Our South Korea and Japan vacation

Oct. 8, 2024 – Oct. 25, 2024

Tuesday, October 8 (L.A.)

Rather than using WhatsApp, we set up a Discord chat with the kids (well Georgia set it up) so that we could stay in contact with them without using data.  Jonathan posted a link to a game called Squaredl.  Georgia created side chats for puzzles and for trips.  

Our plan to leave the house at 7:15pm to catch the 8pm Flyaway to be at LAX by 9 to be at the gate at 10 for our 11:50pm flight went off without a hitch.  Our travel agent hadn’t told us that we needed to make our own seat reservations, and we discovered that fairly late, so we ended up with two middle seats in the center section.  But we got lucky.  The guy to our left didn’t have a seat in front of him (apparently, he paid extra for that perk.)  This meant that Marc, who was sitting next to this guy, could get out of his seat without making him get up.  Even Jackie was able to get out without making either Marc or the guy get up. And the guy spent a lot of time out of his seat, too.

We were wondering how the meals would work, given that we basically took off at midnight and were arriving at 5am.  They served us a meal pretty much right away and Marc went to sleep right after that.  Jackie watched Oppenheimer, which she had wanted to see for a while, but hadn’t gotten around to making the time.  When that was over, she tried to sleep.  When she woke up, they had just finished serving pizza rolls, so she asked for one.  That must have been about 6 or 7 hours into the flight.  Then about 2 hours before we arrived, they served another meal.  After eating the pizza roll, Jackie napped again for a couple of hours.  Then she went looking for another movie to watch.  She and Marc both chose Wonka completely independently of each other.  Wonka is not great, but it had its moments.  After breakfast, Jackie couldn’t find another movie she wanted to watch (and it’s a long list of movies!) so she watched Law & Order.  And then we arrived.  Pretty painless, actually, if you don’t care about sleep.

Thursday, Oct 10 (Seoul, South Korea)

Between the 13-hour flight and the 16-hour time change, we completely lost Wednesday.  No matter, we would make it up on the way back.

Our flight landed about 5:15am.  We got our bags and went through customs.  We changed $50 into Korean money (won, symbol = ₩) and bought T-cards for the subway at a convenience store.  We found the subway station and put ₩10,000 on each T-card.  Marc had mapped out the subway path beforehand, so we knew where to transfer and at which stop to exit to get to our hotel.  Luckily, we happened to exit the subway station at the street exit closest to our hotel.  There was a sign that said, “Lotte Hotel 300m” and it had an arrow.  We each counted my steps so that we would have an idea when we had gone 300 meters, but at 300 meters we were at an intersection of two streets and no hotel in sight.  Fortunately, some guy saw us puzzling over what to do and offered to help.  We said we were looking for Lotte Hotel, and he said to take a left at the intersection, and it wasn’t far.  We went about a block, and didn’t see it, so we stopped.  He had been traveling the same way, so he came up to us, and said that we had to keep going.  We walked another block and spotted the hotel.  Turned out there was a shorter way to get from the hotel to the subway which we used after that. 

After all that we arrived at our hotel around 8:30am.  The desk agent offered to let us check in early for ₩50,000 (about $38).  We decided that it was worth it.  We rested for a bit before starting our planned adventures for the day which was to go to the Gwacheon National Science Museum.  We went back to the subway and got to the right place with no problem, transfer and all.  The Korean subway is pretty easy to use, because all the stops are numbered, and they have station names in English as well as Korean, and announcements in English as well as Korean too. 

When we got to the museum, we found it was next to a huge complex called Seoul Grand Park, which contains “Seoul Land”, “Theme Land,” “Wonder Park,” “Play World,” the Seoul Zoo, a Botanical Garden and more.  We didn’t do any of that.  Next time.  Admission to the science museum was ₩4000 (~$3) per person.  Koreans who travel to the US must have a bit of culture shock at the price of getting into American museums.  

 There was this very cool clock in the entry.

There were three main exhibits, Korean Science & Civilization, Advanced Science & Technology, and Natural History.  The Korean Science & Civilization exhibit was all about the technology Koreans used in medieval times, such as paper, bows and arrows, catapults, and water wheels. It had quite a bit of English on the signs.  Marc went hang gliding.

After seeing the Science & Technology exhibit, we decided to have lunch.  The food place had a long line due to all the school children visiting, so we went downstairs.  But the downstairs food place really just sold drinks.  It did have a couple of small sandwiches, which we bought, but they weren’t quite enough.  We went back upstairs and found that the line had died down.  We bought one meal and shared it.  It was a little too spicy for Jackie’s tastes. 

The signs in the Advanced Science & Technology exhibit had a lot less English, but mostly between the caliber of the exhibits and what we knew of aeronautics, it wasn’t a problem. After seeing the Chicago Field Museum last June, the Natural History exhibit was pleasantly sized.  They had a fun virtual reality piece where you were on camera, and they projected animals into the image.

There was also an exhibit about 31 Korean scientists, which definitely did not have enough English for us.  All-in-all, we enjoyed our visit.

We took the subway back to the hotel.  When we came out of the subway, we came out on the wrong side and had to scramble to find the right place to head back to our hotel.  It made us appreciate that we had been lucky to come out in the right place earlier.  Back at the hotel, we relaxed for a while and then headed out to find dinner.  A couple of blocks from the hotel, there was a street that was just one restaurant after another, mostly Korean Barbeque.  They all had huge signs near the street with pictures of their food and prices. We walked down that street, and when we saw a restaurant with people in it and reasonable prices, we went in.  It turned out not to be Korean Barbeque, and we ordered a couple of stews.  They were good, but, again, a little spicy for Jackie’s tastes.  After dinner, we just wandered around for a while – the area had a lot of neon and reminded us of Las Vegas.

Back at the hotel, Jackie brought up our Discord chat and found that Jonathan had posted the following image

Along with the puzzle: what is the area of this shape?  Jackie immediately started working on the puzzle.

Jackie discovered that she had forgotten to bring the charging cord for her Fitbit.  That was a bummer.  Marc looked into whether we could buy a charging cord in Korea, and the answer was maybe in Japan, but definitely not in Korea.   

Friday, Oct 11 (Seoul, South Korea)

After only 4-5 hours of sleep over the previous 48 hours, we had no trouble falling asleep.  Jackie woke up at 4am, but (to her surprise) she was able to fall back to sleep for a little while.  Buffet breakfast at the hotel had lots of options.  All the traditional American breakfast food, plus various Chinese and Korean dishes.  Jackie especially liked the mini chocolate muffins. 

After breakfast we set off for Gyeongbokgung Palace.  When we arrived, we paid for admission (₩3000/person, about $2.30). They had a deal where if you came in traditional costume, you got in for free, so lots of people were in traditional garb – even foreigners, because you could rent the clothes. 

We learned that there was a Changing of the Royal Palace Guard ceremony at 10am in the courtyard in front of the Palace.  There was clearly something going on outside the courtyard, which turned out to be a Guard Changing Practice Session.  We watched that, and then hung around and watched the guard changing ceremony at 10.  We were pleased that all the announcements describing the pieces of the ceremony were done in both Korean and English. 

When the ceremony ended, we went into the Palace grounds.  They had guided tours in a variety of languages starting at 11, so we relaxed for a while and then caught the English tour.  It lasted a little more than an hour.

There were several buildings. – some we only saw the outside,

others we got to see the inside. 

One was on an island.

When the guided tour was over, we were near an exit, and the Museum of Folk Art was very close.  We thought the Museum might have a restaurant where we could catch lunch, so we went into the Museum.  That turned out to be true, and we split a sandwich and a traditional Korean dessert, which was two little cake things that were good.  The Museum was free, so after lunch, we wandered through the museum.  It had an exhibit called a Year in Korean Life, which took you through the seasons and talked about major events in each season.  Another exhibit was on the Korean Life cycle and life passages.  A third exhibit was on Korean life and everyday objects. The exhibits were very well done and showed a lot of folk objects that Jackie liked very much, and she took lots of pictures. 

As we were leaving, they announced that there was going to be a performance in the area in front of the museum.  They had set up chairs, so we didn’t have to stand to watch, which was nice.  The performance started with a half-dozen people playing either drums or gongs. 

Some of them did acrobatics while they were playing.  Then they put on these hats with long tassels and played while they made the tassels whirl around.  Two guys in a “lion” costume joined the drummers.  Next, they brought out disks and rods. They spun the disks on the rods, tossed the disks in the air, and caught them again on the rods.  They “volunteered” people from the audience, got one of the disks spinning on top of a rod, handed the rod with the spinning disk on top to the audience member, and had the person toss the disk into the air.  Then they would catch the disk on another rod.  The guy sitting next to Jackie was one of the audience members called up to do this, and he handed his cell phone to Jackie and had her video him.  The whole thing was pretty amazing.

Afterwards, we talked to the guy sitting next to Jackie.  His name was Brendan, and it turned out we had both planned to go to Bokchon Village next.  We decided to walk there together.  Brendan is a radiation tech in Sidney, Australia.  Apparently work told him he had to take vacation, so he came to Seoul, and then he was going on to Japan.

Right away, we found a “village” which was a bunch of shops from about the 1970’s.  There was a food processing shop, a seamstress shop, a barbershop, a restaurant, a library, a public bath, a grocery store, school, and a couple of others.  You could go into some of the shops.  In the seamstress shop, there were clothes you could try on.  This was fun, but not the village (or droid) we were looking for. 

