April 25, 2023 Yokohama, Japan Day #2

Today is the second day in Yokohama. Checking the ship’s Navigator app in the shore excursions area, there are no tours planned at such short notice (36 hours). There is a shortage of English speaking Japanese tour guides, so it was not surprising that there were no ship excursions arranged.

The original schedule had today as a Sea Day with a visit to Kushiro, Japan, the following day. The Kushiro visit was cancelled, just two days ago, thus the extra day in Yokohama. We planned to walk over to the NYK Maritime Museum and explore the NYK ship Hikawaumaru, built in 1930 and see the Silk Museum.

The temperature this morning at 8 a.m. was 12° C wind N 16 km per hour and mostly sunny. We went to the dining room for breakfast and the couple after us was Doug and Judy so we sat together for breakfast. We planned to meet later to tour the NYK Maritime Museum.

We needed to post the blogs for last two days using the wi-fi in the terminal, before meeting Doug and Judy. While waiting for Larry to finish, I looked around the huge arrival hall and spotted a counter tucked away on which sat a Charging Station, a pay phone that could make International and domestic calls and a money exchange machine. The fee for the charging station was 200 yen ($2,03 Cdn) for 30 minutes.

The NYK Maritime Museum was less than one kilometre away along the waterfront. You could see the ship – Hikawa Maru – from the Westerdam. We passed through the water front Yamashita Park, which had lovely gardens full of snapdragons, pansies and other flowers which we has seen two weeks ago on our walking tour. This time the rose garden was in bloom too. There were people walking their dogs and several groups of day care children in their coloured hats as well as school girls and boys in their uniforms strolling the park.

The cost to enter the NYK Maritime Museum, which was the ship, Hikawa Maru, was 200 yen each for seniors. The four of us spent over an hour touring the ship. It was built in 1930 as a cargo passenger liner for the Yokohama to Seattle route which took 13 days to cross the Pacific Ocean. It was built at the Yokohama Dock Co. which later became part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. It was state-of-the-art at the time with first class, tourist class and third class areas. There was even a Deluxe suite which was once used by the Prince and Princess of Japan when they were returning from the Coronation of King George in England. It had its very own bathroom, bedroom and sitting room. The first class passengers only had a sink in the bedroom and had to use a common first class toilet and shower room. First class had a dining salon, reading & writing room, post office, lounge, smoking room and even a first class nursery. We did not see the dining room for the other classes. Third class only received the typical Japanese meal of boiled fish. The engine room in the centre of the ship was four decks high. The engines were made in Denmark by M.A.N.-B&W Diesel. Beside the engine room on the middle deck, there was the galley. There was a promenade deck. On the top deck was the Bridge and under it was the captain’s office and bedroom. On the bridge was a note that the ship’s whistle was blown daily at noon. We were off the ship only a few minutes before we heard the whistle and suddenly 50 or 60 students were all running in one direction, supposedly to return to class.

Larry gave Doug and Judy directions to get to Chinatown and we walked over to the Silk Museum, just a few streets away on the way back to the ship. We saw more sidewalk tile designs. The cost for the Silk Museum was 300 yen each for seniors. It covered two floors explaining the processing of silk from extracting the thread from the cocoons of the silk worm to the making of the silk fabric. The silk worms originally came from China and the boom years were from the 1860s to World War I. The silk merchants sold raw silk and produced at first handkerchiefs, then scarves and intricately designed fabrics for export. Silk takes dyes very easily due to its structure. The silk worms favourite food is mulberry bush leaves. Emerging from its egg, a larva feeds on the mulberry plants. On the 25^th day of life, the larvae emits a filament to create the cocoon. Once the cocoon is made, it is harvested and put in a boiling alkaline solution that dissolves the Sericin coating of the filament. This leaves the fibroin fibre which is extracted and combined with several other fibroin fibres to form a thread which is dyed and woven into fabric. The pupae containing cocoons are harvested before the pupae emerge. They are killed in the boiling process. One necktie requires 140 cocoons, one kimono requires 9,000 cocoons, one blouse requires 415 cocoons and one scarf requires 110 cocoons. In the gift shop, the scarves were at least three times the cost of the neckties! There was a machine demonstrating the creation of the thread and another larger machine showing the process taking the filaments and adding them together to form the thread.

Exports to America and Europe began in 1859 after Japan had opened to International trade. A central railway was built in the early 1870s to expedite transfer of cocoons from the regions around Yokohama which had used a special “Silk Road” circuit to send the cocoons to Yokohama. Until 1929 silk was a major export of Japan. When we exited the building the sky was full of clouds that appeared to likely give us rain in the next few hours.

All that was left for us to do was return to the Red Brick Warehouses for a little bit of shopping. Claire found a nice leather iPhone carrier. Then we needed to use the 884 yen coins that we still had. We found an ice cream store selling ice cream for 440 yen for a cup of green tea flavoured soft serve ice cream leaving us with just 4 yen in coins. The ice cream was delicious.

In the courtyard between the two warehouse buildings, a 10,000 square foot tent was being constructed with beer advertising on it. I assumed that it was in preparation for Japan’s Golden Week celebrations that begin on April 29. It is a country wide week long holiday. [On May 2 is Shōwa no Hi ,the annual celebration of Emperor Hirohito’s birthday.

May 3 is Kenpō Kinenbi or Constitution Memorial Day which commemorates the start of Japan’s democracy in 1947 under American trusteeship. May 4 is Emperor Hirohitoi’s birthday known as Midori no Hi or Greenery Day, for his fondness of nature celebrated since 2007. Then on May 5, the nation celebrates children during Kodomo no Hi or Children’s Day.]

Before returning to the ship, all passengers needed to report to Japanese Customs and Immigration to officially leave Japan. It was just part of the process to return on board. Our passports were stamped as exiting the country and once on the ship we could not leave again while in Japan.

Departure was at 5 p.m., when the bow viewpoint was opened with access from Deck 4. Several hundred passengers witnessed the departure from the dock as people waved from the terminal’s grassy rooftop. Westerdam backed out and turned toward the Yokohama Harbour Bridge passing under it to enter Tokyo Bay, then cruised into the Pacific Ocean on a revised route to the east south east of the original planned route. The ocean waves were higher than in the bay. The ship rocked even though the stabilizers had been set.

There was a fierce storm predicted due to a low pressure trough making its way through China, the Sea of Japan, northern Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. The captain is taking a more southerly route to avoid the worst of the storm, but we will still encounter four or five meter waves and feel the ship rolling for the next few days.

We went to dinner in the dining room sitting with Pete & Linda, whom we had met on the previous weeks cruise and Stacey & Sherilyn from Las Vegas. They were a generation younger than the rest of us and they told us about their land trip in Japan before the cruise. Service was quite slow in the dining room. It took over two hours for dinner so we missed the first thirty minutes of ballroom dancing. There were several new dancing couples. Dancing was a bit of a challenge from the sudden lurches as waves crashed into the ship. Walking around the ship, people were holding on to the railing. The captain’s announcement stated that rolling and rocking of the ship will continue for several days.

The dancers had a challenge for their show, with some technical issues, sound issues and the rolling of the ship. The theatre is at the front of the ship which strikes the waves first.

There was a notice to move out clocks ahead one hour overnight.

Total steps 14,041