October 5 – Sendai, Japan

Zuiganji temple

Weather

Zuiganji temple

– 24º and partly sunny…PRAISE THE
LORD! I was actually hot a couple of times today, no jacket or zippy…just a t-shirt

Steps –

13 hours 58 min of daylight

Latitude – Calgary 51º, Sendai 38º

Sendai (pop 1,098,335) is where we woke up today. The city of trees is Sendai’s nickname, but I’d say everything we’ve seen of Japan so far could be called the cities of trees – certainly the country of green…everything has been very lush. I found a pretty big dragon fly, I guess they like the green too. Our excursion took us out of

Zuiganji temple

Sendai for the most part, so we didn’t see much of the city itself.

Zuiganji temple

Our tour started in the town of Matsushima a 40 min drive from Sendai. We drove along fields and fields of rice. Along the way Echo, our guide gave us some background on the temple we were about to visit. She also told us various things about Japan – she was an excellent guide. Matsushima is a very touristy, but charming area before we visited Zuiganji, a Zen Buddhist temple founded in 828 AD. The actual building we visited was built in the early 17th century.

The temple has the nightingale alarm floors we learned about last time in Japan. These wooden floors make noises intruders walk across them – very cool. This time Echo had too many other things to tell us, that she didn’t mention the floors, if you knew about them, they were super obvious.

We have been hoping to visit a sake brewery in Japan and today was that day. I know what sake is and have tasted it, in fact each time we’ve gone to Pacific Rim, the ship’s Asian themed restaurant we’ve had it, but I don’t know much about it.

Our sake education was at Ichinokura brewery. We learned how sake is made and the rituals surrounding it. They make sake here from

rice fields

underground stream water and local rice. We learned about the process to develop a yeast or the “mother of sake” and fermentation. We toured the factory, sampled 5 of their sakes, and browsed the minimal shop, but didn’t buy.

This tour was great. Echo was great, the other

sake lesson

participants were great, and there were only about 23 of us. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time for free time at Matsushima. It would have been fun to have a drink and a snack.

We were back at the boat for a late lunch and some actual pool time! Our tour didn’t leave this morning until 10:30, so we had morning pool time too.

filled with sake

I even did my blogging on the balcony for the first time this cruise before dinner tonight. It’s been an expected disappointment not being able to use the balcony as my as we like. I think I’d happily do it again to see the part of the world we saw. However…next cruise will be a warm weather cruise!

the pilot coming to lead us out

Echo told us about how the 2011 earthquake and tsunami affected the area. The initial tsunami was 3.2 metres and the second 3.8 metres. We saw how far into the temple the water got and how many trees were killed on the temple grounds. 20 people were killed in the area.

Japanese dusky sky

Last night was the last Guess That Tu
ne for this cruise. If there were more, we might not make a huge effort to get t

Japanese pine tree

here. We actually came in third place with 8/15 correct guesses. The remaining 7 we didn’t even have a clue about. We have returned to the Regent of old, the Regent that
thinks we’re all from the pre-WW2 era. We had a switch in piano players at the beginning of the cruise and ohhhh how we miss the last guy. The current one plays some current-ish stuff when he is just playing, but his Guess That Tune selections are mostly from before I WAS BORN! I googled each of the 15 songs from last night and the youngest one was from 1978!!!!! Honestly! Not the end of the world but come on.

sake brewery

October 4 – Hakodate, Japan

good morning Hakodate

Hakodate squids

Weather – 18º, drizzle and fog

Steps –10,879

13 hours 26 min of daylight

Latitude – Calgary 51º, Hakodate 42º

Hakodate a small city (pop 300,000) is on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido and is where we spent the day. Hokkaido’s largest city is Sapporo (of Sapporo beer fame).

our cablecar

The distance between Hakodate (today) and Aomori (yesterday) is about 119Km and would take 1 hour by train and 4 hours by car which would include a ferry. However, it took us about

ship in the distance

14 hours to sail. We sailed in circles through the night. I’m not sure why we do this when sailing from one close port to another, but we’ve done this plenty of times. It must have to do with how long we can stay in port, or how much $$$ is costs to stay longer.

