October 6 – Tokyo, Japan

one last bit of caviar

Weather

time to pack

– 25º, humid…quite the change in
weather!

Steps – 16,858

11 hours 37 min of daylight

Latitude – Calgary 51º, Tokyo 35º (Los Angeles is 34º)

This is it…Tokyo is our last port for this vacation. Today is our last full day on the ship. Tomorrow we will be checking into a Tokyo hotel for the final few days of this vacation.

We didn’t dock until 1:30. Sunday meant champagne and caviar breakfast…and other bits and pieces. It was finally warm enough to sit outside and it was lovely

Unicorn Gundam Statue

the sun came out and it was warm.

After breakfast we found a spot to soak in some last

drum beating game

day pool time. By this time, it was overcast, but still warm. We watched our approach to Tokyo from our deck chairs. At one point we sailed right past one of Tokyo’s airports. At one point I could hear the planes right above us but couldn’t see for too much cloud.

Today being the last day of the cruise is also the day to redeem the Regent Reward points accumulated from participating in things such as crazy games, trivia and Guess that Tune. We had enough points for a ‘sling backpack’.

Originally, we had booked a spot on the ship’s tour of shopping districts. Once we realized this 4.5-hour tour was to the area where our hotel is, and where

The Unicorn come to life

we’ve actually been before we gave our tickets to friends, travelling with us who were on the waiting list. We decided to pack a bit and walk around the area near where the ship is docked instead.

music festival

We almost never do our own thing when we’re on Regent. Excursions are included, so we feel like it’s not economical to not take one.

About a 10 min walk from the cruise port our ship is in (there is another further away, so we’re lucky to be here) is a shopping/cultural area – Odaiba. The first thing we came upon was a music festival. Then we arrived at a mall complex. No giant parking lot outside but lot and lots of people mulling around outside

music festival

because of some kind of fancy-schmancy car show.

We wandered around a mall. This doesn’t sound too exciting, but in Japan many things are very different. The most interesting thing to see here for us was a Japanese arcade. This place is loud and packed. UFO catchers, like claw machines fill half the place. These machines have a variety of prizes that must be grabbed by a crane with a claw that the player control. There are also rhythm games, kind of like Dance, Dance Revolution, but with the players beating drums.

arcade

Tokyo tower in the distance

We were approached by a high school student who had a few questions for us. There were a bunch of high school students approaching people who looked like us. Our guy had a set of questions that he wrote down the answers to. We tried to chat a bit, but it seemed like he was just starting to learn. This was fun!

Outside the mall there was a huge statue of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn - a robot character from a Japanese novel series. It is a major attraction. This statue comes to life a few times a day. We saw it comes to life, which lasted about 3 minutes. It was more interesting seeing how fascinated people were with it.

arcade

The day ended with one last dinner in the dining room. We were lucky to get back into Marcelino’s section. Marcelino is a waiter we got to know over the cruise. He was a unique character and while probably not the most efficient waiter was the most endearing. He always, always remembered our names and said hello even when we weren’t in his section. He definitely should get an A+ for effort.

cases ready to go

YES!! We are the young ones on the ship! On our first cruise waaaay back, I think in 2003, we definitely were the young ones. Other passengers asked us
“did you know it’d be filled with old people?” Yes, we knew. We eventually thought we’d catch up. There are definitely more people our age, but still not lots. I’d say the average age is somewhere around 75.

One other thing about this particular cruise’s demographic…we learned that there are 268 Canadians and 273 Americans on this cruise. That’s A LOT of Canadians. There are usually some, but never almost the same number as there are Americans.