April 12, 2023 Kobe, Japan

Today’s port is Kobe. Kobe is located on Osaka Bay less than an hour by car to Osaka. Westerdam arrived on time and passengers were able to leave the ship by 9:30 a.m. The Rokko Mountains were visible even though it was cloudy and threatening rain. Kobe is the eighth largest city in Japan with 1.6 million people. It is home to the nationally famous Kobe beef.

We had breakfast in the dining room since our excursion was in the afternoon. We sat with a couple form Hawaii and a woman from Netherlands. We didn’t need coats for our half hour walk on the Promenade (Deck 3) after breakfast. The Silversea Muse was also in port today. When we returned to the stateroom there was a cute towel animal sitting on the bed and two dark chocolate wafers. We have opted to not have the evening turndown (of the bed sheets) when the towel animals usually appear on “Dressy” evenings, which was last night. There is a cruise terminal in Kobe with free Wi-fi. We took the opportunity to post the April 10 and 11 text and pictures to the blog which took less than 25 minutes to upload with the fast internet connection.

Our afternoon excursion was to Osaka, on a bus with 37 other passengers. In Japan you have to wear face masks on buses and indoors. The drive was about 45 minutes to Osaka-jo Harbour and the Osaka Castle pier. The river cruise was on a flat bottomed enclosed boat called an Aqua-liner. Our guide bought tickets for everyone and distributed them as we stood in line to board the boat. Each ticket had a seat number on it. Our guide announced that we would be siting in rows 11 to 18. Of course, some people may not have heard our soft spoken guide or looked at their ticket and had to be herded to the proper rows for the cruise. Just after the cruise started so did the rain. We passed Osaka City Hall and Osaka Castle. There are many apartment buildings lining the river. The rain ended just before the cruise ended. Back on the bus, the rain began in earnest. We noticed bicyclists with umbrella attached to their handle bars with a pole and clamp system. We drove to the Sumiyoshi-taisha Shrine that was founded in 234 AD by Shinto monks.

Fortunately the rain stopped. The group spent an hour walking around the compound with many smaller shrines within it. Crossing the bridge into the compound , our guide pointed out the orange bridge at the main entrance. It had a steep curve. Later we ventured over to it and found the steps had been added to the deck in order to mount the bridge. There were three shrines to male deities and one to a female deity. At first glance the shrine look identical, but the timbers on the top shaped as “X” are slightly different. For male deities the top of the “X” is cut at an angle ( / ) while female deities are cut horizontally (--). The shrines are well maintained and needed to be re-thatched every 20 years. There are more than 600 companies that donate to the upkeep of the shrine. Each is acknowledged by a red banner. They look the same, except for the vertical white box on the lower half on the side which lists the company’s name. There was about 20 minutes to wander ourselves. We found a large standing stone lantern statue called “Ganbutsu-sho” that was donated 250 years ago by the toy and traditional doll industries. There are over 600 stone lanterns around the shrine of various sizes.

We returned to the ship just after 5 p.m. and went to dinner in the main dining room sitting with Judy and Doug from Tucson, Arizona. After dinner we went to the Rolling Stone Lounge to dance to pre-recorded ballroom music, forgetting to take our earplugs to dampen the loud music. There were several couples at the start, but they left for the 7:30 p.m. movie, Ramen Girl. The music covered Waltz, Foxtrot, Cha-cha, Tango, Salsa and Swing.

Today’s step count was 14,139