FEBRUARY 29, 2008 – KAGOSHIMA, JAPAN

The tap tap tap of the razor was the first sound I heard before the shower’s dripping. Ed dressed and left a little before 7 am. I got up and saw the sunrise over the mountains as we approached Kagoshima. I am excited to be seeing Japan in person. A country and culture which have long fascinated me.
YIPPEE! We turn back the clock one more hour tonite. Such a treat.
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION: We had to complete some questionnaires and sign them earlier in the week and turn them into the purser’s desk.
We lined up at our appointed time and when it was our turn, we were escorted to gather our passenger landing permit. With this in hand, we waited again until we appeared before Japanese immigration officials. They were all in business suits, and of all ages. All were friendly, courteous and spoke better English than some Americans. They had the latest finger print technology. You had your fingerprints taken (via computer: no ink) and your photo was taken. Your permit was stamped and you were off.
KAGOSHIMA PORT: First off: It’s cold here! Locals are in coats with fur collars. The ship’s sale on sweats did well.
This is a brand new pier, and we think we are the first cruise ship to land here. There was a big Welcome Pacific Princess sign on the terminal, and there were tents outside with samples of rice cakes, green tea and sake. You immediately notice how clean, pretty, orderly everything is!
I took Ed over to the flowered “Welcome to Kagoshima” lawn sign so I could take his photo in front of the volcano. A Japanese man with a serious camera around his neck, motioned that he offered to take our photo together. I smiled and gave him my camera. He led us several blocks away from the ship site to the point of the pier and positioned us on a staging area there with the volcano in the rear and took that shot. But he wasn’t done yet! He also took us around to another view and took our photo with the ship in the rear. This is really an interesting picture. I’m going to try embedding photos into the blog but I’ll also put them in the gallery in case it doesn’t work.
They havc a post office, bank, and international phone services available in this small terminal. While I was waiting in the terminal, I was interviewed by a Japanese documentary crew about Kagoshima. They had questions such as: Do you know what Kagoshima is famous for? I answered the volcano and they were very pleased. Did I like sushi? Alas, no. What did I like to eat? I said Yaki Soba, -- blank looks – then noodles – more blank looks, then buckwheat noodles? No recognition there either. I wonder if these are Japanese American dishes?? They moved on with other questions and eventually left to speak with someone else.
Ed got some Japanese yen (100 yen = $1 USD) and we returned to the ship to get warmer coverings. We had a quick bite to eat since there is no food on this changed schedule (due to our later-than-planned arrival). Because of our tour, we had to miss the plaque exchange program on the top deck with the Captain.
TOUR: We got on a modern, comfortable motorcoach which took us to a ferry for a 15 minute ride across the bay to see Mt. Sakurajima, the local volcano which erupts with some regularity adding to the land mass around here and the anxiety of the locals. We had the good luck to see some shadows and sunshine here and there on the volcano but alas none of our photos do justice to it.
So we took the bus back to the ferry: the bus drives onto the ferry. You can stay on the bus or go up top for a view but the ride is only 15 minutes. Now we headed to a villa with a large, gorgeous garden. These lands were traditional, old Japan. There are some shops on the grounds and a modest museum with many artifacts from the feudalistic era. But most of all, we saw CHERRY BLOSSOMS! It’s cold here and this is a type that blossoms in this weather.
Along the route, many other sites were pointed out to us. We note that the apartments and houses are obviously very small, as are almost all of the cars on the streets. There is an robust trolley network for transport.
TAIKO: 5 busses arrived at the same time and so we had a little wait in the cold wind to rejoin the ship. Everyone was supposed to be on board by 4:30 pm and there was a drum group scheduled for 4:40 pm. We got on board promptly at 4:30 but there were many others yet to board. And the drummers began before we got on the ship. We had invited Twyla and Dave to join us on the patio for the drum concert and when we called, they were ready.
You have to imagine multiple drums including the enormous, several ton Taiko drum, on the pier. There were initially 5 drummers; later we established that they were all girls. If you’ve never seen a Taiko drum demonstration, you won’t be able to appreciate what a treat this really was. The girls played non-stop for over 45 minutes. In addition to being excellent musicians and athletes, they are also graceful in the choreography of their movements.
The girls were later joined by two men, one older, one probably 20, who began to play drums also. Along the way, one of the girls played the shakuhachi (sp), a Japanese flute. There were many Japanese dignitaries around along with what looked like locals and news media. Among these was a lady in traditional kimono who began dancing gracefully with some young women in business suits who had begun to dance to the drumming.
