Japan by Sea – Part 3

Back on the Ship

Osaka being a huge city, we knew that we only had a small taste of it over the 3 days we were there. We definitely chose a good location for then hotel as it was near a hub for many subway lines and getting anywhere was very easy. We downloaded an app to our watches and we just had to tap to get into (and out of) the subway and it couldn’t have been more convenient. For the most part we used Apple Maps to get around including helping us through the underground maze that was many of the subway stations.

By Friday, we were back on the move and it’s possible we may never see Osaka again, definitely not on this trip as we will eventually fly home from Tokyo. Friday was the day we boarded the ship and it’s always an exciting time. This will be the fourth time we’ve sailed with the Windstar line and the boarding routine and the process of getting settled in is a welcoming task. We find that these cruises are predominantly American passengers and on every cruise it seems that we end up meeting fellow Canadians who we meet up with throughout the cruise.

More of Japan

One of the main reasons why we booked this cruise was to be able to explore a larger cross-section of Japan than we would on a self-guided trip. We realize that taking tours in a bus is to popular sites is a fairly sterile way of seeing a country but it at least allows us to see places we would not likely visit on our own. The one positive of doing tours is that the tour guide can give us a cultural context that we would probably never get on our own. We also attended some presentations aboard the ship on the Japanese language and it’s obvious that a lot of the language is centred around politeness and respect. One example is the word sumimasen which can mean “excuse me” if you bump into someone but can be used when a boss wants to talk to an employee or just asking for the bill at a restaurant. The presenter called sumimasen a “politeness cushion” which was a great way of describing it.

An Unexpected Gem

Although this cruise is called Grand Japan, we did one stop outside Japan in Busan, South Korea which we were yesterday. Busan was also the only stop where we booked a private tour and we spent the whole day with our driver, seeing many places in Busan that we had selected. While it rained on an off the whole day, we got to see a lot of the city and Busan may end up being one of the highlights of the entire trip. We visited amazing temples, huge street markets and colourful villages. I liked it so much that I would love to return to South Korea and spend a few weeks here. We spent about 7 hours in Busan, in many places climbing lots of stairs or walking up steep streets, often in the rain, so we were both exhausted when we got back on board we just ended up ordering room service for dinner, not wanting to get up to eat in the dining room.

Life on Board

On most of the cruises we’ve been on we try to balance going on tours, which often means waking up much earlier, and doing “nothing” which I mean waking up a bit later and having a relaxing day like you would expect to be done on vacation. When we were planning this trip we decided to book much more tours than we normally would and in hind sight may have been a mistake given his many early mornings we’ve had lately. With the exception of Busan yesterday, most of our tours have been half days which means we’re usually back on board within about 3 hours and have half the day to relax.

Being a small ship format, many of the passengers on Windstar cruises are often like us, retired in their 60’s and 70’s and like the smaller ships with just a few hundred passengers. Many us have tried the larger ships with thousands of passengers and it’s rarely a preference.

By now I’ve uploaded a lot more photos from our trip to my photo website.

While we still have a few more days in our Japan cruise, the end is in sight and somewhere after we transfer to our hotel in Tokyo I’ll post the final chapter of Japan by Sea.