We continued on to Bokchon Village, and on the way, Jackie spotted an ice cream shop, so of course, we stopped in and got ice cream.  We next found an area with old style buildings that we thought was Bokchon Village.  One street had a lot of craft workshops/galleries.  The first one we went into had a unique style of embroidery.  Another had a focus on traditional knots.  

A third had an interactive craft workshop that was just ending, but we didn’t learn what they had taught.  We wandered on and found Tapgol Park.  This park was where the independence movement started in 1919. The park had a series of bas-relief panels depicting scenes from the independence movement.  The park also had a stone monument in the shape of a 10-story stone pagoda, a pavilion, the text of the Proclamation of Independence (in 4 languages), and a couple of monuments to significant people in the independence movement.

We continued on and didn’t find anything else.  It was getting late, so we decided to head back to the hotel.  Brendan found the nearest subway station for us, and we parted ways.  The subway was a little confusing because the line to which we wanted to transfer crossed the line we were on three times, but in the end, it didn’t matter, and we got back without having to retrace any steps.  The subway car was SUPER crowded – we couldn’t get close enough to a pole or strap to hold on, but we were so tightly packed that we couldn’t move - until we got to Hongil University and then half the people got off.  When we arrived at our stop, we decided to get Korean Barbeque for dinner.  We went back to the street with all the Korean Barbeque restaurants and picked one at random.  We ordered sea eel and pork neck.  We had been told that the sea eel was a little spicy, and the pork neck was not.  The servers cooked the sea eel on the table’s brazier for us first.  We found it to be chewier than we expected.  Jackie found it to be slightly spicier than she could tolerate – this seemed to be a theme with Korean food!  She was glad she had something that was not spicy coming.  When the pork showed up, it looked like a thinly sliced pork chop.  The server cut it into strips with scissors and cooked it.  It was really good.       

After dinner, we went back to the hotel, relaxed for a little while – Jackie solved the puzzle Jonathan had posed – and went to sleep.

Saturday, Oct 12 (Seoul, South Korea)

In the morning, we had breakfast, and then went back to the room to pack and hang out (Jackie played Squardle – the new anagram game Jonathan found) until it was time to leave for the ship.  The subway doesn’t go to the port, so we took an Uber taxi.  Google directed the taxi driver to go past the ferry and take a nearby road to the port.  But when we got to the road from the ferry to the port, it was blocked off.  The Uber driver went back to the ferry.  That’s not where we needed to go, but there was someone there who was able to give us directions to get us to the right place. We arrived around 12:15. We dropped off our suitcases at the bag drop, kept our backpacks, and boarded the ship.  You could check small bags at the Pub, so we left our backpacks there and went to the restaurant called Windows for lunch.  Marc had a quesadilla, which was nothing to write home about and Jackie had fish & chips, which needed a better fish-to-coating ratio.  The fries were mediocre too.  But the chocolate mousse dessert was really good.  Jackie had ice cream for dessert. After lunch we explored the ship. We were able to get into our rooms around 2, which Jackie thought was pretty good.  Our room, being an inside cabin, was pretty small, but as we had decided to spend our money on excursions rather than floor space, we were not surprised.

Looking at the ship restaurants before the cruise ship, we thought that Silk was a specialty Asian restaurant that had Chinese dishes and sushi, and that there was a sushi bar that was complimentary.  So, Jackie had planned to have sushi every night.  But we discovered that it was actually the other way around.  Silk was complementary (except for the sushi) and the Sushi bar was specialty.  Darn!  We decided to go to Silk that first night, which required reservations.  We tried to make reservations at a digital kiosk, but it didn’t work, so we went to the restaurant reservations desk and made reservations for Silk for later that day.  Our cruise package included one reservation at a specialty restaurant, so as long as we were at the reservations desk, we tried to make that reservation as well.  Unfortunately, we wanted to eat at the French restaurant, and it was already completely booked up. We wandered around and looked at the menus for the other restaurants and eventually chose the Italian restaurant as our specialty restaurant.  We made reservations for that restaurant using the NCL app on our phone.  We also went to the technology desk to figure out the wifi and NCL app situation.  Seems like we have to do that on every cruise. We took a picture of Seoul just as the ship was setting off.

At Silk, we ordered a fried calamari appetizer, hot & sour soup, lemon pepper chicken, and a dragon sushi roll. The calamari needed to be crisper, but the lemon pepper chicken was good.  The hot & sour soup was different than we expected but was still good.  The dragon sushi roll was excellent.  For dessert, Jackie had ice cream and Marc had chestnut and red bean pastries which were surprisingly good, so good, in fact, that Jackie asked them to bring her one too. 

After dinner, we guessed the weight of the artwork (not correctly, though!)  We then did pub trivia, where Marc came in second.  We watched Dave Rave, comedian and juggler.  He would have been good at a kid’s birthday party, but we found him too clownish for our tastes.  He was involving members of the audience in some of his stunts, and at one point called an 11-year-old named Elly up.  She was pretty cute.  We finished the evening with a “game show” in the Spinnaker lounge called Sing It If You Know It.  Elly was at this event too.

Sunday, Oct 13 (Jeju Island, South Korea)

Jackie went for a run first thing in the morning, and was pleased that, for the first time on a cruise, she could go all the way around the ship on the promenade deck without going past any “restricted” signs or going up and down stairs.  It took 8 ½ laps for her to do her normal 3 miles.  We had breakfast at the buffet.  We were disappointed that the buffet was basically just American breakfast food.  Not that we don’t like American breakfast food, but when we went to Panama, there was an international section that we enjoyed trying and we felt sorry for all the people from other nations on the ship.  We played Morning Trivia and Full Screen Sudoku (which is just Sudoku, with the start position projected on the big screen, so you have to write it onto the sheet) while we waited to get to Juju Island.  We grabbed the instructions for the Dollar Bill Heart Origami, but couldn’t stay, because we had to run off to get lunch before our excursion.  We went to the buffet for lunch and found that it was very crowded, probably because lots of people were trying to get lunch before their excursions. 

We arrived at Juju Island a little before noon.  Our excursion was to Sunset Peak and Seongup Folk Village.  It was an hour bus ride to get to Sunset Peak, but very worth it.  At Sunset Peak we hiked to the top - up 550 steps!  That was somewhat of a challenge, but we made it.  The weather was perfect and the view from the top was wonderful. 

We would have liked to just hang out and admire the view, but there was more excursion to see.  It was 600 steps back down, and then off to the Folk Village. The Folk Village was nice – it had signs in four languages and gave a good feel for what life was like on Jeju Island.  There were simple stone huts with thatched roofs for the “commoners” and elaborate painted wood buildings with intricate roofs for when royalty came to visit.

There were a lot of fruit trees – mostly not ripe, or all the low hanging fruit had been picked.  There was a persimmon tree in the parking lot, and Jackie asked if she could pick one.  Our tour guide said yes and warned that the fruit would be bitter.  It wasn’t bitter, but to her great surprise, it felt like all the moisture was being sucked out of her mouth.  It was the weirdest feeling. The tour guide was great.  He gave lots of history and commentary about Korea, Jeju Island, and the sites we were seeing on both the drive there and the drive back.  At the very end, Jackie asked him whether Koreans hate the Japanese (because the Japanese occupied Korea for 35 years).  He said that if you ask, people feel like they have to say yes, but actually, the Japanese have brought a lot of prosperity to Korea.  Jackie tipped him all the Korean bills we had left (since we have an opportunity to spend them), but it was only ₩2000 (~$1.50).

Back at the ship, Jackie changed into a sweater, and we went off to dinner.  On the way, we had portrait pictures taken, which would have come out nicer if our hair hadn’t been all windblown from the day.  We had dinner at the Taste restaurant.  Jackie ordered the cabernet sauvignon (even though she planned to have fish for dinner.)  Jackie and Marc both had the bluefish.  It had a thin sauce, and we thought the sauce needed more flavor, or to be thicker, or something.  Jackie had the clam chowder which had bacon and was very good, while Marc had the French onion soup which was good, but not as good as the French onion soup that he makes.  For dessert, Jackie had ice cream and Marc had chocolate mint mousse which was fantastic.  After dinner, we did Pub Trivia, which was especially challenging because the woman reading the questions was hard to understand.  We went to “Sing Along with Roddy” and found that he did all the songs at 1.5x, which was fine for some songs, but not for every song.  Nearby, there was a group with a one-year-old and he was pretty entertaining to watch.  We finished off the evening with a game show event in the Spinnaker lounge called “Speed Trivia.”  People tried to answer as many questions as they could in 2 minutes.  The questions were pretty easy, which was good because if you got one wrong, you were done.  14 players signed up to play and the top four were Elly, Elly’s mom, an adult woman, and the adult woman’s dad.

Monday, Oct 14 (At sea)

Jackie went for her morning run at 6am and was annoyed to find that the starboard side of the ship was cordoned off for deck washing.  She had gone out the day before about a half hour later, so she hoped that after half an hour it would open up, but it was more like an hour before the starboard side was open.  It was also warmer than the day before and there was a strong wind blowing.  Jackie always says that she doesn’t run because she likes it, she runs because it keeps her healthy and promotes longevity.  The day before there had been a moment when Jackie had thought, “hey I actually kind of like this.”  Not this day!  Between the wind, the temperature, and having to turn around at the bow and the stern, Jackie was not enjoying her run.  When she finished, she went back to the room and got Marc, and we walked for a couple of miles.