The Captain was watching this all from the extension of the bridge on the side of the ship. The last person to return to the ship was the physician from the clinic. When the concert had ended, he began the process of loosening the lines. The people on the pier continued to wave to us and call greetings back and forth for some time after we were away from the pier. The taxi drivers put their white gloves on their windshield wipers and turned them on to wave goodbye to us (how clever is this!).
As you can imagine, this was a really outstanding visit for many reasons but the icing was the hospitality and reception from these local people. They really wanted you to experience Japan and Kagoshima in particular.
DINNER: The Fab Four as usual. Twyla said they saw Erna on the shuttle bus and adopted her for the window shopping in town. She’s really worried about Henry as he isn’t bouncing back as she’d hoped; he’s in bed most of the day. We understand and share her worry but he wouldn’t be better off anywhere else.
I downloaded the 200+ photos Ed and I took today and reduced the size of the ones in this blog.
ENTERTAINMENT: A hypnotist who’s supposed to be funny. You know how I feel about this kind of “entertainment.” Ed enjoys it though and I was surprised when he said he was tired and wasn’t going.
So: I didn’t get nearly enough of Japan but I look forward to seeing more of it in the future. For now, we’re on our way to Shanghai where many on the ship will get off to go visit the Great Wall and other sites in Beijing.
FEBRUARY 28, 2008

WHEE! The ship was up and down, back and forth, around and around all night long. Tilt a whirl it was. As we were cruising (well this is much too genteel a term) along last night, one of the casino workers, stumbled over to the window, looked out and said: “Captain, what in the hell are you doing?” He was trying to outrun a storm as it turns out. The final impact means that we will be late into Kagoshima as you really can’t run a ship very fast in a storm.
We woke up late as it turns out but I got showered and ready pretty quickly to make it to the first talk of the day.
THE SMALLEST ROOM: Our Japanese cultural speaker talked about the bathroom, baths (including sand baths which I gather some passengers are going to seek out in Kagoshima), and the various architectural differences in Japan. She always creates a tasteful and very Japanese looking stage setting as the backdrop for her talks. As with so many of these speakers however, I wonder about some of their background which is often left empty. The theologian is one example and she another. She clearly has traveled and lived in Japan many times and her business is around ikebana and such, but more details in writing would be interesting.
TRIVIA: The crocks were in place and ready. Eric has some sea sickness and that explains why he lays down almost flat in the chair and appears to go to sleep for these sessions. Val tells him: “go to sleep, darling. I’ll wake you when we need you.” And she does wake him when we need his input on a question, usually one around a date, whereupon he’s usually right and always adds the admonition: “I know because I was there.”
We had a phobia and question and the resident with the ethical challenges looked it up (she did find this one it turns out) and gave the answer. The group had already settled on an answer (which as it turns out was wrong and was my contribution which was an educated guess backed by some rationale) and Ed and I gave her feedback about how it wasn’t fair to change it, etc. etc. Val was our scribe and she didn’t make any changes so it stayed that way.
We didn’t win and we didn’t see the prizes for today so we didn’t know whether to be happy or sad.
I’ve been trying to think of how to describe Val and Eric so you could get a clearer picture of why I enjoy this couple so much. Val has a Maggie Smith quality about her: almost imperious but not really and always with a genuine sweetness and charm. Her accent is (to my untrained ear), that rather upper crust British accent. She’s quite bright and indulges Eric in a rather “of course” manner. Eric is white haired and white moustachioed with a wide smile, usually seen after he’s accomplished something mischievious. The closest description I can give is of a British officer in India in the helmet and khaki uniform – with without the pomp. You could mistakenly think he’s a little dotty if you didn’t pay attention. He’s obviously bright but clearly has some health limitations which they never discuss but clearly mean they must adjust some of their activities to manage.
LUNCH: the service in the dining room is horribly slow since Sydney and the new personnel. We finally left after our entrees were finally facilitated by Rod who was walking by, when it became clear we were not going to make Prof. Giles’ last lecture if we didn’t hurry.
Back in a corner a large table had been created with a dolphin balloon and a birthday party for the (now) 7 y/o on the cruise. Fr. Cribbin had been invited I’m sure because he gives the girls all his trivia win prizes. It was a cute event to see here.
FINAL AIR OFFENSIVE: You know I don’t care for battle stories, photos or movies, but I enjoy these lectures with their stories, photos and such when done by folks who have a direct connection. I am especially appreciative of Prof. Giles compassionate treatment of the conditions of the Japanese citizens and soldiers. He clearly lays out the environment in which their militaristic bent was developed, but this was a function of the leadership more than the population, which like most citizens in countries, are merely followers of such doctrines as they continue to try to live their everyday lives without making more trouble for themselves.
