Sea Day

 I am finally trying to finish our Japan trip memories, 6 months later! Home, holidays, then 6 weeks in Puerto Vallarta followed by foot reconstruction surgery and now recovering, I am finally going to try and get this finished in a short and sweet way.

The day after Sokcho was a much sea day to relax. On sea days I do a lot of walking around the promenade deck enjoying the fresh ocean air and views. Otherwise we eat, read, walk, repeat. During this cruise we did enjoy going to the piano bar to play trivia and then listen to and sing along with the pianists during his next set. We did enjoy a couple evening shows, most memorable was  The Helen Reddy Story, we took back row "easy to escape" seats thinking it would be lame. It actually was fabulous, the woman told Helen Reddy's very interesting and sometimes sad story along with singing some of her songs in-between her life stories.

We also enjoyed the informative port talks, although our port lecturer was definitely not the best one we have had on previous cruises.

We would also go listen to music in the evenings at the Rolling Stones Lounge, the group that played there were fabulous.

We never made it to the afternoon tea that Holland does so well. We just never felt like we wanted or needed a big sit down tea between lunch and dinner, wanting to save our appetites for the wonderful dinners we had.

I did not take many pictures of the ship, other than food!

Our Sea Day dinner:

Sokcho South Korea

We were excited to visit this port, for one to be in South Korea and to actually step foot in Asia!

Bummer was it was pouring rain, torrential downpour all day. We took the shuttle that was provided at the pier dropping everyone off at the fish/food market. It took about 30 minutes because of the way it had to loop around town. On the way back we walked, much more direct but we didn’t know that in advance. Because of the rain all the bus windows were fogged over so we couldn’t see a thing.

At the market we located a cash machine to get some Korean Won then wandered through the busy market.

We had lunch here, no raw squid for us which is very popular here, we split a red crab sandwich and coconut shrimp, both delicious.

We walked to find the little hand ferry where you can actually help pull the boat across the water with the captain.

Then we explored Abai Village which is another market type area, it was very quiet thinking due to heavy rain. Dave really wanted to try a famous to the area food item, squid sundae, basically a ring of squid with a rice/veggie mix in middle dipped in egg and fried. We stopped into a restaurant and luckily had a server who spoke English to help us as menus only in Korean and no pictures. We just got a plate of squid sundaes, it came with the typical Korean side dishes. Squid sundaes were okay but we liked the sides best! Our server felt bad that we didn’t eat it all, we left her know this was our second lunch we just wanted to try them.

There was supposed to be a harvest festival going on, we walked through it but it was basically flooded so nothing was really happening. We felt bad for them. Below is a monument at the park The Restoration Memorial, symbolizing families separated by the Korean war, to honor displaced people from North Korea looking towards their hometowns.

Posing with locals inside the cruise pier.

Back on ship we enjoyed our before dinner routine in the Explorer's Lounge, I decided to try an Espresso Martini since we were back on early and I wasn't worried about the caffeine this early, I did not like it, way too sweet! I probably set it aside and ordered a glass of wine!

The beautiful red bridge was all lit up as we sailed away.

Fukuoka

Today we joined 2 other couples for a private tour, one couple from Dallas had set it up and had posted on Cruisecritic a couple months ago that they were looking for 2 other couples to join and share expense. We joined them along with a couple from Toronto and had the best day and a wonderful tour guide Erica, she is from the area but went to college in Michigan so had perfect English. We started with s bus ride to the train station where we then took a train to one of the most important Buddhist temples, Nanzo-in Temple.

We had a short walk to the temple passing over a cool little bridge, Melody Bridge with a xylophone type edge along the top to play music on.

At the shrine we were inspected by a guard as to if we were appropriately dressed, no tattoos can be exposed, and no knees exposed. I thought knee length was fine but not shoulders so had brought a scarf but he wanted me to use it to cover my knees, the men all had to pull their shorts down to cover knees. It was just so hot we didn’t want to wear long pants! They did offer blue towels and clips yo use to cover up but our group passed inspection and we continued on into the beautiful grounds. There were signs no pictures allowed but our guide said it was okay to just snap a few quick pictures here and there but no videos.

She told us that Shinto, the original and main Japanese religion and Buddhism main religion of China are very much aligned in Japan, so much so at this Temple, as well as others, include areas for both. We visited the Shinto Shine area.

Lastly we saw the largest reclining bronze Buddha in the world, its length is the same size as the Statue of Liberty.

To say a prayer here you hold the ribbons that are attached to the Buddhas hand and throw a coin into the offering.

Then we took the train back to town and had the famous Fukuoka ramen. Erica told us what makes this areas ramen special, rich pork broth, very firm noodles, all the optional toppings and helped us order on the machine since everything was in Japanese. For a gal who doesn’t like pasta I even enjoyed the ramen!

We walked around a big city park popular for families.

Went to a beautiful traditional Japanese zen garden.

Occasonally mist is released over the gardens for a cooling effect.

We saw couples there getting wedding pictures done.

Erica walked us past the Fukuoka Art museum, we didn’t have time to go inside.

We didn’t have time to go in as we all had to get back to ship early to go through customs before our next stop in South Korea. We ended our wonderful day with a beautiful sunset view seen from our little cabin window.