We had breakfast at The Local Bar & Grill.  Jackie had scrambled eggs and bacon and a fruit plate. It came with more bacon than she could eat – which is a LOT of bacon!  The fruit was also really good.  Marc had an egg sandwich.  He thought the coffee was better than at the Garden café, which surprised Jackie, because she assumed they would serve the same coffee throughout the ship.

After lunch, we did Morning Trivia, watched a Sushi Making Demonstration, and watched the Norwegian 66 Bar Demonstration.  They made a bloody Mary, and then asked what year Norwegian Cruise lines started.  Being that the title of the demonstration was Norwegian 66 Bar Demonstration, Marc answered “1966”, which was correct.  His prize was the Bloody Mary they had just made, which was ironic, as Bloody Marys are Marc and Jackie’s least favorite drink.  We both tasted it, and Marc thought it was better than he expected, and Jackie thought it was worse.

We then went to a seminar called 30,000 years of Art in 30 minutes.  Although it is really just designed to get people to come to the place where the Art Auction will be held, it was still a well-done lecture.  We stayed for the Art Auction, but we didn’t buy anything.  Over the past three days, Jackie had been watching to see if anyone was wearing a Fitbit.  If she could find someone wearing a Fitbit, maybe she could get them to charge her Fitbit.  Lo and behold, the man sitting next to her was wearing a Fitbit.  Around 1:30 the Art Auction was going on, but we were starving, so we grabbed a quick lunch at the buffet.  But we came back, because Jackie wanted to talk to the man with the Fitbit.  When we came back, the man was gone, but the woman, whom we assume was his wife, was there.  When the auction ended, Jackie maneuvered herself to be walking out at the same time and struck up a conversation with her.   It turned out that he was indeed her husband, and they were both wearing Fitbits.  She agreed to charge Jackie’s Fitbit, and said that since they had bought art, they had an appointment with the studio at 6, so we should come to the studio, and pick up Jackie’s watch then.  Jackie was very happy, but prematurely as it turned out.  The couple’s Fitbit charger did not fit Jackie’s Fitbit.  Sigh.  Jackie asked the ship guest services about buying a Fitbit charger at the next port, and was told that it was unlikely, but maybe in Osaka.

There was not much going on all afternoon long, so we just hung out until “Visual Trivia: Rock Bands” at 5pm.  We sucked at that.  Marc got four (of twenty) which was one better than he expected.  Jackie got nothing, which was exactly how well she thought she would do. The sunset was amazing!

We went to Windows for dinner because it had bananas foster for dessert (although Taste had the same menu).  We both got the Asian spareribs and spring roll appetizer which was delicious.  For entrees, Jackie got the almond encrusted fish, and Marc got the bang bang chicken and shrimp.  Both were good, but nothing special.  For dessert, Jackie got the bananas foster, of course, and Marc ordered a brownie s’more.  The brownie s’more didn’t have a graham cracker, but it was delicious, so we didn’t complain.  The bananas foster was not served flaming, but it was still very good.

After dinner, we went to Pub Trivia in Henry’s pub, where Marc did pretty well, considering that we came in late and missed the first five questions.  We went up to the Spinnaker to play Majority Rules.  That game was pretty fun.  The host asked questions like “What’s the silliest thing you’ve ever bought online.”  The various teams wrote down their answers and gave them to the host.  If your team’s answer was in the majority, your team got a point.  The last person to submit their answer had to either tell a joke, sing a song, or dance.  Nobody ever danced, but we did get some pretty funny jokes and a couple of songs.  One person sang “Kookaburra” and got the entire room involved singing the song as a round.  Elly and her parents were there, so the host made an effort to clean up some of the raunchier entries.  For example, when one team wrote down “dildo” for an answer, he read it as “Di-do with an ‘L’”.  And when another team wrote “vibrator”, he just read “v-i-b” and when it was obvious that everyone knew what the rest was, he stopped.

After Majority Rules, we went to the evening show – Blazing Boots.  It was a cowboy song and dance review and was very entertaining.  After the show, we went to bed.

Tuesday, Oct 15 (Ishigaki Island, Okinawa, Japan)

Jackie’s morning run was much nicer – no wind, and the entire promenade was open.  But it was warm.  Marc went up to deck 13 to take sunrise pictures and got some very nice shots.  We met up and walked together.  Since this was our first Japan day, everyone had to go through immigration.  Immigration was done on the ship in the Spinnaker.  Our excursion was to start at 11:45, and the excursion ticket said that deck 4 should go through immigration at 11.  However, the newsletter said that deck 4 should go through immigration at 12:30, which clearly was not going to work for us.  Going at 11 wasn’t going to work well for us either, because when would we get lunch?  We decided to go directly after breakfast, around 8:30. They had announced over the intercom to wait until your deck was called, and they hadn’t called any decks, but the Spinnaker was filled with people already, and they let us in without question. So much for following directions.  Immigration took a while, and we amused ourselves by calculating how long it was taking to process each person (a couple of minutes) and how long it would take to process everyone.  We calculated 5 hours, which was clearly wrong, because they finished in about 3 hours.

After immigration, we caught the end of Morning Trivia, did the big screen Sudoku, and did the 10-minute mystery (which wasn’t very good) before leaving to get lunch.  To our dismay, we discovered that at 11 am, there was no lunch food available anywhere on the ship.  The buffet is closed and doesn’t open for lunch until 11:30 (which wasn’t going to work for us, as we needed to be on the bus at 11:45).  The only open restaurant was The Local, and it was still serving breakfast.  Faced with those choices (lack of choices) we got breakfast. 

Our first destination was a cave on Ishigaki Island.  We’ve been to more spectacular caves, but it was still fun. 

Then on to Ishigaki Yaima Village.  It had several Shisa statues.  Shisa are lions in Okinawa, but on mainland Japan, they are dogs.  They symbolize power and leadership.  We enjoyed seeing the houses and equipment (a threshing machine, a boat) that they had on display, but Jackie’s favorite part was (of course) buffalo, the eagle and the squirrel monkeys. 

We left the village and went to Kabira Fuschi for a glass bottom boat ride.  When we arrived, one of the other passengers realized that he had left his backpack at the Village, and recovering it was a must, because his wife’s passport was in it.  It was a non-descript black bag with no identifying markings or tags, which was BIG problem, because the only way to identify it as the correct bag was to look inside for the passport, and the Japanese were not willing to do that – what if it was not his bag?  It made Jackie appreciate the wisdom of a) having id tags on all her bags, even the little bag with her knitting and b) keeping her passport in a bag so small that she never feels the need to put it down.  It took our tour guide about half an hour of yelling at the people at the Village to get them to find and identify the bag, but eventually they did, and sent someone to deliver it to the place with the glass bottom boat.  The tour guide told the guy who owned the bag, that he should give money to the person who delivered the bag, which the delivery guy would refuse, and then the guy who owned the bag should insist.  The tour guide said that that was the Japanese way.  We hope the bag guy gave the tour guide a good tip too, because it took a LOT to get that bag back.

Jackie was expecting the entire floor of the glass bottom boat to be glass, but no, it was more like a long line of windows along the center of the keel, which was fine, just not what she expected.  We saw some turtles, stingrays, sharks, and lots and lots of fish.  Plus, coral and sea anemone.  It was fun.  We took lots and lots of pictures that we will probably look back at and say, “What the heck was I taking a picture of here?”    

The tour guide told us the story of the black pearl industry.  Apparently, it almost collapsed at one point from lack of demand, but one guy kept it going, cultivating and growing the oysters that make black pearls.  Black pearls are only produced in two places, Ishigaki and Tahiti.  When we returned from our ride, there was a shop that sold these pearls, so we went off to look at them.  The pearls were quite beyond what we were interested in paying, but they had some deep blue glass earrings that were really pretty, so Jackie bought a pair for ~$25. 

There was no option to try to buy a Fitbit charger, because we got back at 4pm, and it was all hands onboard at 4:30. 

Back on board, we followed the previous night’s program – dinner at 5:45, Pub Trivia at 7, Game show at 8, show at 9, and then bed.  At dinner, Jackie ordered the Pino Grigio.  The ship had four types of red wine, and Jackie decided she was going to try each one in turn and find out which she liked best.  She found the Pino to be smoother than the Cabernet she had a few nights earlier.  This night’s game show was “Battle of the Sexes.”  They recruited 5 men for one team and 5 women for another and gave them a series of competitions. The hosts were having trouble recruiting a 5^th person for the men’s team, so Marc went up and joined the team.  In the first competition, each person had a number (1-5).  The host called out a five-digit number, and the team had to arrange themselves so that their numbers matched the number the host had called. That competition was annoying, because it was often difficult to tell which team arranged themselves first.  The next competition was a paper airplane competition.  Marc asked the host what the criteria was for winning, and he replied that the one that went the furthest won.  Marc immediately crumpled his paper into a ball.  The look on the host’s face when he did that was priceless.  They had one woman and one man throw their planes at a time, and in each case, the man’s plane won.  Marc’s crumpled paper went the furthest.  It really pissed off one of the women.  The next competition was called “the orange dance.”  Each team had to hold an orange with their chin and pass it down the line and back without touching it with their hands.  The women won that one.  Finally, each team had to pick one person that they had to dress as the opposite sex.  Jackie was wearing a sweatshirt, and Marc tried to use that, arguing that it was a being worn by a woman, but they did not allow that argument.  The men’s team did use the oranges from the previous competition when dressing up their person.  Then the dressed-up person had to do a sexy walk on the stage.  The woman’s team had dressed up their person to be an old man, and she was very funny pretending to be a really old man doing a sexy walk.   All-in-all, we did not like this game show nearly as much as either the Majority Rules game or the Speed Trivia game.  The evening show in the theater was called Kate & Vasya. It was an acrobatic act, a la Circ du Soleil, and we enjoyed it very much.

