Muroran, Japan
The morning is hectic, everyone is a bit anxious to get off the ship and things are taking a lot longer than anticipated. The Japanese immigration was having issues with their "sensitive equipment" and so are only processing 55 people every 5 minutes. There are more than 3000 people on the ship so things are moving quite slow. The lines are crazy, they wrap around different floors of the ship and boy are the people upset. Kevin and I were at the front desk and people were telling the staff they want compensation for this inconvenience.....not sure what they think they can get as everyone has been inconvenienced, some of us just handled it better than others. Our excursion to the volcano does not leave for another 3 hours so we should be able to get outside and wander around, have some gyoza and Sopooro and kick back.
We were supposed to get off the ship at 9:50 but with the delays it was past 11:00. We stood in line for about 25 minutes before getting into "the room" with the sensitive equipment....finger printing and photos were taken of each passenger. If you were fortunate enough to pass the test you were able to leave the ship...we both passed:) Off to Muroran we went on the shuttle bus. What a beautiful city of approximately 90,000 people. First stop, 7-11 to get some Japanese Yen. The smallest denomination we could get is 10,000 which works out to about 150.00 Canadian dollars. The funny thing is that it is a single bill. After walking for awhile we decided to stop and have some authentic Japanese food. We were hoping for some soup but stumbled upon a buffet and decided that would be good as well. We had no idea what we were eating as everything was in Japanese but it was fabulous. Back on the bus to go back to the ship to head out for our excusrion to Lake Toya and Mount Usu. At Lake Toya we both dipped our feet into the hot springs, the story says that if you go into the hot pool you will extend your life by 7 years.....not sure how they monitor that but we were not going to argue. We were able to see Mount Hokkaido Fuji.....not to be confused with the real Mount Fuji. Every region has its own Mount Fuji, they just add the name to the region you are in so there are over 130 Mount Fuji's in Japan. The people in Japan are amazing, very courteous and happy. Given everything they have been through this year, it is amazing how they are handling everything. We went off to the volcano where we took a gondola to the main area and then walked up 132 stairs to the summit. If we had more time we would have been able to walk down to the area where the volcano is steaming, but we had a good view of it and were happy to stay a bit further away. Sapporo beer is brewed in this area so we thought we would stimulate the economy a bit more and have one....and then smuggled two more into the ship for a treat later on in the cruise. The ship sails shortly and then we have a sea day on Monday and then head to Vladivostok Russia on Tuesday. Our itinerary gets very busy over the next week so many more adventures await us.
We are having an amazing time, wish you could all be here with us to experience it.
Sayonara from Muroran Japan....see you in Russia
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