Now is the season for Japan

I received this article today, from New York Times -

Travel. Click title to view.

Six years ago, I went to Japan, on a 19 night cruise on Princess Cruises, from Osaka, Japan, crossing the date line, then over to Seattle, Washington. It was a great adventure.

My journey began with two days in Osaka. The cab was to be $200 to my hotel, so I found that the airport had transportation, that I could purchase, for @ $16 one way. I then had to exchange American money for Japanese money. It takes a lot of money here, so I had to do this about 3 times during my stay. Once in the city of Osaka, to exchange money, you had to go into a bank. It was like going through a "loan" process, so very time consuming.

Our hotel was a Holiday Inn. The room was tiny. The bed was up against, the wall, on one side of the room. And there was a window over the bed, that when you opened it, there was a walkway outside at window level. The bathroom was a bathroom kit. We had to step at least 6 inches up, to get the ground floor of the bathroom. You had to climb into the tub/shower. Amazing. We stayed two days. Our first day, we did a lot of walking, and my feet had blisters. The next day, we took a city tour, and everyone spoke Japanese, and it included a sit on the floor lunch. I had no idea what the food was, so all I ate were two soups. I think there was two kinds of raw fish, but I wasn't about to eat it. So I was fairly starving, by the time dinner came. We walked to an Outback Restaurant. We ordered the most expensive thing, ribs, $ 10.00US. There was no salad and no potato. And by the time I was getting close to the end of my meal, I began imagining what this food "might be", and had to stop eating ! Breakfast in the hotel included hard boiled egg, sushi, etc.

The next day, we took a train ride to Kyoto (see article). You won't believe it, on the same track, same day, a train jumped rail. I had not bothered to tell my family my hotel name, or much else, so had anything happened to us, no one would have known till after our cruise would to be over.

The ship was only about 10 miles away, however, we were told it would take us at least an hour, and the cost was $ 50 US. Sure enough, that was all for real. But it felt like we went round and round in circles to take up that hour ! When we got there, there was the Worlds Fair Ferris Wheel right by the ship. Beautiful. I was surely glad to get onboard, cause of the cost to be in Osaka !

My cruise adventures included two more stops in Japan, one being Nagasaki, a stop in South Korea, and another in Russia, before getting to the US. While near North Korea, another event took place. Apparently a nuclear (?) something was set off in the water (?). I didn't learn about this till I got home, and a GF told me. She said, wow, all kinds of things happened around you while you were gone. She said, she hadn't heard so much about Japan and the area I was in, till we were gone.

Shopping was great. In Korea, I bought amethyst, and which I had bought a whole lot more, but we had about 15 minutes to shop. I did buy some Japanese shoes and two types of chop sticks.

We saw some wonderful sites. I will never forget this adventure. But like my first time to Asia, on a Royal Caribbean cruise, my idea of visiting these countries is ony by cruise ship.

Have you been to Japan. What was your experience ?