Boog's Blog

All day city and temple tour. Continued warm sunny weather. Good that we brought lots of rain and cold weather gear.

Not at all clear to me why there is camping here, especially long-term camping. Maybe it’s the river access. May be a development site for Expo 2030.

We elected for the 6 1/2 hour excursion. We picked a long one with lots of bus riding and apparently a good deal of walking and many steps. The main reason we picked this is it included a city tour in addition to a temple and the fish market, and another market, local street market.

Tour write up

Very large port area with the ability to accommodate containers ships that hold 23,000 containers

Many Russians, in Busan, because of the port. Particularly fisherman who use the port to offload and then go back to sea.

Very likely the best temple we have seen. Far too many pictures of a spectacular location overlooking the sea with very colorful Korean glue paintings where the glue is designed to repel insects.

Italian food, dinner, the usual.

Bus and ferry ride out to Miyaja Island famous for oysters. We did not want to go on the peace museum for nuclear or any similar excursion.

Itsukushima, also known as Miyajima, is a small island in Hiroshima Bay, western Japan. It is known for its forests and ancient temples. Just offshore, the giant, orange Great Torii Gate is partially submerged at high tide. It marks the entrance to the Itsukushima Shrine, which was first built in the 12th century. Nearby, the Museum of History and Folklore has cultural artifacts in a 19th-century merchant’s home.

This is a world heritage site and possibly the first or third most beautiful island in Japan, or most scenic spot. Guide may have said Sendai Pineforest on the list of three.

Apparently, the island is famous for two treats in additional to the above, mentioned the maple leaf goodies, which we will try separately.

Apparently, there are two styles of “Okonomiyaki,”. The one in Osaka and the one here has to do with order and adding the ingredients. Pancake here looked a bit more like a crepe.

French restaurant dinner

A big temple and garden excursion

Koichi Temple is one of the 88 Temple pilgrimage bris pilgrimage is a very difficult one as the mountain show some of the challenge.

Rice, one time per year, due to shift of diet to bread and noodles for lunch. Used to do two crops each year here.

The above was stated, as fact by the guide. Hopefully in the comments, Tom or another will verify if the Japanese diet has changed with rice, being less important or even very important, my understanding was always related to the political power of the rice farmers.

Before we leave the temples, a bit about the 88 temples.

https://www.88temples.info/31/

A pilgrimage we contemplated and rejected because of its difficulty.

Makino botanical garden

Not a sculpture garden, but a true botanical one with almost every plant labeled and different sections in this typical of botanical gardens. Later in the trip, we will see sculptured or designed ones.

Very warm today. Very sunny today. Very warm I may have mentioned that.

A tour welcoming party. Just before George took this picture.

Spent another night in Kobe. Most others in our group, headed out to Kyoto. We decided to explore more of Kobe on foot.

Kobe mural art project

Lunch in Kobe. Patisserie salon de thé. A significant French influence in this town.

Overall a quiet relaxing day. Highlight was QB getting socks – her size……not so much.

We bagged the tours today, so as to spend time in the city of Kobe. Little need for us to do the side visits to Osaka, Nara or Kyoto – all popular tours.

Kobe is an overnight stop. We get at noon and leave at 7 PM the following day. Kobe is located of course not far from kyoto , Nara and Osaka with easy access by train

You might notice two sets of chopsticks on my tray. . Originally there was one and in the middle of eating they brought me a second set of chopsticks. I turned on Google Translate to ask why, they explained maybe you would prefer this type or maybe you would like these better.

Overall, basically a day of sleeping late eating a lot walking a lot and getting back to the ship for dinner.

Tom provided this link so one can track where we are port to port:

https://www.cruisemapper.com/?imo=9703150

Today’s itinerary is first to a very famous shrine via cable car, lots of steps. The tour was not well attended due in part to steps and an up charge. Next, a very famous fish market for sashimi lunch.

Kunozan Toshogu Shrine

Shizuoka is the number one green tea producing region started by the final Shogun. When the Meiji era started, they needed to find jobs for the samurai Warriors, who were unemployed. Keep tea plantations a solution.

Shimizu Fish Market “Kashi no ichi” is located in front of JR Shimizu Station.

Very fresh, unfortunately lots of salty stuff I couldn’t eat or wouldn’t eat but sashimi was excellent.

Tonight, pan-asian dinner.

Scroll down past this post as newest appears after Tom’s explanatory one. latest is Tokyo 2.

Posts out of order likely due to time zones.

All should revert to normal, soon.

Breakfast tourist tour bus then to the international cruise terminal and loading onto the boat. Possibly better refer to as a Ship.

Meiji shrine and bonsai exhibit at the shrine

Hama-rikyu Gardens. Seawater garden built for the Shogun.

Not a particularly interesting place. It’s main attraction was the contrast between an urban garden and the large buildings surrounding it, tall glass and steel concrete brutalist architecture.

Above at the coffee shop. Boarding was easy and room is lovely. Even has a walk-in closet. wi-Fi is very slow as to be expected.

Wind at 30 knots so dinner before cruise ship pulls out for a very rocking start with big bow waves.

Captain made announcement that it will be a rough night. Batten down the doors etc.

Hi All –

This is your friendly tech support testing the settings of the posting email feeds. After re-configuring the wonderful [?] WordPress site, I’m checking to make sure it actually works. So this message is not a complete waste, here is a picture of a highlight from my recent trip to Japan:

Best Tonkatsu in the world – Tonki, Meguro

Hopefully this and the future posts will appear. So far, there have been two postings from the Boogs Abroad:

• http://blog.boogs.net/2023/10/15/brsj-boogs-resack-japan/
• http://blog.boogs.net/2023/10/17/brsj-tokyo/

With Fingers Crossed – Tom K

Looks like Tom has fixed the unfixable. As many as you know, Tom hates hates hates wordpress. When the boogs return we will discuss alternatives with him; for now it looks like he has the blog and comments working

These melons are quite expensive. The empty slot is about $200. I had several in my business traveling days, but that’s another story. just left this picture out from yesterday and I like it so much I included it for today.

Today is Michelle’s birthday so a plan is being put together. George is very very very badly jetlagged so not clear how this will work out. For those who are interested, keep reading , and the story will be revealed

Among other things, this has a gigantic stationary store. Good for about an hour of looking around at these pencils and pens, quite a few of which were acquired. QB and George have always bonded over stationary. Singapore, Japan, and elsewhere.

We generally find these in Takashimaya

Wandered Shinjuku area: lots of stores, lots of places to see lots of things to poke your nose and kinokonaya, department stores, etc.

Michelle’s birthday party postponed until second night of the cruise. Group could not get it together; group did not have enough energy. Boogs reverted to picnic in Tokyo

In the morning we do a brief tour, and then off to the cruise ship.