Leaving Osaka at 3AM

What a week!  We Dodged one typhoon and are now Slipping Away from our second.

Two days ago we landed in Kobe, jumped on a minibus and visited a sake brewery/museum and the Mt. Rokko Music Box museum. 

To add some excitement, our bus driver turned the wrong way into a one-way street, tried to back out, and bashed into a pole - bam!

Then we got back on board and sailed a whole 16 nautical miles to Osaka. Just to get another port under our belts. 

Here we saw a fabulous aquarium. 

We lined up like these fish to stare at fish. 

But then we got a shock: the trip as we'd been promised was over. No more calls in exotic ports. Our nemesis the typhoon had reached 180-200 mph winds and become the most powerful storm on the planet in 2014. We aren't going to stick around to stare into its 25-mile-wide eye. 

They gave us a couple hours to decide: Cruise or Cancel?

Princess Cruises is giving us (who are still onboard) 100% credit on a new trip. However, many passengers have left the ship 5 days early, along with some performers and crew. They're not afraid of the typhoon, but we are heading to sea for 5-6 days and don't plan to land again until at least one day later than our original schedule. 

I've been pondering the ramifications: 

On the one hand, if we leave then it's 5 days on our own, no hotel, no plan, no speaka-da-Japanese, etc. but also flexibility and excitement. 

On the other hand, here on the Diamond Princess we are warm, well-fed, with 8 friends. We are still seeing Japan from the seaside as we anticipated. All expenses paid. 

Hey, it's travel, right? So we've stayed onboard. 

Our ship's schedule has fallen apart. All plans are disrupted - no casino, no art auctions, lectures cancelled, dining rooms are nearly vacant (buffet still busy though). 

I'm sure things will get back on track, but for now we are easing away from the dock at 3:33 am, heading for safer waters. 

Our Ship Has Come In

It's now 6 am. The sun has come out,

and our ship has finally come in!

My next paragraph will be written onboard the Diamond Princess, God willing. 

He was willing, because we've been underway for 2.5 hours now. Let me flash back to earlier events ... Laurie wanted to walk the 2.5 miles to the ship terminal, so we did, dragging Jim and Ellen along with us. 

We got to the ship with no problems at all, and without getting lost. An hours wait, and we were aboard, thanks to our "frequent-sailing" pals in the group. 

We were brought a glass of champagne to toast our departure. 

As I walked around the ship, I noticed the Seiko slave clocks. Usually there's one master clock and by altering its settings, the captain can change all the clocks at once. 

We had to leave at 2pm to catch the low tide so we could fit under the bridge!

It seemed pretty close from where we were standing. 

This is a big big ship, as you can see from this view looking back along the starboard side. 

Soon we'll be cleaning up and dressing up and walking down to dinner. 

A Day On Our Feet

Yesterday I wrote that we had "fallen on our feet," an English expression for things working out alright after being put in a difficult situation. I didn't realize it also meant we'd be walking for 8 hours today!

We walked to the mall for breakfast, an assortment of baked goods. 

We walked around the waterfront. 

The walking was great, for a few hours. We saw all sorts of buildings ...

people and cars, even a grey 2CV (no picture). And this nifty Abarth. 

We walked quite a few blocks to see a clock tower that turned out to be a gussied-up building used as a wedding chapel -- apparently big business around here. 

We ended up at lunch with a couple from our tour group, in a very classy traditional restaurant. 

I love the decor, smell and quiet of these buildings -- their tranquillity. 

We didn't realize we would get yet another email from Princess Cruises:

More weather - another typhoon disrupting what's left of the cruise! We should have stowed away in this ship which DID leave the harbor. 

Ah well. Nothing we can do. So off we went to a maritime museum. More people watching. Shopping. More walking. 

We went off to the store, bought some Japanese single malt, and ended the afternoon with a drink. 

Then chocolate pastries with Gary and Kay. 

And we all felt better. 

We Move to Yokohama

We drove to Yokohama after checking out of our tourist hotel. We have two days to kill before we embark on our cruise ship.

The weather was awful - notice the guys cycling to work in the photo above?

We drove to Yokohama and on to a specially-designated historical park, which turned out to be a bad idea because it was flooded. Yokohama received 12 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. Notice the picnic area?

We left the park and drove on to Yokohama's Chinatown. We feel our luck began to turn here. The rain stopped. Lunch was great. 

Soup and salad. Rice. Tea.

Beef and broccoli (or some sort of green veg). Noodles with clams.

Pistachio custard and a bill for $20. I'm happy.

We walk and talk and shop. We sit in the sun. It's too hot!

We hop back on the bus and head for our hotel - which has been a bit ornery on the telephone with us, I must admit. When we pull up to the front, we can't believe our eyes!