Today’s tour started with a sort of guided walk through Motomachi – I say sort of because despite Ike's (our guide) best efforts, he was very hard to understand. This is life when travelling in a non-English speaking country. I’d have liked to have learned more, but no big deal.

former city hall, rebuilt post fire

Motomachi is a charming area with cobblestone streets at the foot of mount Hakodate, where most foreigners lived after Japan opened to the west in 1854. Prior to then, Japan had an isolation

random street adornment

policy where relations and trade with other countries were relatively non-existent. When the west was allowed in buildings representing western culture popped up.

We saw buildings here foreign to Japanese culture – Russian Orthodox, Catholic, Episcopal churches, former British embassy. Everywhere we look is also very lush…I guess that’s what happens when it

melonpan machine

rains A LOT. Motomachi is also very hilly at the base of the mountain. I’m not sure how some of the tour participants felt about that, but it was very clear that it’d be hilly.

anticipating the delicious

The most interesting part of our visit to Motomachi was trying a melonpan. Melonpan (メロンパン), is a Japanese sweetbun with a crispy crust. The outside resembles a melon,  hence the name. They don’t taste like melon. The one I got was sliced in half and filled with ice-cream. This was a super interesting experience. The shop was a small, covered counter area with a machine that takes your order. When we walked up to the machine it was all in Japanese but had a

Chris always the helper

button to switch to English. There were pictures and lots of instructions. The instructions were even spoken out loud. Then a ticket was spit out which you take to the guy at the window who then makes

getting soupy

your sweet treat! The bun came directly out of an oven and steamed when he sliced it open. He then filled it with ice cream. It was delicious. Kind of like a cream-puff. It was kinda intimidating at first, but then when we got it Chris helped the next couple.

We also hunted for and found the Hakodate’s famed man-hole covers with squid on them. Hakodate’s city mascot is a squid. Because of Hakodate’s history of being a squid fishing port there is evidence of squid everywhere.

We bought a squid croquette (basically a deep fried squid cake) at the top of the cable car which was delicious. We could have eaten about 10 more, they were so good.

The cable car to the top of Mount Hakodate was a bit of a bust because of the

snack

quite a view

super thick fog. The view from the observation deck was zip, zilch, nada…nothing! Although, of course it would have been better to have been able to see something, it was actually cool to see nothing.

We washed down the squid croquette with a beer and a blueberry milk sour – a sweet, fruity 3%ABV drink, pretty good.

Our last stop was at the Hakodate Morning Market. I looooooove a market. It would be a tough decision to make if I had to choose between a market, a museum and seeing animals. Those have got to be my top 3 favourite things to

google trans

see on vacation.

me in the tram

The market takes up about four city blocks and is exactly what you’d hope for in a Japanese market – tons and TONS of fish, a TON of crab, but lots of squid, huge scallops, salmon and salmon roe, shellfish that look like small conch and other things I didn’t even recognize. Basically, ENDLESS SEAFOOD! Oh, and a HUGE octopus. Unfortunately, Ike didn’t give us as much info as I’d have hoped, but it was cool to just LOOK at everything. At one point Ike did stop by a squid place and showed us we could get a small, but delicious strip of I’m sure was the freshest squid I’ve ever eaten.

can see some coming down

Ike said sayonara to us and we were on our own. Once again. we had to be brave and order lunch. One great thing in Japanese eating places is that there are pictures for everything you could order, so all we do is point to the picture. We get soba noodles with 2 tempura shrimp, squid filled with rice and 2 Sapporo beers – about 30CAD. This was a food court kinda situation in the middle of the market.

We also see the pricy cantaloupe melons. We learned that in Japan people bring cantaloupe as a host gift when visiting. The melons are pricy because they are

BUGS!

wrapped and packaged beautifully.

zoom to read

One other fascinating thing we saw was a vending machine, not just any vending machine. In Japan, vending machines are everywhere, but mostly have the same drinks in them. Like they are all sponsored by the same drink company. Well…the one different one we saw today was filled with BUGS!!! Yes, bugs…to eat! I would have loved to have learned more about THAT! And probably would have tried, but would never commit to a whole purchase without anyone guiding me!

