Arriving in Seoul

Yesterday was a sea day, which gave Becky and me time to do our packing, wash our hair and have a nice 3 course meal at the fancy restaurant.

We hugged goodbye with the 2 couples we've been doing the trivia with and had an early night.

We took the walk off the ship option the following morning and used a private car service to transfer from the cruise port terminal at Incheon to our hotel in downtown Seoul. The traffic in Seoul is crazy and the journey took 2 hours.  We were still too early to check in, so we left our luggage at reception and decided to walk to a palace just down the street.

Unfortunately,  there was a note on the gates saying this palace is closed until 2nd June. so we walked on to a shopping area where there was a Lottemart hypermarket. 

The place was huge and it took us ages to walk around. At this point Becky's illness caught up with her again and it took us a while to get back to the hotel as we kept having to stop at coffee shops to rest.  

On the subject of coffee shops I've seen 3 Tim Hortons here so far!

Once we made it back to the hotel and checked in, Becky went to bed for the rest of the day.

Yesterday was our last day in Japan. We have 2 stops in Korea before the end of the cruise. Today we are docked in Busan, Korea's 2nd largest city at 3.2 million people and also the 6th largest port in the world.

Our tour took us to Gamcheong Culture village.  Our guide said we'd see how people in Busan used to live and I thought we'd see old buildings and people making rice flour by hand along the lines of St Fagans or Upper Canada Village.  However, the place we went looked perfectly modern and all the guide really meant was that the people here didn't live in the high rise condos that dominate the skyline.

About 60 to 70 percent of Korea is mountains, so with little space to build almost all the buildings are high rise condos. As you can see from the views.  

Back onboard, Becky and I were invited to a Sail Away party on the Helipad.

Fukuoka

Today we are docked at Fukuoka. Try saying that 3 times fast.  The tour today was to the nearby Kokura castle and gardens.  Becky was not feeling well, so I went on the tour alone.

The castle has really put everything into the tourist angle and they have guys dressed as Samurai warriors directing the buses in the parking lot.

The castle has no moat, but is surrounded by a japanese garden. 

Inside, it's a museum, with lots of neat touristy things, there was a mirror/screen thing which superimposed a geisha outfit onto you if you stood in front of it.  

After the castle we went to the local market, but I did most of my shopping in the castle gift shop.

Back onboard, I joined my team for afternoon trivia, but without Becky we didn't win.  Fukuoka is our last stop in Japan, so everyone, including Becky,  had to get off the ship to go through departure immigration.  After that, Becky went back to bed and I had a qick snack at the buffet on my own.

Nagasaki

Today's excursion was to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park. It's obviously a common destination for school trips.

The visiting students donate origami cranes the have made in memory of the dead.

Outside, in the Peace Park, the cranes are hung up in shrines.

There didn't seem to be a lot else to see in Nagaski, so after another ice-cream (this one specially shaped to look like a rose), it was back to the ship in time for trivia. We won both quizzes this afternoon.

Kagoshima

There wasn't anything really interesting to see in Kagoshima itself (more shrines and castles maybe), so Becky and I were booked on a brewery tour instead.

We had a very interesting ride on a small bus up into the mountains to the Hioki brewery, where we sampled the local spirit called shochu.  Shochu is like sake in that it starts off with fermented rice, but after the first fermentation they add sweet potatoes to the mash to add flavour during the 2nd fermentation. 

First we donned our special hairnets and footwear to walk around the brewing area. Then we returned to the tasting room to sample 3 of their products. Some of  these spirits were 41%, so I was pretty squiffy afterwards.  

Back on the bus the guide tried to sober us up by plying us with rice cakes and crackers, cookies, caramel corn, etc.  Our next destination was a pottery making Satsuma wear, so I  guess she didn't want us stumbling around and breaking stuff.  We watched people making the pottery and visited the kiln and a pottery museum before exiting via the shop, where I got Becky a birthday present.  

We did the quizzes back on board in the afternoon. The weather wasn't great as we left port, but that didn't stop the locals from seeing us off with a school  marching band, a very bad singer and a woman with balloon animals blowing bubbles. It's the thought that counts.

At sea

Short entry today with no photos, as we spent the day at sea. We spent most of the morning in the hot tub and solarium. After a very nice lunch of duck teriyaki and a lot of alcohol, we finished the day off with a few trivia quizzes. We were the only team who'd even heard of Kiribati, let alone knew that it was the only country in 4 hemispheres. 

Hiroshima

Today I was supposed to go on an excursion to the memorial, but for some reason it was canceled,  so I ended up joining Becky on her excursion to Miyajima instead.

Miyajima is an island just off the coast from Hiroshima,  that is famous for its floating tori gate and a floating shrine.

It's also famous for its oysters and conger eel.  We went into a nice restaurant for lunch and had a proper Japanese meal. I had wagyu beef, Becky tried the conger eel and I had a taste and was pleasantly surprised. I always thought eel would be squelchy, but this was grilled and quite crunchy.

After looking around the island we had deer poop ice cream. Basically, this was an ice cream cone with small chocolate beans on it. Yes, there were deer on the island, but unlike Nara these deer are not considered sacred, so they ask you not to feed them.