar. Even though it was very close to the very noisy Grand Plaza, it was completely enclosed in dark wood walls with thick glass windows and was very quiet. The Grand Plaza turned out to be the location for almost a continuous stream of overpoweringly loud events - silly games, music, dancing, etc. all at a deafening sound level. Since several other venues were right above the Grand Plaza in the open atrium, it was often not pleasant to use them. Fortunately there were some quiet places off of the atrium.
Two more unfortunate events occurred. We tried the soft-serve ice cream from the ice cream stand near the pool. It was very good soft-serve, much better than on the Discovery Princess. Also, during breakfast I had taken a bran muffin to our stateroom to eat later. I tried it and it too was very good and better than on the Discovery Princess. "Why unfortunate?" you are probably asking - very unfortunate for my waistline.
In the early evening we went up the escalator again back to the Skywalker’s nightclub for the Captain’s Circle event for snacks and a live cellist - very nice. Sadly there was no down escalator - we had to walk.
At 6:30 we went to the Captain’s Welcome event in the Grand Plaza. Most of the passengers were there filling every nook and cranny and all the stairs. The Captain mentioned that there were 1500 people from Japan, 400 from the US, a goodly number from Australia and Canada and a smattering from other countries - 2700 in total. From the faces we had seen onboard, we suspected that a lot of the Americans and Canadians are of Asian descent. Then we went to the Crooner’s Bar to listen to a really good pianist.
We went to dinner in the buffet again, firstly because we didn’t particularly like the dining room menu choices, and secondly it was Formal Night and we didn’t want to get dressed up (we didn’t actually bother to bring dressy clothes). I had expected that on Formal Night, on a cruise mostly occupied by Japanese people, that there would be a significant number of women wearing Kimonos. To my surprise we only saw two.
As before, the food in the buffet was very good but imagine our surprise when we were entertained by a singing waiter and his guitar accompanist walking around the buffet seating areas! Then a few minutes later a group of the waiters came through in a Conga Line singing “La Bamba”. Who said cruising is boring?
After we recovered from the shock, we went to see the stage show in the theatre. It was a musical performance and the 9:15 show was completely full. Some people had to stand. Some people sat in the aisles. Luckily we had gotten there early enough to get good seats. It was singers and dancers doing music by famous stars from the past - like the '80s and 90's. I think I recognized two of the songs.
I suspect that the dancing was all faked. The dancers must have been robots. No human being could possibly have that much energy
Since this was not supposed to be a sea day, there weren't any activities that we were at all interested in. They once again had a lot of very loud and noisy things going on in the Grand Plaza, and almost everything else was some kind of poorly-disguised sales pitch, so we basically had a rest day, which we needed.
It was raining when we awoke but the sun came out a little later. Then when we got on the excursion bus it started raining again. We were going to Shirakawago, a farming village of old Gasho-style houses with steeply angled thatched roofs. Interestingly, many of these homes were still occupied. The village has a population around 1600.
On the bus we were given maps and a lengthy warning about bears. We were also warned about bears several times during the afternoon and we saw a lot of signs in the village warning us about bears. We were told that bears have become big problem in Japan, even in the residential areas.
On the way to the village the bus went through a very, very long tunnel - the Hida tunnel - which was 10.7 kilometers long and eight others, all only a few feet from each other, most being over two kilometers long. We got to the village but were unable to take any decent pictures because of the weather. It was very overcast and several times during our time there it rained. Frustratingly, the sun appeared several times, but only for a second or so each time.
The houses were interesting, but not as beautiful as the ones in the Nihon Minka-en Japan Open-air Folk House Museum, and not as well maintained.
We shared a Gohei-mochi - a pounded rice grilled cake on a stick coated in a thick soy sauce - from a tiny stand where a Japanese woman cooked each one over a small grill, after you ordered it.
The star of the stage show that evening was a famous and popular Taiwanese magician, Sunny Chen. His act was wonderful, but his sleight of hand with cards and coins was nothing less than mind-boggling - the best I had seen in a long time, and I'm a big fan of sleight of hand magic.
We awoke to a sunny, clear blue sky. Unbelievably, it actually stayed that way all day. We had an excursion to two places. First - we took a one hour bus ride to the Ichijodani - Asakura Clan Ruins. On the way we passed through thirteen tunnels this time, but they were shorter than the long ones from the day before.
The Asakura Clan Ruins are in a very beautiful area. It was an interesting place. The Asakura clan lived in the village from 1471 to 1573 when the village was burned to the ground in a war with the warlord Nobunaga. There were some old foundations and some reconstructed buildings.
Our guide told us a poem written by a famous Japanese poet about the three main feudal lords of Japan - It's about the song of the Cuckoo bird.
