Live from the Diamond, July 10-27, 17-day B2B around Japan and Korea

[Norwaylady]

7 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

@Norwaylady and @Jim_Iain just making sure you knew we were cruising around Japan these past few weeks. Usually you tag along on my Live From threads, and I just wanted to extend an invite as we are on a Princess cruise rather than a Celebrity or NCL one this time around. 😁

 

Thank you Ken!

I have been occupied both on work and private. So my days needed to be at least 30h. So I need to catch up😅

[Ken the cruiser]

33 minutes ago, Norwaylady said:

 

Thank you Ken!

I have been occupied both on work and private. So my days needed to be at least 30h. So I need to catch up😅

Hi there! Glad to hear all is good and you’ve just been super busy! I forget sometimes some folks still have to work for a living! 😂

[SimplyMarvie]

Also curious about how the immigration process works. We'll be doing it in Akita for our sailing, and have a taxi booked for a tour starting 2 hours after arrival in port. It will be interesting to see if we're able to either make the trip and/or explain to the driver that we'll be late, or if we have to pivot to our B plan! 

[Ken the cruiser]

Had a great time after a tasty surf and turf Formal Night dinner tonight! After watching the sunset

  

 
We watched the production show Bravo.

 

 

 
Then we watched two game shows tonight in the Explorers Lounge. The first one was the hilarious Marriage Match Game Show

 

 

Followed by the Pick Your Pony Game Show, which we had never seen before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun times tonight! 😂

[Ken the cruiser]

Day 15 - July 24 - Kobe, Japan

  

 

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

55 minutes ago, SimplyMarvie said:

Also curious about how the immigration process works. We'll be doing it in Akita for our sailing, and have a taxi booked for a tour starting 2 hours after arrival in port. It will be interesting to see if we're able to either make the trip and/or explain to the driver that we'll be late, or if we have to pivot to our B plan! 

It will be interesting to see how they handle folks getting off the ship in Kobe tomorrow. On the last leg when the Immigration Inspection port was Osaka, they used a ticket system, pre-announced the evening before in the Patter, which help people get off in an orderly fashion based on their group number. The same applied if you were on an excursion.
 

The Patter we received this evening for tomorrow made no mention of issuing any tickets to folks going ashore on their own. However, we’ll be on an early excursion, so all we need to do is go to the theater and wait for our excursion number to be called. But if I subsequently hear anything regarding independent travelers, I’ll let you know.

[Ken the cruiser]

At least it hopefully won’t be as hot tomorrow morning in Kobe as it was when we were in Osaka last week when it was 93 degrees with a 83 degree dew point! 😁

 

 

[Kellyansapansa]

12 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

And now for the good news we got today. If you remember, we were on the Waitlist for an Osaka excursion that would take us, among other places, to see the Sika deer freely roaming around a temple in Nara. Fast forward to this morning when we went to the Kobe port talk.

 

 

Early on in her presentation, she mentioned a tour that went from Kobe to Nara. That triggered my DW to see if there were any excursions still available that went to the Todaiji Temple with the Sika deer freely roaming around the premises. Lo and behold, there was and it wasn’t sold out yet! 😁 

  

So off we went to the excursion desk to see if we could exchange our current Kobe excursion for this Nara one, hoping the 48-hour rule only applied to cancellations. Turns out they had no issues exchanging the excursions. In fact we saved some $$ and this excursion was 30 minutes longer than the one we originally had. 😁

 

That's great news, Todaiji is a lovely place to visit and meet the gorgeous deer. Make sure you have plenty of small change in local currency to buy approved wafers from the vendors around the temple. This is the only food you are allowed to feed the deer who will bow to you as they ask for food. They can get a bit aggressive when they know you have food for them, so keep the food held high. 😊

[KLM3164]

@Ken the cruiserWhile I love seeing your elusive pigeon photos and flower photos, I’m really looking forward to seeing your deer photos! 

[chubbypiggy]

17 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

When we first saw this in the Patter last night, we immediately texted our son to make sure they saw it, as they have been using the laundromat the entire cruise. For us we brought enough clothes to avoid having to use it. However, even though we are not Elite yet, we did use the professional cleaning service once to have our initial travel clothes cleaned with the turnaround time being 2 days.

  

 
This did not happen on the first leg though. We’ve asked a few crew members and they confirmed this was the first time the entire laundry service, both the self-service laundry facilities as well as the ship’s laundry service for towels, linens, etc. has been shutdown for this long that they can remember.

 

 
My purely unofficial guess as to the Why from over here in the peanut gallery is that we will be docked in both Kobe and Osaka, which are very close together, from 6 am tomorrow morning, July 24, until around 11 pm the following day, July 25. If you add in the time we originally entered the Osaka Bay until we leave it the morning of July 26, that’s about the same time the environmental restrictions are in effect.
 

We’re guessing Japan doesn’t want the DP to be dumping their “purified” gray water in their bay for this extended period of time where their fisherman also catch a lot of fish. Like I said this is purely a guess from someone over here in the peanut gallery. 😁
 

Just want to make sure I interpreted it correctly.  The ship will be "overnight" at Kobe-Osaka port?

[Ken the cruiser]

2 hours ago, chubbypiggy said:

Just want to make sure I interpreted it correctly.  The ship will be "overnight" at Kobe-Osaka port?