Jackie’s watch ran out of battery sometime during the evening ☹

Wednesday, Oct 16 (Naha Island, Okinawa, Japan)

We had to be in the Theater for our excursion at 7:45, so Jackie skipped her run, and we just did a short walk.  We caught breakfast in the buffet, and, knowing that we had a 5-hour excursion, picked up some peanut butter packets and boxes of cereal.  You are not supposed to take fruit or meat products off the ship, but we were told that packaged food was fine.  We had brought granola bars with us on the trip, and Jackie dropped a couple of those in her knitting bag too.  For the excursion the day before, we left the ship and met at the bus, but for today’s excursion, we met in the theater.  This was far more annoying, because every time someone new walked into the theater, the staff member would announce that we needed our passports.  We heard that announcement many, many times. 

Our first stop was Ryukyu Mura (Ryukyu is pronounced “U-Q”) Village.  This was a reconstructed village, whose buildings had come from a variety of places.  One of the first things we saw was “a piece of the life size rope.”  “Aren’t all ropes life size?” Jackie thought.  But no, Naha does a tug of war (yearly?) using a rope that is about five feet in diameter.  And a section of the rope was at the village.  It was sooo big that we didn’t realize what it was until much later. 

Many of the buildings had people dressed in traditional clothing inside.  One had a variety of weaving looms in it.  

After wandering around for a while, we went up to the theater and watched a drum and dance performance.  It was not as dramatic as the one we saw at the Folk Art Museum, but it was good, too.  It was indoors, which was good, because it was air conditioned, and it was hot and brutally humid out.  But it was bad because it was really loud.  Drum performances are best done outside. 

After the performance, Jackie spotted a sign for a buffalo, so we wandered over to say hello.

On the bus to the next stop, our guide explained that Shisa that have their mouths open are male and the ones that have their mouths closed are female.  She also passed out ginger candies that were really good.  She told us they were for energy for our next activity. 

Our next stop was Shuri Castle. This castle was built around the 14^th century and was where the King lived and was the home of the Shurijo Royal government.  It has burned down three times – in 1453, 1660, 1709 and suffered devastation naval bombardment during WWII in 1945.  Each time, it was rebuilt. It burned down again in 2019, and now they are reconstructing it again.

The path up to the Castle wasn’t as strenuous as the hike to Sunset Peak on Jeju Island, but it still gave us a good workout.  On the way up, Jackie started feeling like her blood sugar was low and was bummed that she had left her bag with the bars and cereal on the bus.  But Marc saved her because he had some of the peanut butter packets we took from the ship with him.  It only took one, and she felt much better.  They have built a huge temporary building and are doing the reconstruction inside the building so they can protect the construction from the elements.  It was interesting to see the structure half built. They had a video in multiple languages about the history of the palace.  We walked up to the highest point on the property and had a really nice view of the surroundings. 

We started feeling rain drops, so we went back to the bus before we could get caught in a downpour.  As we exited, we found that they had the original Great Dragon Pillars that stood in front of the main building for us to see. 

We were a few minutes early for the bus, so Jackie grabbed her bag, and we went to find air conditioning.  Now Marc was feeling like his blood sugar was low.  But now Jackie had her bag, so he offered him a granola bar.  He was very glad about that. 

On the bus ride back to the port, it started raining pretty good.  Fortunately, the bus was able to let us off under shelter.  Then we had to go up and around and back down again and across and around to get to the ship.  They had set up canopies between the port building and the gangway, so we just had to dodge the rain where the canopies came together, and it would drip.  They had two people with umbrellas shepherding people up the gangway, but by this time, it wasn’t raining hard.  We had lunch at The Local – Marc had a Reuben and Jackie had a “Wrangler Burger” and said to hold the jalapenos, the cheese, and the fries.  Then we went back onshore – Jackie wanted to see if she could get a charger for her Fitbit.  We had been told there was a department store.  We came across a store and went in, but it turned out to be a grocery store.  We found the ginger candies that the tour director had given us and bought a couple of packs so that we could hand them out to friends, and we also bought another type of candy that caught Marc’s eye.  We continued walking, and got to a place where we thought the department store was close, but we didn’t see anything that looked like a department store.  There was a building that said, “Innovation Lab” across the street, so we decided to see if we could get directions there.  As it turned out, when we spotted the Innovation Lab, we had been standing in front of the building that housed the department store.  We went into the department store, but they didn’t have electronics.  We wandered out and down the street and found a store that sold “mobile devices.” They had a whole display of Fitbits which included the Fitbit luxe, which is the one Jackie has.  The Fitbit luxe box said to take the box to the desk to purchase, so we did that.  The sales guy ran off for a really long time and then came back and said they didn’t have the Fitbit luxe in stock.   He showed us the ones that he did have in stock, but we had zero expectation that the charger for any of those would charge Jackie’s Fitbit.  Jackie showed the guy her Fitbit, and explained that really, they just wanted a charger, that we just wanted to charge her Fitbit.  Well, as it turned out, the sales guy owned a Fitbit luxe himself and had his personal charger with him.  He said that he would let us borrow his personal charger and sit in the store and charge Jackie’s Fitbit.  So, we did.  Well Jackie sat (fortunately, she had brought her knitting!)  Marc went for a walk and bought some Shisa souvenirs.  It takes about three hours to charge Jackie’s Fitbit – at about 80% she thought she had taxed Marc’s patience enough.  She thanked the sales guy profusely and we went on our way.  We found a park called Shisa Park with a nice sculpture in it. 

Then we found a garden called Fukushuen Garden – we didn’t pay to see it, but it had a piece of the Life-sized rope (only a few inches in diameter, not five feet in diameter) at the entrance, so Jackie took a picture. 

We walked on and found a place that seemed to have a bunch of games in it. So of course, we went in and took pictures of the games. 

After that we went back to the boat taking pictures of all the interesting stuff along the way, like a tree with huge pods on it, two huge dragon statues on either side of the road, a billboard with candidates running for election, a statue of two kids playing and a tree growing out of a rock.

For dinner, Jackie tried the Merlot and found it to be even a little smoother than the Pino Grigio.  Jackie had the Asian pork, and Marc had the herb crusted rotisserie chicken.  For dessert, Jackie had Black Forest cake and learned that she didn’t actually know what Black Forest cake is.  Had she known, she wouldn’t have ordered it.  And Marc, who knows what Black Forest cake is, said that it wasn’t even particularly good Black Forest cake.  A singular exception to what until now had been a string of really good desserts.  Marc had some custardy thing, and that was really good.

We continued with our normal routine – Pub Trivia, game show in the Spinnaker, and the show in the theater.  The Game Show was “Yes/No”.  People played individually – the host just had a conversation with the player and tried to get the player to say yes or no (or nod their head).  If the player made it for two minutes without saying yes or no, they won a prize.  Marc played and did really well until … The host asked how long he had been married.  “34 and a half years”, Marc replied.  “Happily married?” the host asked.  And with only 1 second left on the clock, Marc replied, “Yes!”  He got kisses from Jackie for that, and actually the host counted it as a win and gave him a prize.

The show was a tribute to Johnny Cash.  The singer was quite good.  Just before the penultimate song, he explained that this was going to be his last song – except that he would then walk of the stage and the audience would call for an encore, and then he would come back and do an encore, because that’s how it’s done at these things.  And then he went on to do exactly that.  It was very funny. For his encore, he did a great rendition of Ring of Fire.

Thursday, Oct 17 (at sea)

After Jackie’s run and our walk, we decided to have breakfast in a restaurant.  Service was a little slow.  In the dining rooms, they have these salt and pepper shakers where one container does both salt and pepper.  You twist the top one way for salt and the other way for pepper.  The one on our table wasn’t working.  Jackie tried the shakers on two or three other tables, and none of them worked either. Finally, a server saw her trying to find one and brought her one that worked.  Clever idea, but problematic in implementation.  We played morning trivia, and Marc had the highest score!  He tied another guy, who was speedier to hit the “buzzer” for the tie breaker, so he didn’t get a prize.  Afterwards, we decided to hang out on deck until Battle of the Cake Masters.  As we passed the pool, Jackie noticed that it was closed.  She walked up to the pool and found that there was quite the wave machine going on in the pool.  The water was sloshing forward and back, so much that Jackie, who was standing pretty much in the middle, got hit with the spray on one of the forward sloshes.  She really regretted not taking a video of it.

For Battle of the Cake Masters, the cruise director, a chef, and Dave Rave, the juggler from the first night each created a Black Forest Cake.  They started with an already cooked cake, cut it into three layers, put whipped cream and alcohol between the layers, coated the cake with whipped cream and added cherries.  They had the audience clap to choose the winner.  Then the cruise director said they were going to flip the cakes.  He took his cake in his hand, tossed it in the air, and caught it in his hands after a perfect 360-degree flip.  The chef was not expected to flip his cake, and we all expected Dave Rave to have no problem, as he is a juggler.  He took his cake in his hands, tossed it up, it flipped, and came down on his hands.  But it only flipped 180 degrees, so it made somewhat of a mess.

