Viking Gems of China and Japan Day 20 – Mostly at sea, plus Japan Immigration
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| Our journey from 4:00 yesterday afternoon until 3:00 this afternoon |
We slept in this morning, awakening after already passing through the small channel in Japan to reach the eastern side of the islands. We headed up to breakfast with anticipation. If you've followed our previous travels, you're already familiar with our habit of asking chefs if they know how to make biscuits and sausage gravy. To date, not one of them had ever heard of the dish. But that didn't stop them from trying. A couple of days ago, we talked to one of the head waiters, Scott, in the World Cafe about it. He talked with the chef and last night, told us it would be ready for us this morning.
It was close to the traditional dish with a couple of exceptions. First, rather than buttermilk biscuits, they used puff pastry. It wasn't what we asked for, but it was a very interesting and tasty variation. The second thing was what had confounded all the chefs - crumbled sausage. Like the others, she chopped link sausage. It tasted good, but was different.
Afterward, Chef Isabele came over to see how we liked it. We told her it was great, plus the differences that we noticed. We think that it is great that the chefs are willing to give things a try, and we appreciated our special breakfast today.
This morning's game was ring toss, once again with the officers playing against the guests. It proved to be quite difficult with many folks, including us, scoring zero points in some rounds.
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| We started on the floor |
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| We finished by tossing from the stairs |
In the end, the guests won this one, and there were many cheers in the atrium. Once again, the officers were great sports, and everyone had fun.
We returned to the room for a bit. The sailing here is quite pretty as we make our way through a channel dotted with tons of islets popping out of the water everywhere.
Funny story - I looked back at our blog entry from our last visit to Hiroshima. I photographed these exact islands the last time we sailed in. How funny is that?
We went to 12:15 trivia, determined to get off the second-place platform today. While we had good intentions, we once again finished with the silver. The winning team today actually won outright with a stellar performance. We were three points out of first on a tough trivia day. The misses are below.
- What word, invented by Sir Thomas More, means that everyone works in perfect harmony?
- We guessed Synchronicity, but it was Utopia
- Who is the second most frequently referenced person in the Bible?
- We guessed John, but it was David
- Which Beatle played the bass guitar?
- We guessed George, it was Paul
- Which country is credited with pioneering exchanging gifts at Christmas (Italy, Denmark, or Turkey)?
- We guessed Denmark, but it was Italy
- How many times are there in a standard set of dominoes?
- We guessed 64 - it was 28
- What Italian word means "scratched drawings" and is commonly used in English?
- We guessed "engrave" - it was "graffiti"
We should have one more chance for redemption before the end of the cruise.
Viking put on a nice seafood BBQ lunch today, serving food on the Aquavit Deck on the back of the ship. Grilled langaustinos, oysters, and scallops were available along with all the usual goodies at the World Cafe buffet.
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| Langaustinos |
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| Scallops on the left, oysters on the right |
We watched the sail-in from the Explorers Bar. It was a beautiful, sunny day and a lovely arrival.
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| Silver Paradise Monument |
In the Small World category, Arlona was wearing a Detroit Lions t-shirt today. I had noticed a man wearing one yesterday. He saw us and came over to chat. After comparing the typical "where are you from" notes, we figured out that for a period of about five years in the mid-1970s, he and I lived ten houses, or about 865 feet away from each other in Southfield, Michigan. What are the odds?
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| My house marked in red, his in green |
Everyone on the ship had to go through face-to-face immigration in Japan today. Everyone had to disembark with their passport and some required paperwork. On other trips with similar requirements, the ship has called rooms, floor by floor, to help temper the traffic. Not today. There was mass confusion and a line reaching two floors as all 854 passengers crammed together to try to get through immigration at the same time. We decided not to play, so we waited in our room for an hour until the idiocy subsided. After about an hour, we went down and weren't happy to see that the line was still running from the gangway at midship all the way forward, almost to the Star Theater. We got in line and waited. The entire process took about 1:15. About two minutes of it was at Immigration or Customs. The other 1:13 was waiting in line. Viking could have handled this better by calling groups down by floor, muster station, or just about anything other than all crowding to get through the process.
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| Welcome back to Japan |
The issue was that we had a reservation in the Manfredis' private dining room at 6:00. Friends that we met on our Antarctic cruise, Bob & Sonja, set up a dinner for a group of us, including our other cruise friends, Paul and Emily, from both our world cruise and Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabia trip. Dinner took 3.5 hours, but it didn't seem like it as the 11 of us all chatted and exchanged stories the entire evening. With folks from South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and New Zealand (plus several originally from Michigan, like us), we all had a lot to share with each other. It was a great evening and a big part of what we love about cruise travel.
Tomorrow, we'll take a tour that will bring us to a temple and then back to the peace park where the atomic bomb detonated. We will also get to visit the museum at the park that we missed the last time were were here.
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