The rain predicted never materialized and we spent our last day at sea sailing the Sea of Japan, the Tsugaru Straight and the Pacific Ocean. It was a bright, sunny, warm day. We didn’t do much except start to get ready to disembark on Friday. Otaru is on the west side of Hokkaido Island while Tokyo is on the east side of Honshu Island. The Tsugaru Straight is the narrow passageway between Hokkaido and Honshu.

Today we had more swells than any day of the trip. It wasn’t really rough, but we could tell we were at sea. We have had amazingly good luck with good weather and calm seas for our whole voyage. The week before we were in Alaska, the seas were rough and some port calls for cruise ships were cancelled. This week the seas in Alaska are really rough and some cruise lines have cancelled ALL their port calls. Bummer for people on those cruises

No pictures today. Taking it easy and starting to get ready to repack everything. Tomorrow we will be in Tokyo for an excursion and then spend our last night on the ship. It will be sad goodbyes to passengers we have met and crew that we have come to know. Then it will be two nights in a Tokyo hotel. But more on all that later.

Yet another brilliant weather day although rain is supposedly in the picture for later tonight. 75º and sunny for today. We overnighted at the Otaru cruise dock, and this morning we decided to cancel our excursion back into Sapporo so that we could spend the day walking around Otaru. I’m glad we did. We walked for 2.5 miles. (Not so bad except for my Achilles tendon strain which still hurts and slows me down – but I soldier on.) By the way, very few local people we encountered in shops spoke any English at all. Google Translate app can be a life saver, although we didn’t need it. Tourist signs are all in English and Japanese, but go into a store and nothing is labelled in English. Here is the day in a series of galleries. Beware! Lots of pictures.

Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews may show just thumbnails of the pictures. By the way, the pictures look much better on a tablet or a computer than they do on your phone. Just saying.

From the Ship straight up past the Otaru Canal

Bob P: Note the barber shop. Everyone: Note the Pachinko Casino in the last picture. Pachinko is a famous Japanese gambling pastime. See the bird in the picture that I am pointing to? It’s not real but part of the sculpture. Note the old railway line converted into a walking path. The Otaru Canal, once a working canal, is now host to just tourist boats.

Down the Mostly Deserted Miyakodori Shopping Street

Miyakodori Street is mostly deserted because it’s 8:00 am. Some stores are just starting to open. It was very quiet. Bob P: Note the basketball net. Those are fish the woman is laying out for sale when the store opens.

Heading to the Main Shopping Street

Almost every building in town has a sign telling the history of the building. The Bank of Japan building is now an art museum. We were going to go back later and check it out, but we never did.

The Main Shopping Street

It’s Sakaimachidoro Street. Bustling with tourists, shoppers, tour groups, and just people. We stopped in a couple of stores and bought some souvenirs. See the cellophane wrapped fish head at the fish market? See the man arranging shells for sale at his store? See Halloween themes twice? How many times can you spot Elaine? In one picture she is buying a fortune origami for ¥100 (70¢). Lots of glass stores. Lots of chocolate stores including the Snoopy Chocolate Company. Lots of fish markets. Lots of jewelry stores. And at the end, back to the Orion.

I stopped in a drug store along the way and bought some Ibuprofen. I never would have found it on my own. And the store attendant spoke no English, but she did understand Ibuprofen. So she showed me where it was. Or maybe I am now taking birth control pills.

We had to be back on the ship by 1 pm. We sailed at 2:00 pm. Rain expected tonight and tomorrow. Tomorrow is a sea day before arriving at our disembarkation port – Tokyo.

Sailing Away from Hokkaido Island

Dinner tonight was in the specialty restaurant Chef’s Table. Set menu. Different wines paired to each course. Theme: Korea. The five courses described and pictures of four of them. (I missed taking the amuse bouche.)

A cocktail in Explorer’s Lounge and off to bed. Oh, and it turns out it’s not Don and Donna. It’s John and Donna. We traded contact information.

The internet on the ship has been pretty darn good. They use Elon Musk’s Starlink. Getting all those pictures uploaded everyday would have been impossible on cruise ships five or ten years ago.

See you on the morrow.

Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews may show just thumbnails of the pictures. By the way, the pictures look much better on a tablet or a computer than they do on your phone. Just saying.

Warning: Lightly proof read, so excuse mistakes!

