Here are some of our thoughts and observations on Japan and cruising. We like Japan! We like their metro/train service. But their cities ar huge. On a 45 minute train journey from Tokyo to Yokohama there was not a single break or piece of open countryside. It is a true megalopolis. The country consists of 4 main islands and 70% of the country is made up of mountains and still has 126m people. There is a lot of bowing involved - it also seems to be the fact ...

Recapping our last day in Tokyo. Left the ship and battled through immigration before a very slow train journey (don't ask!) back to Tokyo. Took a cab from the station to the hotel - all of half a mile which we could have walked if only we could have found the correct exit from the huge station! We had booked tickets to an art exhibition called TeamLab Planets. I'm afraid you will have to Google this as it is virtually impossible to describe. You wade through...

Today we are back in the UK having arrived on Thursday afternoon. However, due to an issue with the blog, i was unable to post this while we were still away! So yesterday was the last full day on the ship. We had sailed for a full day and 2 nights to make it from Northern Japan to Shimizu which is actually slightly south of our final destination, but within sight of Mt Fuji. The sailing day has been very stormy -rough seas and unrelenting rain but the new da...

Yesterday, we landed in Hakodate. We are now moving towards the north of Japan and one can tell the difference with the flowers being later - especially the azaleas and even some cherry blossom! We didnt havea tour booked here, and so we made our own way via a rather circuitous route which took in the Tourist Information Office to Mount Hakodate which wasn’t terribly difficult to find! We got to the cable car (ropeway as they call it in these parts) and took...

Well we are just over half way on our cruise. After a day and night at sea with some strong winds and a bit of a swell, we arrived at Busan in South Korea. This is only al little north of Japan but is very different. They drive on the 'wrong' side of the road have a different language and a different alphabet which was developed to be much simpler and easier for everybody to learn than Chinese or Japanese. Our first visit was to the UN Remembrance cemetery i...