Day 19 Disembarkation/Tokyo

We arrived at Yokahama and got our suitcases to the tour bus. The bus ride to Tokyo was about an hour. Tokyo is a big modern city with a lot of tall buildings. Surprisingly, it’s not madly crowded and the traffic was also very civilized. We drove through the Ginza district with its high-end shopping and luxury hotels. Many well dressed women (saw 3 in traditional kimonos), but men were mostly wearing their work uniforms – either dark pants and a white shirt or a dark suit and a white shirt. We stopped at the imperial palace, which is located in a huge park-like setting in the middle of the city, which somewhat resembles Central Park. Then we went to visit a famous Buddhist temple, which has an adjacent shopping area. The guide told us that this shopping street is the most crowded street in Tokyo visited by 100,000 people each day. It sure was crowded. From there to Narita airport and back home. Overall, the things that impressed us most about Japan were the toilets (Japan has the best women’s toilets in the world. You can regulate the temperature of the seat, select music to play, control water temperature when you turn it into a bidet, etc). They are also spotlessly clean – everything in Japan is. Things also run on time. The famous bullet train between Osaka and Tokyo, which is now 50 years old and runs with the speed of 300 km/hr is on the average no more than 36 seconds late. Another impressive thing are their vending machines. They are everywhere. There is one vending machine for each 27 people. And they work!

Day 18 Cruising

Al played ping pong

Day 17 -- Aomori

Started the day with a tour to Hirosaki castle. Nice bus ride through countryside – a lot of rice paddies and apple orchards. The tour guide told us that this area, Aomori prefecture, produces about 50% of all fuji apples in Japan. The harvest is in October so we saw lots of big, red apples on all the apple trees. Hirosaki castle was built in the 17th century by a powerful feudal lord Tsugaru, but in the 19th century the castle was struck by lightning and only a tower, 5 gates and 3 moats remain intact. Walked around the castle grounds, which include 2,600 cherry trees. It’s a major cherry blossom viewing site in the spring. Then we went to a Nebuda festival hall to look at floats. The festival is held during the first week in August and supposedly each year 3 million tourists descend on this town (Aomori) of 300,000 to participate in the festivities. We were disappointed in the floats and in the displays. They also gave us a demonstration of very loud drumming and a great mini-concert by 3 male shamisen players. Back to the ship for lunch then into town on our own. The town is fairly unremarkable and the most striking structure is the triangular building called ASPAM. Another interesting modern building is the Nebuta House with its façade made of red iron bars, which houses the best floats from the Nebuta festival. We walked around and spent quite some time trying to find an ATM that accepts foreign cards (most ATMs in Japanese banks don’t), which we eventually found. We bought a few little things and bumped into our British table mates and our Polish friends.

Day 16 -- Hakodate

We took a shuttle to the center of town and went to the morning market. Aisles and aisles of fresh fish, crabs, and squid, which is a big specialty here. Some are alive, but also a lot of dried fish. Generally overwhelming and unbelievably expensive. (2 crabs $50, a large peach $5, a melon $30). From there we walked to the area where several huge brick warehouses from the late 1800s were converted to a shopping and restaurant zone. Then, we walked up the hill to the foot of the Hakodate mountain to an area called Motomachi, which is where a lot of old colonial buildings are located. We strolled this lovely area and visited a Russian Orthodox church, the old British consulate and some old government buildings. We then took a tram across town to the Goryokaku fort. It is an impressive pentagonal structure with a moat all around it. It was a place where the last battle of the shogunate took place in 1869 and ended the feudal period. The park around the fort has thousands of cherry trees and it’s supposed to be spectacular during the cherry blossom season. From the fort we walked to a department store where Bo bought a Japanese style bathing suit. We got back to the ship at 4 and rested until 5:30 dinner. We were scheduled to take a tour at 6:15 for the night view of Hakodate, which is considered one of top 3 night views in all of Japan. It is so spectacular because Hakodate is located on an isthmus. The English language tour was booked so we signed up for a Japanese language tour, which also happened to be $20 per person cheaper. The bus took us to the base of the “ropeway” which we would call an aerial tramway. The place was mobbed, but our tour guide somehow maneuvered her way inside and we were one of the first groups to get in. A 5 minute ride to the top of Mt Hokadate yielded a spectacular view of the city. The top was even more crowded than the bottom, but we had an hour so we finally got to all the best view points. The tour guide was great again getting us all down without a wait. She didn’t speak a word of English, and even though we did not understand a word of what she was saying, she managed to communicate the essentials.

Day 15-- Otaru

We started the day with immigration. What a pain. Before we entered Korea or Russia we had to go through Japanese immigration to remove the entry card we received when we entered Japan. Then we had to go through Korean or Russian immigration before we left the ship. And we had to do the reverse when we came back. Japan requires you to be fingerprinted and photographed before entering. We had that done 3 times. Otaru is a very pretty city We took a cable car to the peak of Mt. Tengu overlooking the city. There is a great view from there on the whole city and the surrounding mountains. There is also a ski lift there and it’s a very popular ski area in the winter. Otaru is only about 50 miles from Sapporo where the winter Olympics were held years ago. Then we went to the preserved mansion of a local herring millionaire. The old Aoyama family villa was built in 1917, at the height of Otaru’s prosperity when it was a huge center of herring fishing and coal industry. The villa was one of the most lavish home built in Japan at that time. While we were there, we saw a traditional Japanese wedding party taking pictures in the great hall. Then we walked through the town and its famous canal district till we dropped. It is Sunday so in addition to the 2000+ people from the ship there were also a lot of locals strolling and eating in the multitude of sushi and other, mostly fish, restaurants. Back to the ship for late lunch and a rest. Then out to a nearby shopping mall.

Day 14 -- Korsakov

Korsakov is a small town on the tip of the Sakhalin island (part of Russia). We had to go through Russian immigration (on the ship) then take a tender to the port. From there a bus took us to town. Quite a bit different from Japan. We had to walk to Lenin’s statue and a gift store. The town is pretty drab with communist era blocks of flats and crumbling sidewalks, but people seem well dressed, well fed and not lacking anything. We broke from the group and walked on our own. We went into several stores and finally found one that had vodka. Fortunately, they accepted Visa (most stores only accepted rubles) so we bought a small bottle and poured its contents into a plastic water bottle so we can smuggle it on board. We found a pastry shop that took a $1 bill for a pastry. We walked through several other stores, including two toy stores and were surprised how high the prices were. A container of Pantene conditioner was almost $10 and prices of toys were about the same as in the US and the assortment was similar too with most “made in China” toys. In town we met a Polish couple from California and upon return to the ship we spent 3 hours chatting with them.

Day 13 -- At Sea

Today we were cruising north along the island of Hokkaido towards Sakhalin via the Sea of Okhotsk. The most scenic part was around the Shiretoko Peninsula and the Shiretoko National Park, which is the wildest and most remote national park in Japan. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and misty and we couldn’t see very much. Other than that, Al played about 3 hours of ping pong and Bo did trivia and read. The composition of passengers on this part of the cruise has changed considerably and according to our unscientific assessment it’s about 70% oriental and 30% western, still dominated by the Australians, but maybe not as much. It also seems to be a younger crowd with a lot of young (20-30 stg) Japanese. Too bad most of them don’t speak English.