Sea Day

Our last full day on the ship was a sea day. I'm sure there were a lot of walks around the promenade deck, as well as packing up and there were a few really fun and new, or unusual to us on Holland ships, happenings around the ship. We noticed towel animals all around the pool when we went for lunch.

Following lunch there was a huge cake extravaganza of beautiful and delicious cakes. We may have tried a couple!

Later in the afternoon the crew set up a carnival on the pool deck. There were many games to play, staff handed out tickets for winning at the games, you put your tickets into the ticket cage, tickets were drawn and prizes handed out, we didn't win anything but it was a lot of fun. It seemed like this event was a big hit, both passengers and crew seemed to be having a blast!

This was our last night enjoying our new friends, Barb and Mark, over dinner. We all exchanged contact info and decided we would keep in touch and meet up since they live in Calgary. Mark was very helpful in helping us decide what type of knives to purchase in Japan, he is a hobby chef who loves to cook and has bought many knives in Japan and said he bought a couple more this trip.

On our way back to our room we got a picture of our favorite room steward, he was not ours but we ran into him all the time and had many long conversations with him, he has had a very interesting life.

It had been a great cruise around Japan that we very much enjoyed. It made us want to return to Japan and next time travel around the country on our own now that we know that it is easy! 

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Miyako

Miyako was the smallest port town we visited, a population of about 50,000 people. It may have been a small town but the locals came out in a big way to welcome our ship. They provided local guides all over the town with vests on that had what language they spoke to help with what ever information you needed, or even to help with interpretation in shops. They had even set up little rest area spots around the town. 

Our ship was greeted by dancers and drummers.

We stared our day walking into town and just wandering around. Of course we had to check out the local market, because thats what we do! At the market 2 older local women were trying so hard to have a conversation with us, they both only spoke Japanese, we kept telling them "no Japanese, English, sumimasen". But they kept trying! That was not the only time this happened, at a little clothing shop another older lady who was shopping did the same thing.  This was a very friendly welcoming little community.

These adorable local girls were so excited to get a Canadian pin from a cruise passenger, she was showing her mom who was working at a shop we were in.

We headed back to the ship for lunch because we were meeting from the cruise port later for a ship sponsored tour.   The town had set up a carnival and food trucks in the port area for ship passengers and locals. They just really went all out for us!

After lunch on the ship we met the bus for a trip to Jodogahama Beach and Coastal cruise. The tour guid on the bus told us about the huge devastating earthquake and tsunami that happened here on March 2011. There was not enough warning for the locals to leave, the waves were up to 133 feet high going over the sea walls protecting the area. 20,000 people were killed and over 2,000 missing. Since then they have built a 50 foot high sea wall. Below is a tiny view of a section of the wall, taken from the bus.

We arrived at the boat dock and boarded the boat for a coastal cruise to see the beauty of the rocky coastline.

Next we walked to a little museum to look around then from there we did a little coastal hike to Jodogahama Beach.

It was a nice little excursion. We absolutely loved Miyako and the locals there! It was a stop that we were not that excited about, but this lovely charming community and the beauty of the coast totally won us over!

Aomori

 Our next port, Aomori, we could see the big A-Spam building, basically is their chamber of commerce building, there was not much in there to see other than a few shops on the main floor. Mostly impressive from the outside.

Our ship was greeted by young children and their teachers, along with jumping around they waved and said Hi. It appeared there were going to be drummers but we missed that.

Again this was a very walkable port. We headed to the Nebula Museum and purchased our tickets to get in. The museum features the large illuminated hand made paper mache floats and masks that are used during their huge August Fire Festival that attracts 3 million visitors a year. The huge floats are about 4 tons and are wheeled on platforms during the festival.

When then walked over to the A-Factory, inside is a food mall featuring lots of Fuji apples, and apple products. We purchased an apple to take back to the ship to try as well as a couple delicious apple tarts and an apple ice tea. We at some point did a taste test comparing an apple from the ship's buffet to the expensive fancy Fuji apple we purchased and we didn't notice any difference, could be that the ship gets their  apples from this area.

We walked around the uto-jinja shrine and beautiful grounds.

Passed by the Ichinen Temple.

Then it was time to find a sushi place for lunch, Dave has not had yet had any this trip and time was running out to get it in Japan. We looked at many places before deciding on this one. There were people waiting to get in and we figured  that was a good sign. We figured out that you put your name on the list and wait to be called, it took about 20 or so minutes. 

We were lead to our own little room with our own private booth, there was a whole area like this, otherwise it appeared the only other area to eat was a counter where they seemed to put single people. We ordered using the machine menu on the table, if you needed anything we were to push the red button and server would come.

It took us forever to decide what to order! Dave had a sushi nigiri set, came with miso soup, salad, dessert and coffee. I had some edamame and a pickled plum roll, it was tiny, no wonder it was nearly free!

Here goes the salmon row! I actually tasted one little egg, it was very juicy and not fishy.

Of course we had to find another market, the market was in the basement but there were lots of lovely shops on the upper levels.

Walking back we popped into the A-Spam building again and bought another type of apple pastry to share, we had ran into our table mate friends and they said they were so good we needed to try one.

Walked through the waterfront park on our way back to the ship. We have seen so many Shiba Inu dogs, they appear to be very popular in Japan.

Trees were starting to turn.

Tonight we had another specialty dining complements of our all included pkg. Tonight's amazing dinner was at Canaletto, the Italian restaurant on board. Cheers to another wonderful day!

We ended our evening in the Rolling Stone Lounge listing to the amazing house band, we tried to see them every chance we got.