Another day to rest and relax. Again we started with breakfast in the dining room. The same menu as before, but just fine. We shared a table with other English-speaking travelers. Seems like this ship has mostly Japanese, Australians, and Americans, with a few people from New Zealand, Canada and other less well-represented countries. Typical conversation at meals with strangers is about travel: where have you gone? which cruises have you taken? where are you goin...

Today started with breakfast delivered to our room--croissant, fruit and tea for me, and breakfast sandwich, juice and coffee for Philip. Ordering breakfast to the room is the easiest thing to do on days with early shore excursions. It was good and easy and perfectly on time. The breakfast sandwich wasn't that great, but everything else was nice. Phil decided to skip the shore excursion to Kagoshima. I guess the jet lag finally got to him. He planned a spa day a...

I have been looking forward to the days at sea as much as to the days in port visiting places I have never seen. We were up in time to go to breakfast in the dining room. There was a complete selection of everything you might see on a menu at an American hotel, plus a full Japanese breakfast was offered. Looks like there are a lot of Japanese travelers on the ship. I think they planned well to put people at dinner tables with others who speak the same language. ...

The first full day on the ship started slowly and easily. We did not get to Osaka until after lunch and stayed in port until 10 p.m. We had a chance to look around the ship. It has been fourteen years since our last trip on this ship. It seems like so long ago now. The ship is small (fewer than 2,000 passengers) by today's standards but was one of the largest when it was new in the mid 1990s. We have been on this ship twice before: January 1998 for our 25th anniv...

After a refreshing night and delicious breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and left our luggage with the bellman. The ship was not going to be ready for boarding until 2:30 for our grouping so we had several hours to spend in Yokohama. It was an easy walk from the hotel to the Minato Mirai Manyo Club to visit the onsen, a traditional Japanese spa. We went for Dr. Fish, but they didn't have it anymore. On the website I saw that they offered the treatment which...