Princess Diamond Japanese Cruise

[klutzj]

We will be doing a 16-day cruise around Japan in August. Any suggestions/advice?

[NantahalaCruiser]

We will be doing a 16-day cruise around Japan in August. Any suggestions/advice?

 

Was on the Millennium last fall that departed from Yokohama and stopped in Shimizu, Kobe and Nagasaki. We flew into Narita; in Tokyo we took a fun cooking class at Tokyo Kitchen - Yoshimi was an excellent instructor - maximum of 6 participants - if you are the first to reserve a spot on a particular day, then you get to pick your choice of food to prepare and eat!

 

I could not find any Japanese tour agencies that offered shore excursions. So we did a ship's excursion in the local area at Shimizu - unfortunately, was cloudy and raining so no view of Mt. Fuji.

 

We had an overnight at Kobe, so we independently took the train over to Kyoto for 1 1/2 days of touring; shared a guide in Kyoto with another couple from our ship that we met on CC - booked an excellent guide through tours-by-locals.

 

Note: if you will be using trains or subways in Japan, I recommend you get a special card preloaded with yen that you can use to just swipe as you go through the gates rather than having to purchase tickets. You can purchase one at the JR station at Narita Airport.

 

Nagasaki is very easy to tour on your own since the cruise port is right downtown and it's only a short tram ride to the Peace Park and A-bomb Museum.

 

Hope you have a wonderful cruise; you will find the Japanese people very friendly and helpful. For example, after several hours of touring in Tokyo, we were tired and instead of taking a 20 minute walk to the nearest train station, decided to hail a taxi. When we asked the driver to take us to that train station that we had planned to use to catch the train back to Yokohama, he told us that due to the one-way streets, he would have to take a very long route to get there and suggested that we could save time and money by instead going to the next station down the line towards Yokohama. We took his advice and soon were on board the train. I later checked a Tokyo street map and found that the driver had in fact told us the truth about the one-way street constraints and had truly saved us time and money. I would be surprised to find a taxi driver in any metropolis in the US that would give us such advice!

[capriccio]

For Princess specific advice, I suggest posting your question on the Princess Board: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=197.