Actually we will be in port at Kobe until around 4 am tomorrow morning when we will then make a short cruise over to the Osaka port for a scheduled arrival around 7 am.

[chubbypiggy]

2 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Actually we will be in port at Kobe until around 4 am tomorrow morning when we will then make a short cruise over to the Osaka port for a scheduled arrival around 7 am.

Thank you.  My wild guess for the Environmental restrictions for laundromat was maybe because of the ship staying in port overnight.  Since there is no overnight, my guess is wrong.  ☺️

[Ken the cruiser]

25 minutes ago, chubbypiggy said:

Thank you.  My wild guess for the Environmental restrictions for laundromat was maybe because of the ship staying in port overnight.  Since there is no overnight, my guess is wrong.  ☺️

But we are staying in the Osaka Bay area for about the same timeframe as the restriction, so that might have something to do with it. You can see how close the two cities are in today’s weather map.

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

We have arrived in Kobe, Japan! Since we won’t be leaving for Osaka until early tomorrow morning, it will be interesting to see what Kobe looks like after the sun goes down. The same will be for Osaka tomorrow night. 😁

 

 

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

6 hours ago, KLM3164 said:

@Ken the cruiserWhile I love seeing your elusive pigeon photos and flower photos, I’m really looking forward to seeing your deer photos! 

Maybe I’ll get lucky today and we’ll see both! 😂

[chubbypiggy]

8 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

But we are staying in the Osaka Bay area for about the same timeframe as the restriction, so that might have something to do with it. You can see how close the two cities are in today’s weather map.

 

 

Your guess is probably right.  

[Ken the cruiser]

What a fun day seeing the deer and three different temples plus stopping at a local Nara restaurant for another Japanese lunch.

  

Our first stop in Nara was at the Yakushiji Temple. But first we had to get through Customs which flowed very smoothly and we were on our tour bus right on time at 8:00 am.

 

 

 
And then shortly after we were on the road. Believe it or not there were only 18 guests on our tour!

 

 

 

 
More rice paddies! 😂

 
Then we were at our first stop, the Yakushiji Temple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were a lot of paths we were able to walk along. 
 

 

 

 

Then we came across this interesting ground cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we headed towards Toshodaiji Temple.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
These are the vending machines you will see at every stop. So don’t expect them to have water for you when you get on the tour bus. 😁

 

 

 
These plugs were on the bus at every seat.

 

 

 

Afterwards we headed to lunch at a local restaurant in Nara where we had a variety of Japanese dishes.

 

 

Then it was time to go to the Todai-Ji Temple and see the big Buddha and visit the 1300 deer! 😁

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This yellow stripe we saw everywhere we stopped in Japan. It’s there to help the blind! 
 

 

And there it was, a beautiful and very elusive Nara pigeon amongst all the Sika deer ! 😂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The medical buddy! 
 

 

 

Downtown Osaka

  

 

 
These were the sound partitions that kept us from seeing the various scenic points when driving through the city.

 

[Ken the cruiser]

Tonight after another tasty dinner in the Santa Fe RCDR, we headed to the theater to watch a classical pianist, Tomono Kawamura.

 

 

  
Then we headed as usual to the Explorers Lounge to watch an hilarious game show called Survey It!

 

 

 
Afterwards we headed up to the Skywalkers Nightclub on Deck 17 Aft. We took the elevator to 15, then the escalator up to the Nightclub. It was pretty quite up there, maybe 10 people there around 9:30 pm.

 

 
Then we walked around the ship to admire the sights on such a pretty evening. First we looked out the aft to see what Kobe looked like from there.

 

 

 
This is the outdoor Izumi Japanese Bath pool on the aft.

 

 
Then we headed towards the bow to check out the nightlights of Kobe.

 

  

 

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Ken the cruiser

[Ken the cruiser]

Day 16 - July 25 - Osaka, Japan

 
 

 

 

[chubbypiggy]

3 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Day 16 - July 25 - Osaka, Japan

 
 

 

 

Very nice pictures, thank you for sharing.  

 

Just curious, for your 2 cruises, on the average, how much time after ship arrival at the port before passengers were allowed to go ashore?

[Steelers36]

4 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Then we headed as usual to the Explorers Lounge to watch an hilarious game show called Survey It!

Is that like Family Feud?

 

[Steelers36]

5 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Tonight after another tasty dinner in the Santa Fe RCDR, we headed to the theater to watch a classical pianist, Tomono Kawamura.

I wanted to say something about tickling the ivories. 

[Ken the cruiser]

5 hours ago, chubbypiggy said:

Very nice pictures, thank you for sharing.  

 

Just curious, for your 2 cruises, on the average, how much time after ship arrival at the port before passengers were allowed to go ashore?

That I couldn’t tell you, but it usually didn’t take too long. But then we were on an excursion every port day, so we really weren’t paying that close of attention. For example, today in Osaka passengers were allowed to leave around 7:30 am.

[chubbypiggy]

2 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

That I couldn’t tell you, but it usually didn’t take too long. But then we were on an excursion every port day, so we really weren’t paying that close of attention. For example, today in Osaka passengers were allowed to leave around 7:30 am.

Thank you.  For Osaka, the Patter indicates arrival at 7 a.m.  So about 30 minutes after arrival to allow passengers to go on shore.

[rhaemerson]

Do you know if Princess serves Japanese draft beer on the ship?

TIA