Tuesday 27th - back in Busan. Today the excursion was to the United Nations Cemetary and the museum. It was extremely interesting and moving, lots of photos to hopefully upload when I get home. Then we went to Lotte Shopping Mall but you get only an hour and there were 13 floors of shops. They are interesting to look at though and total quality. Sail at 6.00pm back to Japan - the stops here seem to be merely to reload food.and in some cases a change of crew mem...

Toba - Saturday 24thDue to Cecille and John being incorrectly booked on a Japanese speaking excursion to Mikimoto Island we decided to cancel all three of our excursions and have a day wandering the town. This is the first time the Diamond Princess has been to Toba so we were greeted by a water display from the tugs. Went off shore and walked 20minutes to a department store that sold delicacies and small items,. It was going to be further to walk to the town th...

Wednesday 21st we went to Aoshima Island and visited a temple. The coastline was interesting as it was all long terraced rocks they called Devils Washboard. The trip to the distillery was interesting and the liquor was made from wheat or barley or rice. The alcohol content was around 40-50% and there was plenty of free tasting. Thursday was an at sea day and we went and watched as much as we could fit in. Some of the things you want to do or see clash in timing...

Yesterday we went to Nagasaki and it was a very interesting trip. The first stop was at the museum to view the story, pictures and old pieces of rubble found later after the attack. We walked across to the hyper centre where they had a monument, interesting to see bunches of flowers laid at the sight. The next stop was at Peace Park where we were able to walk around and view all of the monuments from countries around the world. Next stop was lunch - this was a tr...

Yesterday we were in Kochi.Our first trip was an hours drive in a coach to Monets Garden. A beautiful garden and the waterlillies were to die for. We had lunch provided, beef hamburger, it was actually a beef pattie decorated around the edges with the pickles, salad and two chunky slices of bread. The entree was a small cup of vegetable soup.Following lunch we drove to the Botanical gardens, very beautiful and very proud people speaking of them, but not a lot dif...