Second half of the cruise

Kim in Otaru

We got off the ship in Otaru at the tourist  information centre where you could get free wifi. People get handed a card with a  username and password that lasts for about two weeks. This free wifi works in other parts of Japan too. Fortunately it is pretty fast compared to the ship’s Internet so, it’s worth using. There were quite a few people having trouble logging in because it was case-sensitive. I was able to assist a couple of people and they were grateful. However there was nowhere to sit and use the Internet. Outside was really bright and that made it almost impossible to see the screen. So we huddled under a tree, in the shade, with a few other tourists.

Next to the tourist place was a shop that sold some Japanese tea pots made from iron. They were  really well made and quite beautiful. Unfortunately I have no room left in my suitcase and they were around $300 each, so a bit hard to justify buying one. We went walking around the streets, which were very wide and open, with plants, growing as a hedge in the middle of the road, being manicured by three men with scissors. You could hear a rapid snipping sound. It was amazing really, I can’t imagine even Peter Cundall taking that much care to trim a hedge.

Sushi for lunch

We then visited a sushi restaurant that was quite nice. Kim was not that impressed. She is not a fan of sushi. I ordered enough for two, but Kim couldn’t eat much, so I forced a bit extra down. 

The next stop was in Hakodate, but when we arrived it was rainy and foggy. About all we wanted to do here was go on the cable car. The cable car went up a mountain, but that was covered in fog, so a bit pointless going there really. So we decided to stay on the ship and have a relaxing day. I taught Kim how to play draughts (checkers) and was fortunate to win every game. Kim is very competitive and a quick learner. At the time of writing she has beaten me a couple of times with one draw. One of the onboard activities this day was indoor carpet bowls. Kim and I were joined by a couple from South Africa and four Japanese women. It looked like most of them had never bowled before. Some of them bowled with the wrong bias, others too hard. We were organised into a tournament, where the winner played on. I was the final victor in the end. The Japanese ladies were all clapping and I felt like a champion for a few seconds as I held my prize, a plastic drink bottle, in the air and did a small victory bow to them in appreciation of their enthusiasm.

The bizarre floats of Aomori

Our next stop was in Aomori. We got a taxi to the train station that had free wifi and we did a bit of catching up with emails and social media. It was pretty shocking to hear about the terrorism in France. Kim was having heaps of trouble with her phone as the wifi was so slow for her. Compounding the problem, Kim had her Facebook account locked because of unusual activity from someone accessing her account on a Mac OS machine. She tried to get the account reinstated but the Internet was very slow for her. Fortunately and unusually, my phone worked quite quickly, using the same Internet access point. I rebooted her phone twice and closed all the applications other than the browser, but it made no difference. Two iPhones, the same wifi, but completely different performance, one quite fast, the other at snail’s  pace .. go figure. This sort of thing makes me think what a joke technology is sometimes.

In Aomori we visited a museum of historic pageant floats. The celebration of this event goes back nearly 1000 years with a failed military coup attempt. Originally little paper cubes with candles were floated down the streams.  That got extended to larger, lit up cubes that got carried down the street. Finally this evolved to really elaborate, illuminated paper sculptural floats that take teams of people ages to prepare, and a whole museum dedicated to their display. I was impressed in the end, after originally thinking originally a museum of pageant floats would be pretty boring. 

Flash looking bridge in Aomori

Lastly we went into a high-rise shopping centre with an observation deck and could see all over the city and into the mountains. The bay side city was surrounded with forest and misty clouds descending on the mountains. You could see our cruise ship in the port and a big and impressive looking bridge leading to the port. While we were here we got onto some pretty fast wifi. Kim’s phone was working well again. Some information coming back on Facebook was telling us about some pretty severe weather back home, with snow in most places and West Beach in Burnie being half washed away in the storm. It’s good to get away from Tassie in the middle of winter, but you also get the feeling of missing out.  Snow is a pretty special event when it happens back home.

We have now finished now our cruise, and caught the bullet train to Osaka, Japan's second largest city. We still have another six days to look around Japan before we come home.