We went back on deck for a while and then we got lunch.  The only thing of interest in the afternoon was 2pm trivia, so we did that and then went back to the deck and hung out. Jackie actually read her book!  Her laptop ran out of power, so she was forced to leave journalling, and do something else.  We dressed nicely for dinner and went to the specialty dining restaurant called Onda, which is the Italian restaurant. We tried to get pictures beforehand, but the cameo picture takers didn’t start until 6, and our dinner reservations were at 5:30. At dinner, Jackie ordered the last of the four red wines, the Shiraz, and found it to be very similar to Merlot.  Jackie asked about Moscato, which she had not seen on the menu. Moscato is a favorite among her friends – so much so that on a previous cruise, her friends drank all the Moscato that was on the ship! She was told they didn’t have it by the glass, only by the bottle for purchase.  Well!  Good thing her friends weren’t on this cruise!  We told our servers that we didn’t want bread, but they brought it anyway, which was good, because the bread was a cut above the bread in the complementary restaurants.  Jackie ordered the beef carpaccio (because it came with asparagus tips) and creamy polenta (mushroom) appetizers, and Marc ordered the yellowtail crudo appetizer.  All were good, but the beef carpaccio was especially good.  For the main course, Jackie ordered salmon, and Marc ordered the veal Milanese, and for dessert, Jackie got the butterscotch budino and Marc got the cheesecake.  It was a very satisfying dinner.

After dinner, we had our photographs taken (since we were dressed nicely.)  That night, the game in the spinnaker was “Bandaoke” - Karaoke with a live band, so we skipped it.  The art people were doing a mini-auction with many pieces under $500, so we went to that instead.  The art people do these “mystery auctions” where they put up several pieces facing away from the audience, name a price, and if you put up your bid card, you can buy any of the pieces for that price.  Once they have recorded who has put up their bid cards, they turn the art around, and you see what you have “bid” on.  You are not committed to buying anything.  The first time they did that, the price was $210, but Marc didn’t put up our bid card.  Then, as it turned out, we liked the pieces and might have actually bought one of them. After that, he put up his bid card for each of the mystery auctions, but they never put up any pieces we liked enough to buy.  We did win one of the raffles, which gave us a set of 10x13 prints, some of which were not completely atrocious.  The night’s show was Broadway in concert and was a medley of Broadway songs - they did four songs from Les Mis and Defying Gravity from Wicked that we especially enjoyed.

Friday, Oct 18 (Hiroshima, Japan)

At Hiroshima, we passed on the war memorial excursions, and instead went to Miyajima Island.  Miyajima has several shrines, one of which has a “gate” that is built so that when the tide is high, it is in the water.  They said, “it appears to be floating in the water.” The “appears to be floating” part is somewhat dubious, but it was definitely in the water.  We took a bus to a ferry terminal and then a ferry to the island.  We were warned that the deer on the island would eat our maps, and we should keep paper hidden.  When we arrived, the tour guide told us that we could stay with her, or we could just meet back at the ferry at 1:15.  She wrote “1:15” in big letters on a piece of paper so there could be no mistake.  We got separated from the group pretty quickly because Jackie kept stopping to take pictures.  We wondered about the meet up time, because a) it meant the tour would be more than the 4 ¾ hours we had expected – we had expected to get back before lunch and hadn’t brought any food and b) “all aboard” time was 2:30 that day, and if we met back at 1:15, we should be able to make it, but it would be very tight.  But we were already separated from the group at that point and couldn’t ask.  Separating from the group was a small problem when we got to the shrine, as we then had to pay for entrance ourselves.  We didn’t realize that we had to stay with the group to get in for free.  But it was only a few hundred yen, and we had cash, so no problem.  We went through the shrine and took pictures of the “gate”. There’s no wall, so it’s kind of weird to call it a gate. 

Officials started to shoo people away from the water, and then out of the shrine area.  Turns out that high tide was particularly high, and they expected some of the walkways to be under water soon, so they wanted everyone on higher ground.  The shrine was closed for about an hour, but it wasn’t a problem for us because we were on our way out when they closed it.  We wandered on and found a folk museum. We paid for entrance to that.  We took lots of pictures, not noticing the “no pictures” signs, until someone told us to stop. 

Further on, we found an aquarium, but did not pay for admission to that.  We would have gone into the aquarium store, but you had to buy admission to go into the store – we thought that was dumb.  It did have a nice sculpture of a woman swimming with dolphins.  Outside the aquarium, we saw a deer eating a map, very much validating our tour guide’s words!

We wandered some more, found more shrines, and finally decided to head back.  We found a place that was selling meat on a stick and decided to get some.  We could have gotten octopus, but we stuck with pork and beef.  It was only ¥600/skewer (~$4.25), and it was quite delicious.  They also had chocolate covered bananas for ¥400, so we got one of those and shared.  We decided to head back to the ferry and got there about 12:30. We were just hanging out and we spotted the tour guide’s assistant.  He recognized us and explained to us that the tour guide had indeed made a mistake with the meet up time.  She should have told us 11:15, not 1:15. The bus had already gone back with most of the tour group.  We wondered about how the majority of the group knew to meet back at 11:15 and speculated that they had stayed with the tour guide the whole time.  There were eight others, who like us, were still on the island.  The assistant collected up the ten of us, we took the ferry back, and he put us in three taxis to get back to the ship.  We knew it would be tight to make it back before “all on board”, but we weren’t worried about it, because if a ship-booked excursion is late getting back, they will hold the ship.  We actually walked onto the ship a whole 6 minutes before “all on board” time.  Plenty of time to spare! 

Sunset was really nice again this night.

Later that night, we sat with the couple with the Fitbits at Pub Trivia.  They had been on the same excursion, but a different bus, so we told them our excursion story, and also the story of how we got Jackie’s Fitbit charged.  Coincidentally, at that night’s game show, we spotted the other woman with the Fitbit, so we told her the story of how we got Jackie’s Fitbit charged.  The game show that night was “Last Man Standing”.  They got a bunch of audience members to come up and asked them questions that had only two answers.  Each person chose which answer they thought was right, and the ones that were wrong had to sit down.  They kept answering questions until there was only one person left.  Marc played multiple times and after five or so tries, managed to win.  Humorously, the last question in the game he won was “What was the price of the most expensive dress ever sold?”  The options were $17.7M or $17.8M. That meant the who won was really just random chance.  Marc picked $17.7 and he was right.  The show in the theater that night was a magician. He did a bunch of classic magic tricks.  The rope trick.  The linking rings. Putting spikes into a woman in a box.  Putting a woman into a box and putting steel plates into the box to divide it up.  Turning scarves into solid objects and vice versa. All classic magic, but he did everything really, really well and with great style.  It was a very entertaining show.

Saturday, Oct 19 (Osaka, Japan)

Our excursion wasn’t until 11:45, so we did our morning routine (jog, walk, breakfast, morning trivia, and full screen sudoku - Jackie came in third this day.)  The Garden Café was not supposed to open for lunch until 11:30, so we went there at 11:20, to be the first people in the door, grab something we could eat in the theater, and go meet our excursion.  But when we got to the buffet, it was open, so we had plenty of time and ate there.  The first stop on our excursion was Osaka Castle.  It was raining when we got there, but we had brought umbrellas.  Jackie learned that the umbrella that she had bought recently at Nordstrom’s didn’t stay fully opened.  That was annoying.  No wonder it was on sale when she bought it.  Inside the castle, we weren’t allowed to take pictures on the third and fourth floors, so most of our pictures are from the balcony looking out. 

On the grounds, there was a time capsule they created in 1970.  It has two parts.  One part was opened in 2000 and will be opened every hundred years after that.  The other won’t be opened for 5000 years.  Assuming mankind is still around then.  There was also a shrine. One of the interesting things near the shrine was a rack about 3 feet wide and 5 feet tall.  The rack had hundreds of wood postcards with messages on them hanging on it.  The postcards were in multiple different languages - one of the postcards was in Hebrew.  Some of the messages were personal like, “I wish to get pregnant and have a healthy baby.” Others were more general like, “A wish for good health and happiness.” The rain had died to almost nothing, so the shrine and time capsule being outdoors wasn’t a problem. 

Then back to the bus and on to the Namba District.  We saw a palace with a five-story pagoda in the center of the courtyard.  Jackie went inside the pagoda and climbed to the top.  There were lots of statues lining the walls of the stairwell.  At the top there was a pillar in the center with a small glass enclosed gold statue of a building and a band going around the pillar.  People had put money in the band.  It was interesting. After looking at the other buildings on the complex, we went back to the ship. 

We got back around 4pm and decided to go out and see the sites of Osaka.  The ship was docking overnight in Osaka, so we didn’t have a deadline for being back on board.  We were told that if we wanted a good dinner in town, the place to go was Dotonburi.  We got directions for using the metro to get there (take the Green line to the Red line) and decided to do that (which cost ¥290 each) rather than a taxi (which cost ¥5000) and set off.  We didn’t have any trouble with the metro at all and found Dotonburi without any problem.  The metro had a diaper vending machine in it – you don’t see that in the states! 

