Wednesday, September 30

Since leaving Dutch Harbor two days ago, the weather has been mostly sunny with a crisp, cool breeze, temps in the upper 40’s to lower 50’s, & fairly calm seas. We adjusted our course initially to avoid a storm south of the Aleution Islands, but today we were advised of another approaching system, apparently the remnants of a tropical storm off eastern Japan, heading our direction. The Captain advised us to prepare for a rugged couple of days.  We’ll see.

If you ever want to know the exact, up-to-the-minute location of the ship, just click on “Ship’s Current Position” – it’s a menu option at the top of this page, upper right-hand side. The web site will show you a map, and then go on to list our last port, when we left, where we’re going, distance remaining, & ETA. I stumbled across the web page about a year ago and find the technology fascinating. You might enjoy it as well.

Speaking of technology, we’re still attending our 9:00 am class on Windows 8.1 & Desktop – I believe I’ve mentioned elsewhere that we have an outstanding instructor (Craig) and learning a lot. We attended a Japanese language course yesterday afternoon on understanding basic greeting protocol (bowing) and the some of the most common words/phrases a tourist might want to know, such as please (douzo) thank you (arigatou) excuse me (sumimsen) good day (konnichi wa) good morning (ohayo) excuse me, do you speak English? (sumimasen, Eigo ga hanase masu ka?) call the police (keisatsu wo yonde) toilet (toi-re)

The bowing protocol is interesting. If you greet a superior such as a parent or teacher, your back & face must be parallel with the ground, so quite a broad, full-size bow. If greeting a peer or someone of equal stature or prominence, a half-bow is the most appropriate…so midway between an upright position and my first example. If just passing someone in the supermarket, a slight nod of the head is acceptable. When using a finger or hand to motion a person to come to you, always have your hand turned over with fingers pointing ‘down’, not ‘up’ as we typically do in our western world – apparently this is considered quite rude & distasteful. I’ll need to be particularly alert on this one, because quite often I use a ‘thumbs-up’ gesture to express approval.

This will be our first visit to Japan, and we’re very much looking forward to the education & cultural experience. We have extensive tours booked in each of the three ports, so we’re excited to see, learn, & make some memories.

We’ve crossed the International Dateline, jumping from Sunday to Tuesday. The time changes have been a real challenge. Since the entire state of Alaska utilizes one time zone, we couldn’t begin adjusting our clocks until after we left Dutch Harbor. The challenge now, however, is we’ve had to adjust in two-hour increments…so we went back 2 hours Saturday night, 2 hours Sunday night, another 2 hours tonight and then 1 hour on Wednesday night…PLUS…we’ve temporarily lost a day. A 1-hour change is manageable, but many folks are struggling with the two-hour adjustments. I was up in the Lido at 2:30am getting coffee (and updating our blog) and what is normally void of people was quite active with folks who couldn’t sleep.

We’ve found the mix of travelers on this voyage to be nothing short of great. While we miss many of our friends from cruises past, this is turning out to be pretty special as well. My only words of caution, and I've written it elsewhere in this blog…people are normally on their ‘best behavior’ the first week or two – then some of the dark-sides begin emerging. Those can be funny and believe me, we’ve seen our share of shouting & pushing, to include a fist-fight on a tour bus! But…so far, so good! Awesome folks.

While I’m thinking of it…for Larry & Sue Metz…there were no fridge magnets in Dutch Harbor. We checked Safeway, the local hotel, and the museum. Everyone was out – so sorry, but please know we tried!

As I write, the wind has shifted as the Captain predicted, and the ship is starting to experience some slight commotion. If you’ve followed us for any length of time, you know we enjoy rolling seas, so we say, bring it on!

Time to shower & dress for Happy Hour & dinner – will update tomorrow.

UPDATE:  It’s now 3:00 am on Wednesday. Dinner was excellent last evening. Cheryl and I decided to skip the scheduled entertainment – a flute player, or said correctly as we were told, a ‘flautist’. We’d heard her before – an excellent musician, but neither of us particularly care for the instrument itself. We watched a couple episodes of ‘Big Bang’ from the DVD’s we brought with us and called it a night.

We’ve since encountered the predicted storm, but so far, nothing of significance. The strong winds, however, enticed a few large birds to seek refuge on our ship. I typically transmit our blog from the back of the ship in the Lido on deck #8, as close to the satellite dish as I can get. I’m typically alone this time of day but as I entered to get coffee and grab my normal seat, there was another passenger chasing a bird – quite honestly, I thought for a moment I was dreaming because you just don’t expect to see something like that. As it turned out, there were three large birds! I notified the front desk, and within a couple minutes there were two crew members, myself, and ‘Jim’ chasing these birds with beach towels! It took about 10 minutes, but all were retrieved and escorted off the back of the ship. None were harmed. When the wind conditions are just right, the back doors on deck #8 will sometimes blow open. These birds just decided to seize the opportunity – a little too early for breakfast though!

Our first port in Japan is still two days away. 

Rummy games: Cheryl 2, Bob 3 - my lead probably won't last long!