PHOTO CHALLENGES: We invited Dave and Twyla to come up to our room so we could download Dave’s photos to the hard drive and put them on a disk for him. He has about 700 by now, some quite good, and some of things where we didn’t get the shot or the experience. He didn’t have the cable for his camera to computer hook-up since he didn’t bring his computer. We did manage to find a way around that and multiple other problems we encountered (running out of hard drive space—we had brought our external hard drive and found a way to get around that) until we finally got them all on disk.
Now I’ll spend some time showing Dave how to do some basic editing I’ve learned in Microsoft Office Picture Manager.
PASSENGER TALENT SHOW: We ran down to see this since Eric was the finale. We came in as the two little sisters on the ship were doing a skit where the younger girl plays a ventriloquist’s dummy to to the older sister’s Edgar Bergin.
As you may expect, most of it was funny because of how bad it all turned out. One lady who has a little bit of a ditzy edge read some poems she had brought along, not because she’s a gifted reader, but merely to have some spotlight for a few minutes. One fellow deludes himself into thinking he’s a comedian and embarrassed himself by telling some highly inappropriate off color jokes. I had already heard them all but they were not fodder for this event and you could see how uncomfortable everyone was. The staff didn’t have a way to cut this short and no one seemed to know what to suggest. Mericifully he ended rather quickly,
So then Eric appears, clearly fresh shaven but still in his shorts and sockless loafers. He introduced another well known Australian song and began to sing it. They asked all the Auzzies to join along, but not many did. After a minute or to, a lady joined Eric on stage to sing; she carried a teeny Australian flag from a cocktail pick. A little more time and a tall fellow also joined, and eventually, Val and one of the crew appeared waving a very large Australian flag as the body all now joined in song. I’m not even Australian and I found it moving. I loved every minute of it all.
By the way, if you want to ferret out the Auzzies in your midst, simply call out “Auzzie, Auzzie, Auzzie!” very rapidly and it will quickly be followed by a chorus of “uuooh uuooh uuooh!” No I don’t know but it is funny when it’s done.
CAPTAIN’S ANNOUNCEMENT: Because we were slowed down by the bad weather, we will be at least 2 hrs late getting into Kagoshima. We did find out later that the immigration officials will come on board with the pilot so that we won’t lose time on the ground to immigration procedures.
PHOTOS OF DANCERS: Claude stopped us at the photos kiosk to give us two photos from the Guam dancers the other day. One is of Ed dancing with the little girl who directed him in dancing with her, and the other of us with the troupe of dancers. He has a wonderful camera and these are terrific shots. The gift of such memories in the form of a photo is a priceless gift.
DINNER: The six of us again. Hank is still very ill and Erna is very worried. Hank is a cancer “survivor” and is on long term chemo for it so that is very much complicating his recuperation. Still there’s nothing to be gained by trying to get back home to Hawaii. He’s got room, board, a medical clinic and friends here. At home, he’d be alone and have to fend for himself.
The conversation flow was a little better tonite than usual. Ed sits near one couple, and I near the other. I feel like I’m the hostess at a large banquet who’s job it is to keep the guests involved and not feeling isolated.
ENTERTAINMENT: This was an Italian singer who looked Middle Eastern and had a similar sounding last name. He has a good voice but it wasn’t one I enjoy though Ed thought he was terrific. I did like his selection of songs. I did feel a little sorry for him as he tried to get the audience to sing along with him, almost always with little success except from those who drowned his voice out. He was wear a Chinese jacket in black with red trim. I wonder if he thought this was Japanese perhaps?
MEDICATION SCHEDULE: My medication schedule these past few days has required a medication nurse to follow me around. Upon arising, I have a nasal spray, 2 puffs from one drug which are separated by 10 min., then 2 puffs from another drug which also requires a few minutes between puffs. One drug by mouth to be followed 30 min. later by another drug. And 10 cc of Robitussin which I absolutely hate.
And once a week on Tuesdays, we take our malaria pill.
The nasal spray is twice a day, the puffer drugs are three times a day, the oral drugs are four times a day. I made myself a schedule like one I’d do for a patient and I’m still trying to catch up. Everything tastes like Cephalexin and thank God I’m almost finished with the Robitussin as I’m not sure how much longer I can deal with it (Oh come on now Bonnie: you’ve been through worse and you’ve given much worse!)
WEATHER NOW: By this time, the ship is fairly well gliding along the top of the sea and the speed is barely perceptible. I don’t know if I’ve told you, but when we have dancers, the Captain slows down the ship so they won’t be injured in the swaying and bucking of the ship. As soon as the show ends, you can perceive the speed picking up again.
CLOTHES DRYER: We’ve found a way to dry clothes faster in the room. The little refrigerator is in a closet and it stays warm and dry in there. So we hang things in that space for a quicker drying time.