528 Diana handing our ballots to the postal lady for mailing.
578 School kids with the Amsterdam in Yamashita Park, Yokohama, Japan
581 Diana along the waterfront in Yamashita Park with Yokohama in the background
596 The tug awaits while the fireboat gives us the 6-hose salute. Under that bridge is the way back to the Pacific Ocean.
Oct 5 – Yokohama, Japan. Our day is free today, but the ship leaves at 5PM. I’m going to head to the Post Office of FedEx to mail my ballot back to Texas.
After a very active day yesterday we were early to bed last night and up very early this AM. The Lido buffet opens at 6:30am and we were through the door at about one minute later. Since some new passengers have boarded we are on quarantine procedures for 48 hours just like when we all boarded in Seattle. Nothing on the tables and employees must hand everything to you. Really slows down service in the Lido.
We left the ship at about 7:15am armed with the map they provided. These maps are a fanciful idea of reality. About 50% or the things noted are shown in an accurate location. Our first order of business was to get to the post office to mail our ballots and recharge our ¥ supply. Optimistically, the map shows one about 1,500 yards from the pier. However upon arriving there, no post office. I picked a likely candidate from the people passing on the street, excused myself (sumimasen) and asked where the nearest post office was. Getting directions we set out for that location and again, no post office. Trying one more passerby got us a third location but not a post office. (I don’t want to hear any more jokes about men not wanting to ask for directions. Worldwide, my experience has been that asking people on the street is a great way to start a scavenger hunt but not a good way to actually find something.) That being said we did find a post office on the way to the third location that we’d been given. The post office lady was a little embarrassed but pleased when I asked her to pose with Diana to commemorate handing over the ballots.
Even with all the wondering around we were still too early of the opening of the Silk Museum. Diana wanted to window shop and I found a comfortable place to observe the activity on the street. Turned out to be a good thing as I saw lots of people from the ship who also wanted a post office and I was able to direct them to the one we found earlier.
The Silk Museum is a small place but it has a very informative display on the manufacture of silk from the growth stages of the silkworm through the final weaving of the cloth. The upstairs has a display of kimonos for each of the major historical periods up to the Meiji. Everything is styled with such subtlety and grace. The colors and designs are very artful and there’s always more there than you see at first glance. Very beautiful.
After visiting the Silk Museum we decided to walk back to the ship along the waterfront, which in this area means going by way of Yamashita Park. The ocean liner Hikawa Maru is docked there as a permanent museum. Between 1930 and 1960 she carried 25,000 people from Yokohama to Seattle-Vancouver. You can tour the captain’s cabin, bridge, smoking room, first class dining room (complete with tableware) and cabins, including a suite occupied by Charlie Chaplin in 1932.
It was a very pleasant walk back to the ship along the water. We met a group of school kids, about 13 years old or so, posing for a picture along the sea wall with the Amsterdam as the background. I decided to join the fun and take their picture too. I snapped mine first and as their leader was counting down to take there’s I said ‘cheeseburger’. That cracked everyone up. I told the leader that we were from the US and she replied in very good English, “I lived for 7 years in Seattle.” I told her that’s where the ship sailed from to get to Japan. We had one of those ‘small world’ moments as we smiled at each other over the coincidence.
All aboard was at 11:30am and we arrived back at about 11:10am. Plenty of time for a quick shower, lunch and out on deck for sail away activities.
The sail-away was nice. The port had a fireboat giving us the 6-hose salute as we sailed out of the harbor. Sometimes the spray from all that water creates a rainbow but no such luck this time. It’s a busy port and backing away from the pier took some time as various ferries and small boats kept crossing to our stern.
We’re sailing along the east coast of Japan within easy sight of land and won’t arrive in Kobe until 10am tomorrow.
Since we get in late tomorrow morning we decided to do a double header and see the movie Battleship. It was over two hours and didn’t seem that long. It was a special effects smorgasbord with some humor and romance thrown in. Essentially it was the Navy against space invaders. Brooklyn Becker, an actress with whom I’m unfamiliar, played the love interest. She’s not at all hard to look at so that helped the picture hold my interest. Someone told me she was voted the ‘Best Bikini Body’ in a poll of some sort. Couldn’t prove it by this movie as she was pretty much fully dressed at all times although clearly she has very nice legs.
The show this evening was The Divas of Motown, three black girls singing hits from the Motown and Soul genre. The songs were nostalgic and the performance energetic. It was the largest crowd I’ve seen at the late show.
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