We were back at the ship a short 4

pricy melons

lunch

hours after we left but had an amazing morning!!!

October 3 – Aomori, (was supposed to be Kushiro) Japan

Weather

– 18º, overcast, tiny bit of rain

Steps –

11 hours 40 min of daylight

Latitude – Calgary 51º, Kushiro 43º

5:30AM and I’m wide awake…this time change thing continues to blow my mind. The sun wasn’t quite up, but I was.

Aomori by night

Now that we’re in Japan, it’s time to turn on our eSIMS. We both got 2Gig for 9USD, and I had a bit of credit, so 2 gig I think cost me about $4 – WOW!

Aomori by day

They tell us Aomori means blue water – the water’s blue, but no more blue than anywhere else.

Nebuta Museum float

Today, being the first Japanese stop we need to do a face-to-face customs and immigration check. Depending on the country, the cruise often takes care of the immigration for us. They keep our passports, and country officials get on and do it all without having to see anyone. Not Japan. I actually don’t remember doing
this last time. I’m sure we did, but it mustn’t have been a gong show like some face-to-faces can be. This one wasn’t at all a gong show, but did take some time. Somehow these things always take longer than I think they should.

Nebuta Museum float

The immigration/customs process was delayed because there were a few medical evacuations. As we came into port, I saw no less than 4 emergency vehicles. This is never a good sign, I guess a mostly elderly crowd + 5 days at sea = a few medical issues unfortunately. A few days ago, we heard a ‘code mike’ which is the

Nebuta Museum float

ship’s code for medical emergency and then later a call for ‘stretcher team’. None of this is good, but we’ve heard nothing but great things about the medical facilities – great, but not inexpensive.

In addition to the medical vehicles, there was a welcoming committee of drummers and dancers…neat!

Aomori cidre

According to the interwebs, Aomori’s pop is

me next to the big Buddah

264,945 – didn’t think Japanese cities could be this small. As we travel around, we can see it is like a small town, with little in the way of traditional Japanese architecture.

Our tour didn’t depart until 12:15, so we had a leisurely morning in the room (started at 530!) and finished at the pool like yesterday.

Japan’s tallest seated Buddha at the Seiryu-ji Temple (or Temple of the Blue-Green Dragon) complex was one of our 2 stops today. The 70-foot Buddah (the

Seiryu-ji Temple

tallest in Japan) is made of copper so after being

Seiryu-ji Temple thru trees

weathered looks green. The entrance to the temple is made of cypress wood making the interior smell delightful. This place is as you might expect a Japanese temple in a Japanese garden…quiet and serene…lovely. The light mist of rain only added to the atmosphere.

We walked a bit at the beginning of our visit with Togo our guide as she explained this and that. Then we were on our own to wander the grounds and go inside the Buddha and temple.

temple complex entrance

Excursions are a good way to experience things we might not necessarily choose for ourselves. Aomori’s Nebuta Museum Warasse is an example of this. Parade

another Buddha

museums aren’t exactly up our street, but this is actually the second parade/festival museum we’ve visited on a ship excursion – the first was 2

today's entry tix

years ago in Brazil. Every summer Aomori has a Nebuta summer festival which is showcased in this museum. There are 4 example of parade floats. These floats are all made from paper and lit on the inside by light bulbs.

We also learned that the area of Aomori is the apple capital of Japan. Where there’s apples there’s…

tiny Buddhas lining the walls in the Buddah

CIDRE!!! We had a bit of time at the end of our museum visit for a quick cidre. We each had a 200mL, 3% bottle of sweet, bubbly
Japanese cidre…yum! $7CAD each.

Sea days gives me a change to read. I typically spend a lot of my free time on vacation blogging rather than reading. Today I finished Jodi Picault’s Small, Great, Things, I found it in the ship’s library, so I thought I’d give it a try. I really

$14CAD

smaller shrine

liked it, but a bit of a heavy vacation read.

interesting outside space