Tokyo March 6th

Our plan for this morning was to walk to the Tokyo tower, which we could see from our hotel room. Once we looked outside, it was obvious that this would not be a good day to see anything from the tower. The clouds were very low, and it was raining. Once the rain let up a little, we walked through the Ginza area and had coffee and a roll at a traditional Japanese coffee house called Starbucks. We were thinking that this would be something that might catch on in the US. The rest of the morning we spent stocking up on necessary supplies for our stateroom (booze), then got a taxi to take us to the ship. The last words from the bellman as he loaded our suitcases into the cab was "you have many luggage!"

Once on board, we quickly realized that we did, in fact, have "many luggage". We were not prepared for the fact that there was much less closet space and other storage than we'd come to expect on the bigger ships. We managed to get most everything put away, but decided not to unpack some of our summer clothing which we won't be needing for two or three weeks. We set sail at 10pm, bound for Osaka. We've been informed that today will be the last day we will have internet service for the next three days due to Japanese Maritime law which does not allow the ship to provide internet service while in port. So, this will be my last post for a few days. Tomorrow we'll be in Osaka, where we're taking a tour to Kyoto.