April 15, 2023 Sea Day #1

  We awoke to voices in the hall at 5:33 a.m.  People were in line to get their group number card for face-to-face passport inspection by Japanese Immigration on April 20th. The line extended 45 meters from midship to the theatre entrance.  When you can’t beat them, join them. It took Larry less than 20 minutes to secure our cards, once the rack was accessible at 6 a.m. The cards are needed for re-entering Japan on April 20th at Otaru after the visit to Busan, South Korea April 18th. The rack containing sets of numbered cards was located down the hall in the Atrium by Guest Services. There are seven 45 minute time slots with four sets of numbers per time period, beginning at 10 a.m. on April 20.  People taking tours that day have priority to leave the ship first and did not need these numbered cards. By 6:30 a.m. the line was just in the Atrium area and the hall was quiet. From Cruise Critic posts of earlier cruises with Japan as the main destination plus a change of country to South Korea or Taiwan, the immigration process on the last day in Japan took some time.  We will see tomorrow when we return from our seven hour excursion.

 

   We decided to go to the Promenade Deck on three to walk for an hour before the dining room opened for breakfast. However, due to the pouring rain and the wet deck, all of the exits were roped off so we walked the halls of decks 1 to 5 accumulating 6,253 steps. 

    Today Westerdam is cruising in the Sea of Japan (also known as East Sea) from Fukuoka north to Kanazawa. At 6 a.m. this morning the temperature was 14° C, the wind was over 30 km per hour and it was raining. There were only 10 of the 24 groups of cards left to be picked when we returned from breakfast. By noon the rack was empty.

    Another letter about Japan Immigration was in our mailbox, this time explaining the procedure tomorrow in Kanazawa for exiting Japan. When we return from our excursion we will proceed through Japanese Customs and Immigration as leaving Japan and not be able to go ashore again before we leave Kanazawa. Then there will be a more formal re-entry when we return to Otaru, Japan after visiting Busan, South Korea.

    We attended the Cruise Critic Meet & Greet at 10:30 a.m. in the Rolling Stone Lounge. Everyone received a preprinted name tag and lanyard. There were 116 people on the list with around 80 attending. The mixer was to complete all 40 boxes by having another person initialing a box and finding a different person who had the experience to sign other boxes. An example is “Has found a cruising duck on a cruise ship” or “Has crafted a sculpture” or “cruised in six continents”. We could initial the box for two of the three. One person was able to get initials for all the boxes in the 20 minute challenge. There will be another Cruise Critic Meet & Greet on the cruise which goes to Seattle on the second April 27^th since the ship will be crossing the International dateline eastward and gaining the day we lost going to Japan 

   Dr. Ping Wing Kam gave his first of two parts on the History of Japan to a full theatre. We had lunch in the dining room with a couple from Australia and another couple from Delta, B.C. Next was a port talk about Kanazawa and Busan, South Korea. Then enjoyed Afternoon Tea in the upper level of the main dining room on Deck 3. Tonight was a dressy attire night and a special “gala” menu. The table of six included Ari and Susan from Michigan and Sandy and David from southern Utah. The dining room was busy. Dinner took almost two hours but the conversation was interesting as both David and Ari worked internationally during their careers. We were still able to fit in the last half hour of the Ballroom Dance Hour and reconnected with Pat and Pete from Britain. They had asked us a few evenings ago to tell them what kind of dance they should be doing when a new song was played. They missed us yesterday. We had skipped dancing because the was no time after dinner which was delayed  because our excursion yesterday returned close to 6 p.m. and we were much later going to dinner.

Steps 12,236