KYOTO

  I had got together with a bunch of Australians on line before we boarded to join them on a private tour of Kyoto. We never got to meet them on board until the day of the tour. Anyway I sent them our photos and they found us in the queue to leave the boat. Our guide was a young guy called Lee, we had a Bruce in our group so we had the full Kung Foo pair. It's a long ride from Osaka, where we docked to Kyoto, 1.5hours plus. The bus was good, 12 seater for 8 of us.

Some of the bamboos were carved to play notes in the wind, and the bamboos rattled at the same time. However, no wind & big crowds, so who knows what it would have been like. Next stop was the Golden Temple.

Picturesque, nice walks, 1000 year old tree, golden temple with phoenix on top, lovely ice cream, matcha & vanilla, but you know what - you can get templed out.

Off to Nishiki, Kyoto's famous market area. Indoors & out, from street food to high end shops. We went for grilled eel, so fresh it was almost alive. Liked it there.

Gion, the geisha girls working area next up.

And finally, another shrine, the Fushima Inari Shrine, but by now it was dark.

Protected by foxes with golden fish in their mouths & wearing bibs- who knew. It's open 24/7 and has the famous tunnel of Torii gates that feature in so many marketing shots for Kyoto. They were installed all the way from the shrine to the top of the mountain and were paid for by sponsors who got their name & company on their Torii gate. Lin was exhausted by now and I had to leave her at the bottom of the hill & collect her on the way back. Arrived back at the ship at 19:30, she was so tired, I couldn't even persuade her to go on the big harbour wheel. At 404ft it's slightly smaller than London Eye but we've still got a chance with the Singapore Flyer at 540ft, 100ft bigger than the eye. Let's wait & see. 

SHIMIZU

 Konnichiwa. Taken me a long time to get back to blogging. Busy, so busy, busy doing nothing, working the whole day through(you take it from here). Serendipity, next best thing to lucky ducky. Had no plans, just options. Got up at 6:30 to look for Mount Fuji as we entered the bay. It's what this port is for. Socked in - low cloud, rain & misty. So option 1, go to cab office get a cab tour to go see it close up, out of the question. Do back to bed to dream up option 2.

This is what we should have seen.

Ah well, option 2. Get up, go to tourist info, visit mall, wander harbour, take public ferry or bus to a black world heritage beach. Set off, waylaid outside port gate by women from cultural centre. "We have rots on today wanna go see, Washoku organic food festival" . We wandered off, went past cultural centre & waylaid again. "Wanna take part, make some food, starting now" OK we say, paid up & joined food class, we only non-japanese, me the only (clumsy) man. We were to make Nerikiri wagashi refers to classic Japanese sweets crafted from bean paste and sweet glutinous rice flour.

We made Mt Fuji. This is what it's supposed to look like.

The leaves are Maple & Ginko Beloba, made from a maple syrup & gelatine, cut with a stencil cutter. We went on to tea tasting trying teas from a small organic tea plantation owned by Masako Saito, who was there helping us. We tried, a green tea, a fermented green tea that was claimed to aid digestion & a black tea that we tried as a brew & could also be eaten raw or sprinkled on food - all great. We bought the teas to try at home.

So that was that, but no we were ushered upstairs to meet the geishas. They performed 3 dances. Chakiri-bushi - a folk song to promote Shizuoka Railway in 1927. Yakko-san - based on Samurai servants, often seen in kabuki. Gujo Harukoma Kuzishi - a harvest dance performed with wooden saucers as you would with castanets.

They make Lin look short. So that's that, no, we were next presented with bookmarks made from fallen black pine needles from the world heritage site. So that's that, no, we had the kimono's on for a photo.

Lin may be short, but their kimonos wouldn't meet over the boobs.

All that for around £25 for the 2 of us versus a ships tour of $250 each to not see Mt Fuji - serendipity. So that's that, no we did see Mt Fuji, the secret origami we did on the Tokyo tour turned out to be Mt Fuji. Which do you prefer?

So that's that, no. Masako Saito the plantation owner asked to come visit next time we were in the area.

TOKYO

 Finally made land! Took a ships tour because the on line advice about difficulties getting through customs & security. Not wrong, the massive queues, fingerprinting, photos all very reminiscent of LAX.

Finally got with the tour guided by Yoshi, a very nice young Japanese lady. The tour lasted all day and took us to palaces, shrine & temples all the usual Tokyo sites. It's a massive city over 13 million inhabitants, it's surprising it's traffic runs so well, also a good public train & bus service.

The statue with the knitting commemorates the return of Japanese women held captive in northern China.

The towers are pretty tall as well, the TV tower is 634m, that's 3 times higher than than the PO Tower - in an active earthquake zone as well.

Lots of girls wearing kimonos, one in the traditional white wedding kimono with the large coif.

What car is this I saw in the car park?

ATTACK OF THE KILLER MUSSELS

 We have been having talks about the old B horror movies & this is is the sort of titles they had in the day but it's really happened. We were cruising along peacefully at about 20mph in the calm Pacific when we came to a halt. You could faintly hear alarms going off on board. It turned out to be an engine overheating problem - wait for it - a growth of mussels in the engine cooling system. Well, we had to hove to while the engineers cleared out the system and we could resume again.

Had a nice Japan theme party, lots of Asian drinks & food on offer run by Darko & Josui, the suite lounge staff. That's the singers and lecturers, Sue, who we'd met before on another ship, Ali Harper, a lovely singer from NZ who is next performing in NY and Diane who lives in Japan & is educating us about Japan & it's society. We also have Dayna, who is a karate & taekwondo black belt 5th Dan who didn't get in the photo. Arrive Tokyo tomorrow.

LUCKY LITTLE DUCKY

 We are still wandering the mighty Pacific, now off the coast of northern Japan. Weather has been a bit grim since we left Alaska, first Super Typhoon Halong which is now about to hit the US/Canada west coast and is forecast to cause flooding in coastal areas and big snow dumps across the Rockies. It caused some problems on the ship, flooding in the deck doorways, bent up the bridge windscreen wipers & bought some internal panels down. Next week had an earthquake that triggered Tsunami warnings that didn't seem to have any effect and then Typhoon Nakri which is passing us now 100 miles off the port side.

This is Lucky Little Ducky.

People hide them around the ship and they are supposed to bring good luck. We found one in the lift & she certainly seems to work. Since then Linda won the Premium Bonds, & the Postcode Lottery (again!) and we won the quiz. The prize was Captain Stanley.

We're chilling, getting fatter by the minute.

We were given a tour of the galleys by a chef. One guy spends all day, every day making nothing but cheesecake - we've tried some, it's very good.

We've just been prepared to pass customs & passport control in Tokyo. Apparently everyone has to get off, like it or not & can't get back on until everyone is cleared. We're off on a ships tour.