Dotonburi is a hoot.  It reminded us of Vegas, with all the lights and electronic billboards, and showy stuff – like a store with a huge three-dimensional octopus on its sign or the one with the bowl of ramen with the chopsticks moving up and down.  There was also a huge Pride poster.  We had a lot of trouble deciding where to eat, but finally settled on a place.  They wanted us to order using a QR code, which was problematic because a) we didn’t have data, b) we couldn’t get the wi-fi to work, and c) the staff didn’t speak English.  But there were plastic menus, and we were able to get a wait staff to order for us on her phone.  The food was delicious.  For the first time in her life, Jackie took pictures of the food we ordered.  Unfortunately, one of the things we ordered was a sushi sampler, which didn’t list the items we got.  “Unfortunately,” because one of the items was really good, and we don’t know what it was!  It might have been sea bream.  We will have to order sea bream and find out.  After dinner we just wandered down the street.  We found a street that was covered and stuck to that one, so that we didn’t have to have our umbrellas up.  One of the first stores we saw sold bugs (live bugs.)  Mostly rhinoceros beetles, and a few other types too. There was a store that attracted Jackie’s attention because of the rabbit statues in the front.  It turned out it was a F**king Rabbits store, and most of its merchandise ranged from risqué to downright offensive.  We didn’t buy anything.  We also found a phone booth (what’s a phone booth!)

When we got tired of walking, we came back to the dock, and enjoyed the Lego giraffe, the little mermaid statue, the old-style sailing ship, the huge merry-go-round, and the sculptures in front of the aquarium.  

Then back on the ship and off to bed.

Sunday, Oct 20 (Osaka/Kyoto, Japan)

Jackie’s watch never switched to Japan time, so she had just been adding 4 hours to whatever time it said to get the time (and switch am to pm or vice versa.) Our excursion was at 8:15, which meant that we didn’t have enough time for a run, a walk, and breakfast.  Jackie decided she was going to skip her run, and we set an alarm for 6am.  But she woke up before sunrise, added 4 hours to her watch, and got 5:15. “Well,” she thought, “I could go for my run, and be back by 6am to walk with Marc. Why don’t I do that.”  So she did.  She found that, before 6am, there is nobody on the promenade.  It was really nice.  The weather was a lot cooler too.  Also nice.  She returned to the room a couple of minutes after the hour and was surprised that Marc was still asleep.  Didn’t his alarm go off at 6am?  She touched his phone and discovered that it was not a few minutes after 6, it was a few minutes after 4. Damn.  No wonder there was no one on the promenade.  Her watch must have said 11:15, and she read it as 1:15.  Well, what to do now?  She didn’t want to crawl back to bed all sweaty (and besides, she was wide awake.)  She didn’t want to take a shower before walking with Marc. So she just decided to get caught up on her journalling.  Marc woke up at 6, and said, “Couldn’t sleep?”  “It’s a story,” Jackie responded.

We went for our walk and had breakfast.  At breakfast, a trio of servers was walking around with coffee and pastries.  When someone accepted coffee and/or pastries from them they would sing a song which was a parody of “Dancing Queen.”  It was pretty funny.  After breakfast, we hung out for a little before our excursion, which was to Kyoto. It was only about an hour drive to Kyoto, which surprised us – we thought it would be further. 

First, we went to Sanjusangen-do Temple.  This Temple has a huge statue of the Buddist deity Kannon seated, 1000 statues of the god standing, 28 statues of guardian deities, a statue of the thunder god, and one of the wind god.  Kannon has 40 arms and 11 extra faces.  Kannon is a pretty interesting looking god.  Unfortunately, picture taking was not allowed in the building, which Jackie believes is because if everyone stopped to take pictures of all the statues, it would slow down traffic too much.  We had to take off our shoes to go into the Temple.  After seeing all the statues, we wandered around the grounds, and saw a bell inside a pagoda, which was nice.

Next, we went to Kinkakuji Temple.  We did not go into this Temple, but just walked around the grounds.  It was a spectacular golden Temple with a golden phoenix on the roof.  This Temple was above a pond that had an egret in it. 

The grounds were really nice – very green and relaxing.  We came up a set of rocks with a cup and lots and lots of coins laying around.

There were lots of little shops with people selling stuff, both food and items.  In one shop there was a statue of a bird about 8” x 6” x 4”.  It spoke to Jackie, so we bought it. It’s meant as an incense holder, but we will probably just use it as a statue and a remembrance of Japan.  It came with a little wooden plaque with Japanese characters. When we got back to the bus, we asked the tour guide what it said.  “Kiji” she responded.  “What is Kiji? We asked.  “It’s the name of the bird,” she replied. She had to look up the English word for it – as it turned out, kiji means pheasant.  But for us, the bird will always be named Kiji. 

Next, the tour took us to a restaurant for lunch.  They served bento boxes with a dozen different items inside, plus miso soup and sticky rice. And we had our choice of drinks.  Marc got sake; Jackie got Kirin beer.  It was quite good.  Afterwards, Marc went into the gift shop and found these chocolate balls that were packaged to look like Japanese women.  They were super cute, so we bought some.  Jackie didn’t go into the shop (because she was still nursing her beer) and struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler who was also nursing a beer.  Turns out he was from Poland (but currently living in Chicago.) 

After lunch, we went to Nijo-jo castle.  This castle was used by both the emperor and the shogun (not at the same time.)  We asked what the difference between an emperor and a shogun was, because sometimes Japan had both at the same time.  The tour guide said that the emperor is the leader of the country, but the shogun runs the country.  She said that in her family, her husband was the emperor, but she was the shogun.  We also asked about the difference between a palace and a castle.  A palace is a house for a leader and a castle is a fortress.  Nijo-jo castle had a palace in it called Ninomaru-goten Palace.  The rooms of the palace had huge murals on the walls with tigers or trees or birds.  No photographs allowed there either, which was too bad, because the tiger murals were pretty nice.  Interesting that they chose tigers, since there aren’t any tigers in Japan (except in zoos, maybe.)  We were told they were supposed to impress visitors with how fierce and powerful the emperor or shogun was.  Like what is painted on the walls means anything. After the palace we wandered the grounds for a while and then went into the gift shop.  Jackie picked up a book talking about the castle and sat down at a table.  Nearby there were several Israelis trying to figure out what to do for dinner, and Jackie had a good time eavesdropping on their conversation and trying to figure out what they were saying.  Then back to the ship.

We hadn’t eaten dinner in the buffet, and Jackie wanted to see what they had to offer.  It looked good, so we ate there.  After Pub Trivia, the night’s game show was “Crowd Trivia”.  In this game, everyone playing got a buzzer (from “Affordable Buzzers.”)  They put a question on the screen. Each question had four possible answers. They would show the first answer, and if you thought that answer was right, you pressed your buzzer.  If that was the right answer you received points based on how quickly you pressed the button.  If it was the wrong answer, you were blocked from choosing any other answer.  Marc played and was doing really well.  His triumph was the question, “On what holiday are the most collect phone calls made?” He was the only person who knew that “Father’s Day” was the correct answer.  But on one question he pressed the button too early and got zero points.  If he had gotten points for that one, he would have come in second.

The evening show was the clown that we didn’t like, so we passed on that.  Jackie journalled and Marc read his book. 

Monday, Oct 21 (Nagoya, Japan)

We hadn’t scheduled an excursion for this day, so after Jackie’s run, our walk, and breakfast, we headed out into the city.  We took the free shuttle to the local subway, and then we transferred to the city subway.  We had more trouble figuring out where to go and what to do this time – the signage for the city subway line we wanted was not great, but we got there.  Our planned destination was the Nagoya City Science Museum, Nagoya City Art Museum, and Shirakawa Park (which are all very close to each other.)    But when we arrived, we discovered that both museums are closed on Mondays.  Well, that was annoying!  There was an Electricity Museum not too far away, but that was closed too.  At least Shirakawa park had a bunch of interesting sculptures and a sundial. We decided to go to Oasis21 – the guide said it was a “three-dimensional park symbolized by Spaceship-Aqua, its huge water filled glass roof.” Our route there took us down a parkway with more  really nice sculptures. 

Oasis21 was a big courtyard (with a free-standing water filled glass roof) surrounded by stores.  When we arrived, we found that they were just about to start an ice sculpture contest.  There were two groups of participants, one with about 15 people and the other had about seven.  We wandered the stores and then ate lunch at a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant. After lunch, the larger group was just finishing up, so we stayed hoping they would announce a winner, but they didn’t.  Then the other group finished.  We don’t know that the difference between the groups was.  All of the sculptures were amazing – people created a sculpture out of a block of ice with saws and chisels in just an hour or two - but some were even more amazing than others.  We might not have got to see the museums as we planned, but the ice sculpture competition was very cool (pun intended!)

We decided to walk to the city subway, and along the path we found all sorts of fun stuff, like a store called “Your, Gurt & Granola”, a park with a stream and a pond (and more statues), and a hotel called “Lamp Light Books Hotel”.  We found a street with a sign that said “Yangibashi Central Market Nishiki Shopping Street Limited” Yangibashi might have been Ryubashi – Marc’s translator gave us both at different times.  We went down that street but found that almost everything was closed – Monday is apparently not the best day to romp around a Japanese city!  Oh well, we did get to see the ice sculpture contest.