Land At Last

Approaching Otaru (Sapporo)

Ah, land at last. We landed at Otaru, the port city for and suburb of Sapporo. It’s a 45 minute drive from Otaru (population 110,000) to Sapporo (population 2,000,000).

And we are docked right near the Otaru city center as the only cruise ship in town. Some pictures from the ship once we docked and before we got off. With beautiful weather, the retractable roof at the pool area was open.

When we got off to go on our tour, we had to clear Japanese Immigration and Customs. Immigration was time consuming. Each passenger individually had to meet face to face with an immigration officer. There was no verbal questioning; in fact, they didn’t speak much if any English. It was all biometrics. But you were digitally finger printed and your eyes were scanned. I don’t know what that told them, but they intently watched the results on a computer screen. Then you were given a stamp in your passport and sent on your way to Customs. We were waved right through Customs, but we saw one or two passengers who were body searched, patted down, and who had all there possessions (pocket books, knapsacks, and camera bags) religiously searched.

Today’s tour was about five hours long – Highlights of Hokkaido, the island on which Otaru and Sapporo are located. It’s Japan’s northernmost island and Sapporo is where the 1972 Winter Olympics were held. Pictures from the bus:

Our first stop was for lunch at a Mongolian BBQ. It was an efficient assembly line production held at the Asahi Beer Hall. Very well done, especially considering there were four busses of cruisers there at the same time. The Asahi Brewery was next door. We all sat, four to a table, where each table had its own gas grill in the middle and one plate full of noodles and vegetables and another plate full of meat (beef, pork, lamb, and bacon). Then you just threw stuff on the grill (with tongs), stirred as it cooked, and helped yourself with the tongs onto your own plates. Everyone got a separate dish of rice and there was plenty of soy sauce. Asahi beer (or another beverage of choice) was handed out too. Good food. Good beer (and as much as you wanted). Alas, we shared a table with one of our least favorite passengers, but we persevered. There was an interesting vending machine at the entrance. See me chowing down at the shot of the long table (Elaine took the picture)?

After lunch we drove around Sapporo to see the city before stopping at Odori Park where we had an hour to wander on our own. The park runs east to west through the whole city. Sapporo is a beautiful modern city. Very clean. The park is beautiful with lots of flowers. Here are lots of pictures. We loved the two little Japanese boys were were playing in the park with their mothers (or nannies). Note the smoking kiosk. Weird. No smoking allowed in the Park. The city was planning on allowing smoking, but apparently the ban is still in effect. The most noticeable landmark in the park is the Sapporo TV Tower. The picture of the Aurora Town entrance is especially for Cindy. Aurora Town is Sapporo’s underground shopping center (which I’m sure is much appreciated in winter when Sapporo gets lots of snow).

When our hour’s wandering was up, we regathered as Viking Tour #17 and we all ascended the tower for viewing the city. There were two elevators to get the viewing platform. The views were grand. There were gift shops at the base, at level one, and at the top. Also at level one there was an expensive looking restaurant. The picture of Elaine is in the elevator on the way down. The next-to-last picture is looking straight down.

Then it was back on the bus for the ride back to the ship in Otaru, just in time for 5 pm cocktails. Dinner was in the World Cafe, and we were early to bed. We don’t sail tonight and tomorrow we will most of the day to explore Otaru on our own. It looks like a nice little town.

See you then!

Another beautiful calm day at sea. Seven straight is a record for us. We have done five days before when crossing the Atlantic. (We have done a bunch of those – NYC to Southampton on the Queen Mary, Montreal to Southampton, Southampton to NYC, Fort Lauderdale to Marseilles, and Barcelona to Fort Lauderdale) This Pacific Ocean has not been like the one we see raging when we stay in Trinidad, California or Depoe Bay, Oregon. From the pictures from our balcony early this morning (7 am), you can see the sun raising behind the boat as we sail almost due west at the moment. And there is increasingly other marine traffic visible – commercial tankers and container ships. Last night was the last night that we turned the clocks back to gain an hour. We will be on Japan time now until we fly out of Haneda Airport in Tokyo next Sunday night.

The good weather and calm seas continued all day. The temperature was around 70º. Great for sitting on the balcony. And we did see some actual volcanos. Dormant ones, I think.. Japan is the most volcano dense country in the world and sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire.. It has more than 100 active ones. More pics from the balcony.

Dinner was in the World Cafe with Don and Donna.