Now I want you to think back to the first book on Narnia:

"ONCE there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. 

They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs Macready and three servants...

As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first night, the boys came into the girls' room and they all talked it over.

"We've fallen on our feet and no mistake," said Peter. "This is going to be perfectly splendid..."

That's how we felt when we walked into our room in Yokohama's Intercontinental Hotel. Yeowza!

What a gorgeous building and fabulous view!

Yes, we are "stuck" here for 2 days, for the same price as a tired hotel on the main drag in San Luis Obisbo a few weeks ago.

This is going to be perfectly splendid. 

Laurie agrees.

Fast Food or Slow Food - Take Your Pick

Food in Japan is bright, colorful,  eye-catching and mystifying. So many choices. So much small writing on the outside of the packaging. Such prices.

Everything seems to be available via vending mating - giving even more choices. Even the local truck drivers (wearing western ball caps) seemed baffled by what to choose.

And you don't need to be inside to get vending machine choices, they are everywhere in parking lots, along sidewalks, and in the most unlikely places.

Because we have been on the move we have eaten relatively fast food. One night it was a do-it-yourself barbecue - at the table. They bring the raw food.

This is what we left behind after an hour and about 6 extra plates of meat were brought to us.

One day we were free to choose our own restaurant, so we went to the sushi-on-a-conveyor-belt place. The ultimate fast food. A spigot dispenses hot tea into your cup. Choose and grab, eat and stack the plate, choose again -- they total up the number and color of plates and you pay, then dash off.

We haven't fallen for American food chain meals (yet).

HOWEVER nice all this fast food is, it's not really our favorite way to eat. But last night we had an exceptional treat.

We went to dinner with Ken and Casey, two guys who also work for a watch website. Casey is an American photographer who moved to Japan 28 years ago. Ken is a Japanese banker who lived in New York for 20 years and recently returned to Japan. They know each other because they both collect Seiko watches (like me). I had met Ken before in LA, and we arranged this dinner visit to meet up to talk watches and EAT.

Ken chose the Takewaka Ikebukuro restaurant and a special autumn tasting menu for us. The starter included prosciutto, peeled green grapes, some mackerel, okra and a few other items I can't recall or identify. Casey told us about his first visit to Japan - he went home to the US, quit his job and moved immediately to Tokyo. He's been there ever since.

The second course was Dumpling in broth with sea food inside and seasonal mushroom (like truffle) in the broth.

Special autumn box with colored leaves, egg yolk dressed as a tiny pumpkin, bean cakes, crabmeat in a citrus fruit, steamed oyster with sauce, fish roe and special beans threaded onto pine needles.

Fingers are okay for many small round things...

Now the seafood platter arrives! Fish, shellfish, lobster, seaweed.

Ken is a thinker. A thinking gambler of sorts. He invests a small percentage (but huge amounts) of the Japanese public employees pension fund in hedge funds and "alternative investments". Also "cross-border business advice, globalization, financing, asset management, insurance/reinsurance".

Here he is trying to make a huge decision - the best sake to go with the meal. I am trying to decide how to tackle that lobster head with chopsticks.

We watch collectors are a very cheery sort, and we had the waitress in stitches the whole evening.

Next course was a large piece of eggplant underneath a whole bunch of vegetables and some shredded fish. In broth. Very tasty and I don't like eggplant but ate it anyway.

Then a kicked up version of BBQ with all the fixings on a large leaf placed over a burner. The leaf insulates the food from the direct flame and keeps the sauce out of the fire. But you have to be watching it every second.

Either our waitress felt Casey couldn't cook his own, or there was some flirting going on. Anyway, she came over to demonstrate the technique.

After the BBQ was cleared away we had tempura - 3 pieces plus the leaf - with citrus juice and pink rock salt.

More sake! we cried.

Ken said "When the rice comes, the meal is over." Mike said "That's a lot of rice!" It was covered in fish roe (aka salmon eggs).

Casey convinced our waitress to demonstrate on his bowl of rice. This is the first of three ways we ate the fish/rice. First, own its own, second with a broth, third with special herbs and spices.

Notice the bowl is the size of a salad bowl.

Oh, and under the cover is miso soup. And some pickled veg in the bowl behind it. Dinner is over??

Finally the deserts came, along with cups of tea. This is a chestnut on chestnut custard, slices of apple, pear and peach between slices of mozzarella, with a fig, drizzled with caramel sauce. And a mint leaf.

What a meal! And it only took 2.5 hours to consume, eating non-stop with 3 people serving us. My kind of "fast" food.

To work it off we had to walk home a mile underground, and a half-mile on the typhoon sidewalks.

We were glad to see the sign for our hotel, and gratefully staggered up to bed.