I feel like I am on a roll with famous sayings at the moment and today’s saying is ‘feeling like a child in a candy store’. That’s just how we felt last night with fresh meat, I mean passengers, boarding the ship. Having spent the last 8 days with predominantly Japanese passengers (my mastering of the language sucks), the prospect of some English speaking people to converse with was rather exciting. Having moved from set dining on the last leg, to anytime dining on this one, we headed down to the restaurant ready for a chat fest. The Maitre D’ looked at us with pity as we excitedly requested a ‘sharing’ table. The waitress’ face mirrored that look of pity as she led us to a table right by the window, with a great view of the Yokohama Harbour front. We sat and waited for others to join us, and waited and waited some more. The empty restaurant wasn’t dampening our mingling spirits. The Maitre D’ continued to look back at us while we sat with growing desperation in our eyes. Since the ship had docked late, boarding was still occurring, so it seemed that we might be eating alone. Giving up on the prospect of being Chatty McKathies, we bit the bullet and ordered our meals. Entree devoured and just as we commenced our main course the Maitre D’ proudly led another couple over to us and the bombardment of talking commenced.
This morning’s arrival in Toba, Japan was a very different vision to Yokohama. Being a seaside town they aren’t equipped for large cruise ships, so tenders are required. Determined to not make the same mistake as last week with a lazy start, we were up and ready and managed to score ticket 230. The process was held up slightly by the captain announcing that they may not be able to run the tenders due to high winds. There was a brief moment when it looked like that Westaway curse was still with us. Luckily all went our way and we made it across in the tender with just a little sway.
We decided to pass on the US$100+ ship tours and make our way out to Ise Jingu Geku, the outer shrine, on our own. For the bargain price of ¥330 yen each, we got on the train and arrived 15 minutes later. As we leisurely wandered the grounds, bus after bus of ship tours arrived and were escorted around the area with military precision. Grateful to not be locked into a tour timeframe, we decided to skip catching the bus to the inner shrine (there is such a thing as being overshrined) and took a walk through the small town instead.
Mandatory consumption of hot pork bun completed (bet they don’t get time for that on the tour), we were tempted by the sweet cake snacks that offered ‘the eternal basic traditional smoothly wetly’. I would like to say we were brave and tried them, but we decided that heading back into the main part of Toba might bring some more accurate translation of what we were consuming.
Toba isn’t the biggest port and other than heading out to the shrines or visiting the aquarium, there isn’t much to do if doing it on your own. We managed to find ourselves in a customary ‘sucker tourist’ store where a range of bizarre eats and gifts could be purchased. The store didn’t compare to the taste testing heaven in Okinawa, but they did have samples of beer, hot red wine and a delicacy they called non alcoholic hot sweet rice wine. One of the locals assured me it was ‘oishi’ (delicious) so I gulped away. There must have been some lost in translation as it was what I imagine a tissue breaking apart in a cup of hot, slightly sweet but slightly off milk might taste like. Needless to say it wasn’t consumed after the first gulp was promptly disposed of.
The tourist store did happen to have a whole floor of multiple restaurants so not all was lost. Simon was starting to panic as restaurant after restaurant offered a huge range of delicious looking seafood. Who would have thought that a fishing town had so much fresh seafood on offer! It’s not that Simon is allergic to seafood, he is just a fussy git who won’t eat the stuff. Stumbling across one place that sold curries, he was smiling again with a tonkatsu curry while I was still able to have seafood in mine.
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