Then we four were off to the Explorer’s Lounge for nightcaps. It was more crowded than usual because instead of the usual piano music, the ventriloquist (and his dummy) were entertaining. We caught the end of the show and his Q&A session. He was pretty good. Elaine had a chance to chat with him. Nice guy.

Tomorrow morning we dock in Otaru, a city near Sapporo, Japan on Hokkaido Island. Every guest on board has to personally clear customs with a Japanese border agent. Then we will be off on an excursion to see the Highlights of Hokkaido. We stay docked in Otaru for another night and see more of Sapporo the following day. Then it’s a another sea day as we sail south to Honshu Island and Tokyo.

History update: For those who wondered and may not have seen the reply to a comment: Of the Aleuts that were taken off Attu and imprisoned in Japan, half died in Japan of malnutrition or disease. When the survivors returned from Japan at the end of the war, they were not allowed to go back to Attu, but were taken to the village of Atka in the Aleutian Islands.

Still sailing open ocean, but we are now in the Sea of Okhotsk. We are getting closer to Japan. Looks the same. Feels the same. It was mostly cloudy today but much warmer. Seas still relatively calm. Elaine did see a whale swim right by the ship while she was on the balcony. (The whale is not in the picture, so don’t go searching for it.) She also saw a pod of porpoises.

Want to see some rough seas on a Viking Ship? Watch this video. It’s the Viking Star in 2019, mostly taken in the Explorer’s Lounge. The ship, identical to the Orion that we are on, totally lost power and came within feet of running aground off the coast of Norway. Passengers were being helicoptered off the ship 15-20 at a time when power was partially restored and the ship limped into port. Not a good cruise to have been on. 450 or so passengers were taken off by helicopter before the rest arrived at port. The story is told here.

History time.

Attu Island is the westernmost island in the Aleutians and the westernmost point in the fifty US states (Yes, further west than Hawaii). The closest we came was our stop in Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island. It has historically been home to 200-400 Aleuts. And it (along with nearby Kiska Island) became the only places in the USA ever occupied by a foreign force. Six months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded and occupied the two islands. The Aleuts were imprisoned and transferred to Japan. Eventually the US counterattacked and retook the island in the deadly Battle of Attu. It remained a military base and/or a coast guard station until 2010 when Casco Bay Coast Guard Station was closed. The island is now uninhabited although the Coast Guard does periodic maintenance of the airfield there for use in possible emergencies. (End of History Lesson)

Today was Viking’s special Brunch served in the enclosed pool area from 12:00-2:00. It was mobbed! We walked by and you couldn’t even get close enough to take a photo of the elaborate food displays. The band played on. We skipped the whole thing and had a delightful quiet lunch in the World Cafe.

Moving on to dinner, we dined in the Restaurant. Here’s the whole meal in pictures. Elaine: Cream of Celeriac Soup (what the hell is celeriac? – Martha Stewart knows – see link) followed by delicious Scallops. I had Tiger Prawns followed by a Duo of Lamb (roast leg and chops). We both had the Berry Cobbler for dessert. We had a wine from Sicily. All good!

Last sea day tomorrow before we run aground at Sapporo, Japan. There is one more sea day after we leave Sapporo for our disembarkation in Tokyo. The temperature prediction for Tokyo on our last day there is 94º.

Every day is long since we we have passed through a time zone every day since leaving Alaska. So every night we turn the clock back one hour and get an extra hour sleep. The seas remain pretty calm and the weather remains pretty good. There was rain during the night but mostly hazy sun today.

I mixed it up a bit at breakfast. An omelet instead of scrambled eggs. And papaya instead of honeydew melon or watermelon. Always bacon though! And cranberry juice.

At 11 am we attended a one-hour lecture on the History of Japan. Needless to say, it was condensed. There were emperors and shoguns and samurai. There was the Meiji Restoration. There was the arrival of the western powers. There was conquest and expansion. Pearl Harbor. Atomic bombs. And the current democracy that was put into place after WWII. You can read LOTS more if you so choose. Go here.

Lots more reading this morning too. And I started a crossword puzzle. Lunch was in the World Cafe. The food is simply amazing. Today I had some bacon wrapped meatloaf with BBQ onion on top and some Mongolian beef stew with delicious corn and green beans. Elaine had something similar.

I napped. Elaine attended another lecture. I worked on the blog and read some more. Days at sea are pretty tranquil.