Oda Nobunaga said: If the cuckoo won’t sing I will kill it.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi said: If the cuckoo won’t sing I will make it.
Tokugawa Ieyasu said: if the cuckoo won’t sing I will wait until it does.
Tokugawa Ieyasu was the first to successfully unite Japan and was the first shōgun. He established the Tokugawa Shogunate which ruled a peaceful Japan for over two hundred and sixty years.
We then drove another half hour to the Eiheiji Buddhist temple - “The temple of eternal peace” - a very apt description. There are over seventy wooden buildings lovingly and superbly crafted with unequaled joinery techniques and wood carvings and ornate tiled roofs. It opened in 1244 but the oldest standing structure dates from the late 1700's. It's a training center for Buddhist Soto sect monks.
The buildings were surrounded by many towering, majestic giant redwood trees. There were little running water features scattered around, along with stone statues and the lovely stone Toro lanterns.
We had to take off our shoes at the entrance and put on slippers. We also had to carry our shoes in plastic bags. We had to climb more than two hundred wooden stair steps to the top and more than two hundred down, in stocking feet - the slippers were too dangerous, they kept sliding off so we removed them and carried them.
We spent about an hour climbing stairs, taking zillions of pictures, admiring the beauty and the peacefulness, and going back down the stairs. We then put our shoes back on and walked, somewhat unsteadily, the 300 meters back to the bus, and drove for another hour back to the ship.
In summary, between the lovely, miraculous weather and the marvelous beauty of the two sites, we had a wonderful day. The Asakura Clan Ruins were interesting, but I will state categorically if you ever have the opportunity you must visit the Eiheiji temple.
We had to get up early and skip breakfast because we had to meet in the theater for our excursion at 8:00 AM. This excursion was entitled "Highlights of Sakaiminato" and it turned out to be well named.
We started out with a forty five minute ride to The Adachi Art Museum which had small collections of Japanese paintings, lacquerware and ceramics, which did not permit photography, but it's main attraction was four very beautiful Japanese gardens - a moss garden, a white gravel and pine garden, a dry landscape garden and a pond garden. They were all very beautiful but you could only look at them from outside, not stroll into the gardens themselves.
Our next destination was the famous Mitsue Castle which was built in 1611 and is one of the twelve remaining original castles in Japan and is designated a Japanese National Treasure. We were told by our tour guide that the Matsue castle and many of the other Japanese castles were built just after the beginning of the Edo Period and the Tokugawa Shogunate, an over 250 year era of peace, and so the castles were never attacked. Also we found out that nobody ever was intended to live in the castles, they were only used as places to retreat to in time of a siege, so the interiors were very bare, while the exteriors were very ornate and beautiful.
Of course we had to climb many narrow, slippery, uneven, steep, wooden steps so this time we didn’t go all the way up. The building was extremely photogenic and so we were extreme photographers. Did I mention that it was a sunny, clear, beautiful day. You can't lose them all.
Our next destination was the Yuushien Garden. The excursion marketing description didn't even mention this place, it only said we were stopping for lunch. It was yet another wonderful Japanese surprise.
After the bus ride, we were escorted into another very beautiful old style wooden Japanese building with lovely trees and landscaping surrounding it, and discovered that it was where we were going to have lunch.
We then drove to the Shigeru Mizuki Museum and then walked along the road named for him. He was a very famous cartoonist and manga artist. He invented many very imaginative and sometime very grotesque Yokai (goblins). The road was lined with over one hundred bronze statues of his Yokai. We took way too many pictures of them. It also had a number of souvenir stores selling all kinds of merchandise related to his stories and characters.
When we got back to the cruise terminal we had to go through Japanese Immigration procedures where they checked and stamped our passports and told us we could not get back off the ship today. "Why?" you might ask. Because tomorrow we are sailing into Busan, South Korea, so officially we have left Japan.
Bye bye Japan - sniff, sniff, boo hoo!
Oh - wait - the day after next we're coming back to Nagasaki!
The day started out very overcast. First we had to go through Korean immigration and then we joined our tour bus. Busan turned out to be a very modern city with lots of very tall, very new buildings.
It was on a major street surrounded by many stores and businesses so it quickly became apparent that Korea was not as clean as Japan. We then drove a while to the Hae Dong Yong Gung Temple which was very, very crowded and was the destination for many, many tour groups. It struck me that it was really a money making operation more than a religious site. It was not very pretty and very gaudy. There were way too many ways for you to spend money - souvenir stands, restaurants, "wishing" wells, sales of fortune tokens, paying to have your name on a roof tile, etc., etc.