Back at the ship, we did Dog Breed Trivia and did better than we expected (we came in second).  At dinner, Jackie realized that there was one more red wine, a Malbec, and tried it, and did not like it, so she switched to the Riesling, and liked that much better. After Pub Trivia, we wandered through the Park West Gallery.  We looked at the artwork by the artist whose artwork had been in the “mystery auction” that we didn’t bid on (Andrew Bone.) We decided that we wouldn’t have bought any of the pieces that were in the mystery auction, even if we had participated in the mystery auction.  But then we found another piece by this artist that we did like.  We asked the price - $235 (unframed) plus $35 shipping.  “Can we get the $210 price that the other prints were going for?”  “No, but I might be able to get you a discount on the shipping?”

We ran off to go to the game show – That night’s game show was called “The Perfect Couple.” They recruited three couples (with some arm twisting!) As it turned out, two couples were on their honeymoons (although both had been in a relationship for about 8 years.)  The couples had to do four events.  In the first one the woman had to take a lemon, put it into the husband’s pants leg opening, manipulate it up the leg, and down the other leg and out. Two of the husbands were wearing shorts, so their wives had to make the lemon go up one leg and down the other four times, but still it was much easier when the guy was wearing shorts.  After two couples had gone, the host said that they had run out of lemons, so the third couple would have to use a different fruit.  And they brought out a very large pineapple.  Clearly, they were joking, but the wife made it even funnier by acting as if she thought she would actually need to use the pineapple.  After a bit, she tore off the top of the pineapple and shoved it up her husband’s shorts.  The host was aghast, and explained that they were joking, and brought her a lemon to use.  For the second event, the husband was given a toilet paper roll wrapped in duct tape and the wife was given a long pole and blind folded.  She had to put the pole between her legs and get the end into the toilet paper, with the husband giving directions (since the wife was blindfolded.)  The couple with the husband that didn’t know right from left was pretty humorous.  In the third event, the couples had to pop three balloons, first by squishing the balloon between their bellies, a second by putting the balloon on the husband’s lap and having the wife sit on it, and a third by having the husband bend over and having the wife squish the balloon against his butt.  After three events, each couple had won one of the events.  For the last event, the couple had to stand back-to-back, place an apple between them, and then maneuver the apple to their mouths without using their hands.  The whole thing was a hoot.

On the way to the evening show, we stopped back at Park West, and the woman who was helping us said she had gotten us a $20 discount on shipping.  Which meant the total price was only $5 more than the “mystery auction” pieces.  We said we would come back the next day to buy it and ran off to see the evening show.

That night’s evening show was called The Elements, and it featured most of the entertainers from the cruise – the singers, the dancers, the magician, and the acrobats.  It was really, really well done – probably the best show we have ever seen on a cruise ship.  It got a (well deserved) standing ovation.  After that, the singers did one last number which was all about how Norwegian is your family.  Then they brought all the crew up on stage, and the cruise director thanked them for their service. 

Tuesday, Oct 22 (Shizuoka, Japan)

Our last full cruise day started as usual with run, walk, and breakfast.  On the way to the theater for our excursion, we went out on the promenade and found that the clouds at the top of Mount Fuji had cleared, and we could see the top (not that there weren’t clouds partway up, but the top was visible.) 

Our excursion first went to Miho Beach, which had views of Mount Fuji, but not as good as we had seen from the ship! This beach was (of course) a black sand beach. A couple of people were making rock towers on the Beach.

You get to Miho Beach by walking through a pine grove with several monuments in it.  One was called the Hagoromo Monument, which was a monument to the French dancer Helene Giuglaris.  She was not Japanese, but she performed the legendary “Hagoromo” noh play in Paris in the 40s.  Close by, a couple of guys were going up into one of the pine trees using a rope contraption.  He went up, cut a small branch from the top and came down.  Were they collecting pinecones from the top of the tree?  Practicing going up and down using the rope contraption?  We have no idea. 

We also saw the “Hagoromo Pine.” The Shinto spirits that come to land from the sea are said to use this pine tree as their landmark. The current tree is the third iteration and is estimated to be 300 years old. When we left the pine grove, there was a store selling ice cream.  One of the flavors was listed as “White bait”.  Jackie asked the tour guide about this, and she said it was “baby sardines.” We didn’t try it.

After this, we walked to a Shinto Shrine.  It also had one of the racks with wood postcards – one of which had a bunny family on it.  It also had a well, and the tour guide explained the ritual way to wash your hands with the water from the well. She also explained the proper way to pray at a Shinto Shrine.  We saw two women with a gaggle of preschoolers between them.  Each woman had one end of a rope, with plastic pieces attached at intervals along the rope.  Each preschooler was holding onto one of the plastic pieces.  It was really cute. 

Back at the bus, we discovered we were missing seven people.  They weren’t at the Shrine, so the bus went back to Miho beach, and we found the missing people there, much to our tour guide’s relief.  On the bus, she explained to us that Shinto Shrines have a Torii gate, and Buddist Temples have five story pagodas.  Next stop was the Shizuka City Tokaido Hiroshige Museum of Art.  Here we got to experience a Japanese tea ceremony, where they served us these little gummy cubes and mini cookies (that were really good) before they served the tea. 

We then went into the museum, which had the 53 stations of the Tokaido.  These are wood prints (53 of them) that depict the scenery of the Tokaido. We couldn’t take pictures of the 53 stations, but here is one of the stations from Wikipedia.

Back on the ship, we played “Where in the world is this?” trivia and got some ideas for future trips.  For our last night, we decided to go back to the Japanese restaurant for dinner, and decided it wasn’t any better than the first night.  The show that night was the vocalist who had done the Johnny Cash songs, but we skipped it in favor of Pub Trivia. Marc had the highest score that night – him and two others.  If only he had listened to Jackie’s answer for “What is the official flower of the Kentucky Derby?” he would have won outright!  The game show that night was called “Versus”.  They recruited audience members and formed them (randomly) into two teams.  Unfortunately, one of the teams ended up with all the best game show players on the cruise.  The other team was doomed from the start.  Fortunately, Marc was on the good team.  They mostly recycled games from previous game shows, like the one where the team had to put the numbers in order, and the Yes/No game. 

After the game show, we went over to Park West, to buy the print we liked. 

We were told we couldn’t have the $20 discount on shipping that we had been promised.  “No discounts on shipping!”  But we stuck to our guns, and they decided to give us the same $20 discount on the print (which is better for us, because we had to pay tax on the print, but not on the shipping.)  Then they automatically tacked on a charge for the appraisal, which we made them take off.  We’re not sure why you would have a $200 piece of art appraised if you have no plans to sell it ever. 

Then back to the room to pack.

Wednesday, Oct 23 (Tokyo, Japan)

We skipped our morning run and walk, and just had breakfast.  The ship arrived at port around 8am.  To disembark, Tokyo has these contraptions that look like jetways and could go up and down, so we disembarked from level 7 rather than from level 4 like in every other port.  We had fun watching them maneuver the “jetways”.  Once we disembarked, we caught a taxi to our hotel.  It was too early to check in, so we just had them hold our bags and went off to explore the city.  There was a science museum, so we decided to check that out.  When we got there, it was closed!  We were not having much luck with science museums!  So, we went to the nearby National Museum of Modern Art.  That had a lot of cool stuff in it.  They had an exhibit on Akutagawa Saori’s art, which was notable because she was one of only a few women Japanese artists in the 1950s.  But we didn’t really like her stuff.  After this museum, we caught lunch at a local restaurant.  When we came out, it was raining.  Unfortunately, we hadn’t brought umbrellas with us.  We had planned to go to the Imperial palace, but without umbrellas, we decided to go back to the hotel instead.  On the way back, Jackie spotted something that looked like a hummingbird dining on flowers on a bush in front of a store.  She tried to take pictures, but it was moving too fast. Later, we found out that Japan does not have any hummingbirds, and that it was a hummingbird moth.  Her picture is on the left, and a picture from the internet is on the right.

When we arrived at the hotel, it was still too early to check in, but only by about a half hour, so we just hung out.  After we checked in, dried off, and changed clothes, we grabbed our umbrellas and headed out again.  Of course, now that we had umbrellas, it had stopped raining.  We had found there was a museum called the National Museum of Mathematics and headed out to that.  We had a little trouble locating the entrance and arrived only 45 minutes before closing.  The museum was wonderful!  We were not allowed to take pictures, so we bought the book they had for sale that described many of their exhibits.  We just wandered around Tokyo until we got hungry.  Jackie wanted sushi (like usual) so we asked the hotel for a recommendation. We weren’t able to find the place they recommended, so we went to a nearby place.  They had sushi on the menu, so Jackie was happy.  But they were out of that dish, so she was sad.  But she found a sashimi dish, so then she was happy.  After dinner, we walked around Tokyo some more, and then went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Thursday, Oct 24 (Tokyo, Japan)

We had booked a Mt. Fuji excursion.  Figuring out from where it was leaving and how to get there was a bit of an adventure, but we got it done.  Unfortunately, we had to leave at 6:30 to get to the rendezvous point, and breakfast at the hotel started at 6:30, so all we could do was grab a pastry on our way out.  Fortunately, we had hardboiled eggs and boxes of breakfast cereal that we had appropriated from the cruise.  We took the subway to the excursion bus.  The first stop on this excursion was Mt. Fuji.  The excursion took us to the highest point on Mt. Fuji that supports vehicle traffic.  This point is called the “5^th Station.”  Because of the rain the day before, there were lots of scattered clouds, and the views were wonderful.  There is a Shinto Shrine at the 5^th station, and we walked over to see it.