Nothing really to report. Here’s a picture of the grand staircase in the Atrium on deck one. The display at the top changes continuously. The second photo is taken from halfway up the staircase looking down. It was taken at 5 pm. You can Lilliya and Tatsiana entertaining the guests with their music (which is lovely). On the right you can the Living Room Bar where we are about to have our nightly libations. If you look really closely, you can Elaine.

We had a leisurely dinner in the World Cafe. Here are pictures of me and my food. Is that a smile or a leer in the first picture? My plate consists of roast lamb with mint jelly, rice with lamb gravy, pasta, and a grilled piece of bell pepper.

In answer to an email question: No, it is not the first time we have crossed the International Date Line. I did it in 1971 on a trip to the Orient (Hong Kong, Tokyo, Kyoto, Bangkok, Singapore, and Taipei) with my mother. I crossed again in the late 1970’s on a trip to Australia and New Zealand with a friend. Elaine I crossed it on a trip to Australia in 1998 and then again on a separate trip to New Zealand in 2010. And Elaine crossed it on her trip to Viet Nam with Mianne in 2016. Those were all by plane. This is the first time we have done it on a ship.

Ho, hum. Another day at sea. Still calm seas. Still good weather. Sunny this morning, cloudy in the early afternoon, and sunny again by 3 pm. Today marks the halfway point to Japan. Three more days at sea upcoming.

Today we attended a lecture on Japan Geography. Japan is 1,900 miles long and made up of 14.125 islands. Wow, that’s a lot. The four main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. The rest are classified as remote. The climate varies from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical and tropical rainforests in the south. We will visit Sapporo on Hokkaido Island (the boat docks in Otaru) and Tokyo on Honshu Island. The population of Japan in 2006 was 128.2 million. Today it is 123.6 million. A small decline, you say? Actually Japan has a severe population crisis. The fertility rate in Japan is 1.3 births per woman – far below the population replacement requirement of 2.1 to maintain a stable population. So the population is aging and declining. And Japan allows almost no immigration.

Lots more reading. I finished my second book and am now reading this that I found on the Viking bookshelves:

Breakfast & Lunch. Normal stuff. Here’s the view down the World Cafe dining area where we ate lunch today. Also there’s a view of outdoor infinity pool and hot tub at the stern on deck seven. A little too cool and windy for outdoor action today.

Dinner tonight in the Italian-themed Manfredi’s specialty restaurant after cocktails in the Living Room. Scenes from the restaurant.

Elaine had the eggplant appetizer and the ravioli from the pasta selections as her main. She skipped dessert. I had pasta e fagioli soup to start and the traditional bone-in bistecca alla florentina as my main. I had some ice cream for dessert. We had a wonderful bottle of Gevrey Chambertain pinot noir. First time I ever remember not being able to finish a steak. It was huge!

See you tomorrow.

Not much to say today, so I’ll be brief.

Sunny again with some clouds in the afternoon. Windy.

Elaine did a 2½ mile walk on deck two – 10 laps. At one end of the ship she had to hang on to the rail because of the wind.

Usual breakfast – BACON!

Usual lunch.

We did some reading on the balcony. It’s 50º, but we are shielded from the wind and the sun shines brightly off the sea right onto our balcony. It’s quite pleasant out there.

Cocktail hour at the Living Room. The artwork shown is the piece closest to our stateroom. That’s Elaine in the elevator. (There are six – four near the stern and two towards the bow. There is rarely a wait for an elevator.) And Elaine with Igor.

Dinner in the Restaurant – the main dining room. I had seafood linguine. Elaine had duck. Both yummy. I had coconut surprise for dessert (not pictured – the spoon is quicker than the camera). The surprise was embedded raspberries.

Then cocktails in the Explorer’s Lounge. Elaine usually has an Amoretto on the rocks. My latest “good night” fad is an Aperol Spritz (pictured) – Aperol, soda water, and white wine or prosecco with a slice of orange. The artwork (photos from NYC) is near the entrance to the Lounge.

Monday Tuesday – Cruising the Pacific Ocean Lake

We had no Monday as we crossed the International Date Line. We went to bed Sunday night and got up on Tuesday morning.

The international date line (IDL) is an imaginary line that runs along the Earth’s surface from the North Pole to the South Pole in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. When you cross it, you either gain or lose a day depending on which way you are traveling. If you are traveling westward, you skip a day, and if you are traveling eastward, you get it back. Read all about it here. We’ll get the day back when we fly from Tokyo to Honolulu. We both got certificates that confirmed we had crossed the Date Line similar to the ones we got for crossing the Arctic Circle back in May on our previous Viking cruise.

