Boog's Blog

Caymus wine marketing lunch at a price. QB massage. Lots of free time for reading.

QB went to a line dancing class.

NB: have video saved

A short day with the rice crackers and rice storage visit. This is major rice area. An early ship departure for a day at sea tomorrow

Rice factory tour

This has to be one of the oddest tours I’ve ever been on. All you can see is occasional picture of obsolete machinery and rice crackers moving along a conveyor. Narrow hallway echoes a lot so it was hard to hear the guide.

Good story about Tootsie rolls: a woman we met on the tour told us she used to work at the Tootsie Roll factory in Hoboken. Her job was to write letters in answer to complaints about pieces foreign objects found in the rolls. She would send the apology note along with a complimentary box of tootsie rolls.

Then to old rice warehouse

Early am virtuoso tour. Later virtuoso gathering. All courtesy of our fine and soon to be retired guide.

UNESCO world heritage site, art museum, fine lunch, lantern museum.

Looks like a real city especially compared to the rural area we just came from which was apparently full of bears. According to Tom (see his comment of yesterday).

World heritage open air site and archaeological site of Jamon people from about 3000 BCE. Excavations, buildings wonderful visit. Would’ve been good to have more time to look at the museum.

https://kitano-jomon.jp/en/about_jomon_en/

Next stop the Aomori Museum of Art. Modern art big Chagall pieces for Ballet Theatre staging of Areko

Architecture and space of the museum very strange. Two large exhibition halls.

Next: lunch.

Lunch was at a wedding chapel or hall.

All of the tables had an odd number of chairs. Some had five chairs some seven etc.. No idea what to do when the party is six or eight. I assume that for a party of six they would sit you at the table with seven chairs??

Lantern Museum contains floats from the Aomori Lantern Festival which occurs in August. Floats are constructed of Japanese paper squares, wood supports and are painted and lit.

Aomori is well known for its apples. This is the Apple factory selling everything Apple. The edible type this time

Hell Valley and onsen visit.

Then special dinner.

Same cool temperature with a high about 10°C. Sunny day.

A later start today as the tour or excursion as it is called commences at 10 AM. Time for a relaxing breakfast.

We do not like is the tour guides on these excursions. Never stop speaking into a loud microphone. Airpods in noise cancellation mode solves the problem.

It was marked at 80°C

Then to onsen Hotel no pictures allowed of course. Five or more pools, various types, bubbling, sulfur, chlorine, skin exfoliation, hot cold. Large building with nothing with pools in it.

Seafood lunch included in the tour

Guy described this as barbecue seafood. I don’t know any other name, but it was excellent. All of the seafood was fresh and nice to have it right in front of us. 

Dinner

Once again, we have dropped the planned excursion. Boiling pits of hot mud have been seen before and will be seen tomorrow when we do the onsen trip.

About all the reason in town is a mall. Those who did not go on excursions went to the mall. They like us left after picking up very little.

A couple we met liking it to Walmart

We are here in this quiet town because the ship diverted here after finding out that the cranes where we were supposed to be today were no longer available as the crane Park closed.

Buffet asian dinner

Planned excursion: the caves of Ryusendo. Then coastal view with rocks. In the evening, birthday dinner with Michelle-excellent

As above, Sharon and others pointed out that I pictured the wrong tree in the previous post. Now corrected.

Coast line coming in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryūsendō

Mountain ride to get to the cave; had to go through 17 tunnels.

Cave tour followed by coastal ride to observation point

Sannoiwa

Just some shrooms at a store

Michelle’s birthday party at chartreuse all eight of us

George got a wonderful bottle of wine. Kathy bought a wonderful card.

Rolling ship rocking in 2.5 m waves starboard to port. Not a major problem. Made shower a bit unstable.

We had a planned excursion to one of the breweries , one of several, and then tothe shrine. Too many hours on the bus, so we decided to go into the city by ourselves.

Docking

Trying it. OK but not NYC.

Some of the guide books call Sendai the city of trees

Had a discussion with a native who had lived in America for a number of years. He was helping us try and buy apples, translate their type, taste and see which were crisp.

But it turns out you can’t eat apples in the street and you can’t bring fruit back to the cruise ship so no apples were purchased.

We did have a conversation with him about Trump asking him what he thought the locals thought. Wants to be a king, tariffs, corrupt all the usual things without the fine detail.

Dinner tonight with Kathy and Rick.

After breakfast ride to the ship (don’t call it a boat) and a side trip to Hands in Takashima the ship headed to Sendai. Large city.

Coffee bar on the ship

We will be spending a lot of time there

Taxi ride to Takashimaya

Tom and I used to meet in the food hall every time I came to Japan. The main difference that I noticed now is the lack of free samples that we always got at many many counters.

Sharon‘s questioning if that is a post Covid reaction. Sounds like a good theory to me.

Obvious cheese course

Decided not to go out jazz, dancing, and drinking this evening and turned in a little earlier. No carousing as Sharon says. 

Trip to Kamakura. Ramen – and then Japanese tapas planned. Could not find a Ramen shop that would take anything other than cash so we settled for a perfectly fine soba noodle place. 

This major tourist street is mostly food. We had a pigeon cookie (local thing).

Took about one hour on JR. A little longer if you count time getting to Tokyo station.

A lunch break of soba noodles. Tempura and separately a duck and scallion dipping sauce for the soba.

We arrive at the great Buddha. To enter the temple is ¥300 but cash only; we had no cash and there was no way around it other than a long walk back to the post office to get cash. Instead, some guy said here’s ¥1000 just take it and go in. He didn’t want change and didn’t want me to send him the money by WhatsApp or Apple Pay, just enjoy. A kind person.

George and Michelle acquired some items. It was drizzling outside so the stores wrapped these to waterproof perfection.

New Otani Japanese garden, then Japan traditional craft center with the traditional visit to Takashimaya.

Waterfall not pictured

After visiting the traditional craft center, we stopped for tea at Toraya. Been around since the 1500 hundreds.

Ended up skipping Takashimaya in favor of going back for a nap