Next stop was at a “Ninja school” for lunch.  School wasn’t in session, so we didn’t see any Ninjas.  They served us a buffet with lots of yummy options.  The grounds around the restaurant had a stream with a bridge, obstacle courses, a tree house, and other “ninja training” facilities. 

We got back on the bus and went to the Hakone Ropeway, which was a cable car that we took up the mountain.  From the top we could see steam coming out of the ground in several spots – a reminder that there is volcanic activity going on below the surface in Japan.  Jackie found a pretty green bug.  As she was admiring it, a passerby warned her not to touch it because it could release a very strong odor. There was a big black egg statue there, which we later learned was because they cook eggs in the hot sulfur spring, and it turns them black.

Next stop was a lake, where we took a boat trip.  There was a “floating” Torii gate here too. 

Our last adventure on this excursion was to take the bullet train back to Tokyo.  So, on this excursion, we got to experience four different modes of transportation – bus, cable car, boat, train (plus the subway to get there).  Our guide was excellent – very funny and easy to understand.

Once back near the hotel, we found a place to have dinner.  When we went to pay, we discovered that we could not use a credit card, and we did not have enough cash!  So Jackie stayed at the restaurant and Marc went back to the hotel and exchanged some cash.  We got hosed on the exchange rate, but we didn’t exchange much, so it wasn’t that much money.  Then we just walked around Tokyo.  We planned on taking the subway to the airport, and we spent some time figuring out that we would need cash to buy our subway tickets, locating an elevator (since we would have all our bags with us), and generally figuring out things ahead of the next day’s trip.

Friday, Oct 25 (Tokyo, Japan)

We went out early trying to find a place to exchange more cash where we could get a better rate, but never found a place.  We went to the science museum that was closed Wednesday, and this day it was open.  When we bought tickets, they warned us that there were very few explanations in English. But that worked well, because we only had a couple of hours, and if we had spent a lot of time reading explanations, we would have missed most of the museum.  The museum had lots of fun stuff – highlights included a machine that simulated an earthquake, a piano that you could play by stepping on the keys, a cellophane disc that changed colors as you turned a polarized filter (we have art that does the same thing!), cool exhibits on electricity, and some amazingly intricate mathematical shapes. We were sad to have to run off to get to the airport.

On the way back to the hotel to get our bags, we stopped at a convenience store and bought boxed sushi. We got our bags and headed to the subway.  We found the elevator, bought tickets, and found the line we wanted without trouble.  Hurray for researching everything beforehand.  We got to Nihombashi station, the transfer point for the subway to the airport, about a half hour before the train we wanted was due to arrive.  We knew that not every train on that line went to the airport and that we wanted the 1:34 train.  We also knew that it would say on the outside of the train that it was going to the airport.  With a half hour to wait, Jackie settled on into a chair and started to knit.  But then, at 1:19, a train pulled in that said, “Narita Airport.”  Wait, what?  We thought the trains always ran at exactly their scheduled time!  Jackie quickly stuffed her knitting back into the bag, grabbed her two suitcases and followed Marc onto the train.  Once we got past the point where only some of the trains continued to the airport, we figured it out.  The 1:34 train was an express and didn’t stop at every station.  The train we were on would stop at every station and would actually get to the airport after the 1:34 train, even though it left before.  But no matter, we had plenty of time.

Famous last words.  When we arrived at the airport (the end of the line) Jackie got up, looked around, and said, “Where’s my backpack?”  In her rush to put her knitting away and get on the train, she had left it in the station.  What to do?  We went to talk to a station agent.  “Can someone at the Nihombashi station just put the backpack on the next train?”  “Absolutely not.  You will have to go back to the station yourself if you want to retrieve your backpack.”  At this point it was three hours before our 6:40pm flight, but it was an hour back to Nihombashi station.  The station agent called Nihombashi station and verified that Jackie’s backpack was there, and also that there was an (express) train going back to Nihombashi station leaving in 10 minutes.  But once back at the station, the next train back to the airport didn’t leave until 6:10, too late to make the flight.  But she could take a taxi from Nihombashi station to the airport.  We decided that Jackie would take the train back to Nihombashi station, retrieve her backpack, and then take a taxi to the airport.  Marc would take the bags to the airport and try to check them.  Next problem: Jackie needed a ticket back, and they don’t take credit cards.  But luck was with us, and we actually had 35 yen more than the cost of the return ticket!  Jackie jumped on the train, and Marc went off to the airport, trying not to think about what we would do if Jackie didn’t make it back in time.  Jackie spent the entire one-hour ride back stressing.  What if she misremembered the station name?  What if she couldn’t find the office where the backpack was being held?  What if she couldn’t get a taxi?  What if she couldn’t get to the airport in time?  But she did get off at the correct station, she did find the office, her backpack was there, and the very nice agent helped her get a taxi.  She did misplace her return ticket, but the agent let her out of the station without it.  Once in the taxi, she asked the driver how long it takes to get to the airport.  “We should get there at 18:00,” he replied.  “Oh, that is going to be very tight!” Jackie said.  He then looked it up on his phone, and Google said that we would arrive at 5:45.  He promised to do his best to get there as soon as possible.  At this point, Jackie texted Marc to let him know that she had the backpack and expected to get to the airport at 5:45.

Meanwhile, back at the airport, Marc had shepherded three roller bags and his backpack from the subway to the gate.  This was challenging until he managed to get his hands on a cart at the airport.  He got to check in and found that they would not let him check in the bags without Jackie.  He just had to wait until she got there.  He also found that the agent was planning on leaving at 6pm, so Jackie had better arrive before 6!  He wanted to use the restroom, but having no one to leave the bags with made that problematic.  He was saved by the presence of a large single gender restroom that had plenty of space for the cart and all the bags.

Jackie did indeed get to the airport at 5:45 (even slightly before) much to Marc’s relief.  We checked our bags and went to security.  Security pitched a fit over Jackie’s knitting bag.  They wouldn’t tell us what was causing their concern until they finally found it.  It was the small scissors that she kept in the bag.  Is that all?  Toss them.  They are not expensive and can be easily replaced.  Afterwards, Marc commented that they didn’t care about the scissors in his cross-stitching bag which were the same type!  Then, off to the gate.  We arrived at the gate at 6pm, only to find that the flight was delayed (but only about 10 minutes.)  Phew!!! 

The flight was more turbulent than average, but otherwise uneventful.  They served us dinner almost right away, which Jackie liked, and Marc didn’t.  We both watched movies (and Jackie knit).  From midnight to 2am, Jackie tried to sleep, but not successfully.  Oh well, that just makes it easier to fall asleep once we get home, right?  They served breakfast shortly before we landed at noon Los Angeles time.

We thought that taking an Uber from the airport home would be about $10 more than taking the Flyaway to Van Nuys and Ubering from the Flyaway, but in the half hour it took to get from the terminal to the Uber pick up spot the price went up about $20!  Yikes!

We arrived home to find it exactly as we had left it – no break ins while we were gone, and no ants!  Hurray!

This vacation was so much fun and was everything we had hoped it would be.  We were pleased with the choices we made – to come in two days early and stay two days after, and to save money by getting an inside cabin and spend it on excursions instead.  The inside cabin was small, but we pretty much only slept in it.  The biggest problem with it was that it technically slept four, which meant it had a bunk bed, and the ladder for the bunk bed was under our bed, which meant we couldn’t put both our empty suitcases under the bed. Next time we will try to get a room that only sleeps two.  It had a bidet, which we tried.  The other minor issue with our room was that it was on the same level as most disembarkations, so a couple of times when disembarkation was going on, we had to go the long way around to get to our room.  If we had been up one level, we would have avoided this minor problem. 

The food was not amazing, but it was good, and the desserts were pretty consistently excellent.  The breakfast buffet was almost entirely American breakfast food – we wished we had the opportunity to eat breakfasts from other countries that we had had on other ships.  We didn’t watch all the nighttime shows, but with only one exception, the ones we saw were excellent.  We had fun at all the trivia and game show events, but thought they should not use people who don’t pronounce things correctly unless they are also displaying the questions on a monitor.  There were numerous times when a question would be read, and the entire room would go “what did she say????”  And this was in a room that had monitors, so they could have used them to display the questions.  They didn’t have much to do in the afternoons on the sea days, but maybe that was intentional to get you to gamble.  We would have liked lectures on the ports of call, history, culture, and wildlife of Japan, and random topics of interest to be offered, but other cruise lines don’t do that either.

We would advise someone considering taking the same trip to do it Tokyo to Seoul if possible, rather than Seoul to Tokyo.  Our two sea days were near the beginning of the trip and reversing the path would have given us the down time closer to the end, which would have been nice.

This cruise ship (Norwegian Spirit) was smaller (~2000 passengers) than the last two cruise ships we had been on - Royal Caribbean's Navigator of the Seas (up to 4000) and Princess’ Emerald (~3000).  Its dining, entertainment, and deck chair capacity seemed well suited for the number of passengers, and for the most part we didn’t have any trouble finding a place to sit or eat, despite the ship being full.

Our biggest complaint about the ship was that at 11am there is no lunch food available, so if you have to be in the theater at 11:30 for an excursion, your lunch choices are a) breakfast food at The Local, or b) take a sandwich from the buffet the day before and keep it in your room until the next day.

All-in-all the trip was a raging success, and we can’t wait for the next one!