Note that I crossed out “Ocean” in the title above. The Pacific is doing an excellent imitation of a lake. Sailing is smooth as silk as you can pretty much tell from the pictures I took this morning after breakfast as we sat in lounge chairs in the pool area facing out to sea. The pool area has a retractable roof, but its been closed on this journey due to the cool temperatures.

Near where we were sitting is this photograph taken by a Norwegian photographer. There’s no explanation of what it is. I don’t know. Do you?

We had lunch in the World Cafe and sat with an Aussie woman who has spent most of her life in America. We know EVERYTHING about her and her kids, natural born and adopted, and about every volunteering job she has every done as well as everywhere they have lived. We shall avoid her in the future. She knows nothing about us and didn’t ask.

After lunch we spent time on our cabin balcony deck. More reading. Some napping. A few more pictures. (Elaine is awake in the picture – I do the majority of the napping.) The captain in his daily noontime announcement said that he expects good weather for the next few days. Kiss of death? We’ll see.

Cocktails in the Living Room Bar as usual. Don and Donna joined us. We four ate dinner in the World Cafe. And then they went to hear the entertaining ventriloquist in the theater. Edgar Bergan and Charlie McCarthy? Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney? We skipped it and had nightcaps in the Explorer’s Lounge. Our photo from the Living Room. I should have had my gimlet in my hand. You can see it in the foreground. Everyone is smiling. That’s my version of a smile.

Not much to report. Breakfast for me was poached eggs and chorizo sausage in a spicy sauce, some bacon (it’s not breakfast without bacon except at home where I never see bacon), and cranberry juice. Elaine fasted.

Then we both read our respective books in the Explorer’s Lounge. At 11:00 we attended a lecture on Captain Cook (and others) searching for the Northwest Passage to Europe. They didn’t find it, of course, because it doesn’t exist. But Cook did a lot of very accurate mapping of Alaska and Canada and ultimately discovered Hawaii. Not a bad find. The Hawaiian natives were at first friendly and traded with Cook’s ship. Alas, on his third visit Cook decided to hold Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief (aliʻi nui) of the island of Hawaii, hostage because the natives stole a longboat belonging to the Resolution. That was a bad idea as the natives killed him and some of his marines. Supposedly, his heart was eaten by the four most powerful chiefs of Hawaii. Most of his bones were eventually recovered. Is all that accurate? So said the lecturer. Wikipedia seems to agree. It’s quite a story. (Aside: we have met up with Captain Cook in various venues around the world that he visited during his voyages.)

Lunch in the World Cafe was excellent. Elaine had Saltimbocca. I had five spices roast duck and some perfectly cooked flank steak with mashed potatoes. We had gelato for dessert.

Then it was more reading and some naps. I filled out the customs declaration and the disembarkation cards required for our visit to Japan.

We can feel the seas now. You need sea legs for walking around. But it’s not by any imagination rough seas. These were taken from our balcony mid-afternoon.

Injury Report

No, not us fortunately. While we were in Kodiak on our tour, a woman on our bus missed the curb when leaving a museum and went down hard. Fortunately two of the women passengers on our tour were retired nurses. They tended to her until the ambulance arrived and took her to the hospital. The woman suffered a five inch gash on her knee and possibly a broken bone. We don’t know if she made back on board or not.

That same day we walked back to the ship from downtown Kodiak. Going into town the guide warned us to walk on the side of the road with the paved sidewalk if walked back to the ship. We did. Another woman and her companion didn’t. She stepped in a hole and down she went. She was able (with help) to get up. Fortuitously, the next shuttle bus came by just at that moment and she got on. No further word on her.

Then last night as we were about to depart from Dutch Harbor, we watched a couple disembark the ship with their suitcases. Viking personnel obviously arranged a ride for them and were with them as they got off. They didn’t appear injured in any way, so we surmise that some family emergency came up and they had to get home.

Cocktails in the Living Room. Yesterday I showed you two of our favorite bartenders. They were both from Bali. This is the third one from the Living Room – Igor from Macedonia. We also see him in the restaurant where he doubles as a wine steward,

Dinner was in the Restaurant. I had Alaskan Rockfish while Elaine had Chicken Breast. We finished up in the Explorer’s Lounge where it was pretty quiet.