We had to walk 108 narrow stone steps down and some of the steps were very uneven, steep and slippery. Worse - between the crowds pushing to get down and the throngs trying to get up the narrow staircases, there was a real risk of being knocked over while on a steep staircase.
We then were bussed to the Nurimaru APEC Center - a conference center built in 2005 for an Asia Pacific Economic Conference. It was a modern circular building, looking like a flying saucer. Inside was a circular conference room and not much else. It was, in my opinion, not very impressive, and really not worth the time it took from other things we could have seen.
We then were driven to have lunch on the seventh floor of a discount department store which, since it was hosting a whole bunch of tour groups, was very crowded, noisy, and frenzied. The food was not very good nor was it traditional Korean food. The buffet line had - sushi, sashimi, tempura, french fries, and very unappetizing looking pizza. There might have been some kimchi. I learned one useful fact - don’t eat Korean sushi.
Our next destination was just a large duty-free store with high prices - a total waste of our time. Then we drove to the amazing Gukjje market. This was a better destination. It was a very large, very busy maze of narrow streets, covering several blocks with hundreds and hundreds of little stalls, shops, food carts and eateries. There were lots of ladies making and selling different kinds of kimchi. There were a great number of unrecognizable and yet somehow appetizing-looking things to eat being cooked on little grills or deep-fat-fried.
On the whole, it was a most disappointing tour except for the market at the end, which we barely saw because our guide was in a big hurry for some reason.
We had no excursion booked for today - a bit of a relief after four solid days of getting up early, walking around six miles a day and being exhausted in the late afternoon, but we had to go through Japanese immigration before ten AM so we got off the ship and went through the process and got back on the ship to have a relaxed breakfast.
We wanted to use up our remaining Yen, so we took a Nagasaki Tram packed with Japanese people to the Hamanmachi Covered Arcade. Amazingly and fortuitously, our Suica Apple Wallet cards worked like a charm on the Nagasaki Tram.
We window shopped for a while and then took the tram back to the cruise terminal. In the little souvenir market in the terminal we bought two T-Shirts just to use up some of our Yen.
Just before it was time for the ship to depart, a kid's orchestra set up on the pier next to the ship and played several pieces of music to entertain us and say goodbye. They were very good. When the ship finally pulled away they and their parents all waved goodbye - very nice.
Yet another sea day. Our activities included eating, resting, writing these words and packing.
Normally in these excruciatingly long documents I end before the usually very boring trip home, but this time I have to describe a part of it because it was noteworthy.
We had to vacate our stateroom before 8:00 so we went to our designated waiting lounge where we had to wait until 10:50 before we could get off the ship. When the time came we walked off the ship, found our luggage quickly, went through a quick customs check and got on the bus to Haneda airport, arriving about 11:00.
Once at the airport we found out that the Delta check-in counters wouldn’t be available until 1:00 so we asked if there was a place where we could sit and wait and were directed one floor up. Imagine our surprise when we found that the next floor had lots of little shops and restaurants just like Tokyo Station, all beautiful - and, unlike any airport in the US, all of this was before going through security. In every American airport, there is usually nothing before security. Then we went up another floor and found a few more shops, yet another Don Quijote store, and a very large outdoor observation deck with a view of the entire airport.
We had a few Yen left so we spent some time wandering through the many attractive little shops looking for something to buy with them. Most of the things we were really interested in were more expensive than the amount of Yen we had left, so finally I just bought an unnecessary T-shirt with Mt. Fuji on it. There was one shop that just had a large array of absolutely beautiful hand-made ceramic items - little tea cups, sake bottles and cups, etc. They were pure art. They were also hundreds of dollars, each - (sigh).
Haneda airport is probably the nicest airport we have ever been in. Another added plus was the life-size Godzilla head on the mezzanine above the departure area, peering menacingly down over everyone.
After checking in and going through passport control and security we had a long walk to the Delta Sky Club lounge. It was worth it. It was very comfortable, quiet, with an amazing panoramic view of the airport and beyond it, Tokyo. The Japanese ladies who staffed the lounge were, of course, very polite, very helpful, very well dressed, and constantly cleaning up peoples' dirty dishes.
We had some delicious Japanese food, ramen for Donnie and a noodle bowl for me, and then some other small delicacies, and later some popcorn, and for dessert, we got a clear view from the lounge window of Mt. Fuji!
I have to revise my previous statement - Haneda airport IS, without doubt, the nicest airport we have ever been in.
Not much to report here, except to say that we had another November 3rd - International Date Line - remember. We spent it traveling home.
Airports, planes, limousines, etc. We got home. I already missed Japan.
Copyright © 2025 by Jeff Kravitz