Detailed (& long) review of Celebrity Millennium 12 Night Best of Japan 14-26th July

[Lunastella]

10 hours ago, StopTheWorld said:

Loving your review! ☺️ We’re doing the same trip in October (and the dreaded 14hr BA flight from Heathrow 😳). Hoping the rain abates for you. We’re from Glasgow and,  like you, don’t go on holiday to get rained on!! I’ve added a rain jacket to my packing list 😜 

 

Sneak peak...the rain does stop eventually! We fly over with BA and back with Japanese airlines, and the food, at least, was better on BA.

[Lunastella]

7 hours ago, Mark.Jules said:

Looking forward to each days post. Thank you for taking the time to write this review.

 

Thanks! More to come.....its also raining in Ireland this weekend, so plenty of time to sort through the photos!

[hcat]

1 hour ago, Lunastella said:

 

 

Now that's a good idea!

 

To be honest, I dont talk too much about the ship (compared to my last review of Beyond where I had hundreds of photos of the ship) as its just 'grand' rather than 'wow' so there is not much to say about it. But I am happy to answer any questions you have!

 Thanks

Interested in overall condition ..furniture, soft goods, decor.. Any crowds in sea days,  restaurants, etc.. Also music, shows and lectures  

[cinnamon]

3 hours ago, Lunastella said:

 

They were local drummers onboard in the theatre one night who were excellent, but I was really surprised by the lack of enrichment talks about Japan on the cruise, there were none as far as I know. We always go to some of these talks on previous cruises, so I missed them on this particular cruise, no idea why they were absent.  

This is very disappointing to hear. I thought there would be talks. 

[Lunastella]

43 minutes ago, cinnamon said:

This is very disappointing to hear. I thought there would be talks. 

 

Actually I think there was one talk about Japan, but it was on something obscure so I didn't go. There were no talks about culture, religion or art as far as I know.

[Susanb10567]

4 hours ago, Lunastella said:

 

They were local drummers onboard in the theatre one night who were excellent, but I was really surprised by the lack of enrichment talks about Japan on the cruise, there were none as far as I know. We always go to some of these talks on previous cruises, so I missed them on this particular cruise, no idea why they were absent.  

That’s a little disappointing…that’s one of the things I look forward to when visiting different areas of the world. When we were on our Spain, Portugal and Morocco cruise there was no enrichment talks about where we were …the activity list looked like it could be a Celebrity Today from the Caribbean. There were tons of talks/sales presentations from the spa. 
 

I asked this question on the forum for the Laura Beth Hodges questions and she chose not to answer…

 

 

[DaKahuna]

4 hours ago, Lunastella said:

I used to travel Business at one stage, but then I figured I would prefer to spend that money on a really good hotels and restaurants instead, so its always economy for me now. But premium economy really was a nice surprise!

 

 We were spoiled with Business/First on the way to HND but the Premium Economy on the way back was not horrible.  I do know next time I'll try and get bulkhead seats for the extra legroom.  Being overweight and 6-foot tall, i needed just a little more room. 

 

[DaKahuna]

29 minutes ago, Lunastella said:

 

Actually I think there was one talk about Japan, but it was on something obscure so I didn't go. There were no talks about culture, religion or art as far as I know.

 

I just looked back over ours and talked with the DW and we do not remember any either. Of course with my wife being Japanese we would not have paid that much attention to them.  The best port information we found were the maps and places of interest fliers we received from the Retreat Concierge. I do not know if they had these in other cabins or not.  

 

For example here is what we received for Busan, Korea.

 

 

 

[Lunastella]

2 hours ago, hcat said:

 Thanks

Interested in overall condition ..furniture, soft goods, decor.. Any crowds in sea days,  restaurants, etc.. Also music, shows and lectures  

Hi Hcat

I'll be talking about the music and shows in future posts. Overall, they were excellent, and there were loads of them, but there was a severe lack of enrichment talks.

 

The ship has been renovated and is in pretty good condition, apart from the windows in our cabin!  For me however, who in retrospect loves the Edge class ships, Milly is just 'grand', nothing outstanding, no 'wow' moment like on Beyond. 

 

However, it never felt crowded (apart from once or twice on sea days in Oceanview). We could always find loungers in the solarium for example. We almost always had to wait for a table in MDR with a buzzer, but we just took that as an opportunity to have a pre-dinner drink, so we didn't mind too much.

 

In sum, the ship was better than I expected, but my expectations were not too high to begin with. I will post some photos of the ship over the next few days.

[Lunastella]

19 minutes ago, Susanb10567 said:

That’s a little disappointing…that’s one of the things I look forward to when visiting different areas of the world. When we were on our Spain, Portugal and Morocco cruise there was no enrichment talks about where we were …the activity list looked like it could be a Celebrity Today from the Caribbean. There were tons of talks/sales presentations from the spa. 
 

I asked this question on the forum for the Laura Beth Hodges questions and she chose not to answer…

 

 

Exactly, loads of talks about how to look 10 years younger, but no talks about Japan itself (which is well known for its beauty products actually!).

[Lunastella]

16 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 

 We were spoiled with Business/First on the way to HND but the Premium Economy on the way back was not horrible.  I do know next time I'll try and get bulkhead seats for the extra legroom.  Being overweight and 6-foot tall, i needed just a little more room. 

 

One of the advanatges of being 5 foot 2!

[hcat]

3 minutes ago, Lunastella said:

Hi Hcat

I'll be talking about the music and shows in future posts. Overall, they were excellent, and there were loads of them, but there was a severe lack of enrichment talks.

 

The ship has been renovated and is in pretty good condition, apart from the windows in our cabin!  For me however, who in retrospect loves the Edge class ships, Milly is just 'grand', nothing outstanding, no 'wow' moment like on Beyond. 

 

However, it never felt crowded (apart from once or twice on sea days in Oceanview). We could always find loungers in the solarium for example. We almost always had to wait for a table in MDR with a buzzer, but we just took that as an opportunity to have a pre-dinner drink, so we didn't mind too much.

 

In sum, the ship was better than I expected, but my expectations were not too high to begin with. I will post some photos of the ship over the next few days.

Thanks..I'll stay tuned!

[Lunastella]

5 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 

I just looked back over ours and talked with the DW and we do not remember any either. Of course with my wife being Japanese we would not have paid that much attention to them.  The best port information we found were the maps and places of interest fliers we received from the Retreat Concierge. I do not know if they had these in other cabins or not.  

 

For example here is what we received for Busan, Korea.

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately we did not receive this type of info in pleb class! But Google did us well!

 

[Lunastella]

Pre-cruise Day 2: Tokyo

 

Up early and ready to go was the plan, but plans don’t always work out. Sleep did not come, so at 1am I gave in, took a melatonin and read for a while. Sleep did eventually come, I think, for a bit anyhow, then DS’s alarm went off at 7am. The regime!!!!  No idea where I am, but as usual, I got straight into my gym gear, it’s a default mechanism.

 

Disorientated, there was no-way I could manage a full gym session, so just did a short (and slow) run on the treadmill, but the view over the hotel swimming pool was quite nice.

 

Treadmill view

 

 

By 8am I was back in the room, showered and ready for breakfast. Despite not feeling particularly hungry, I ate, of course, because when there is an amazing array of buffet delights what’s a girl supposed to do?? Breakfast was in the hotel lobby restaurant and is a pretty well organised affair. Most importantly, they bring coffee directly to your table, hotel gods at work again. As jet lag demands, I had a pretty random breakfast of Bircher muesli, banana, boiled egg, smoked salmon and pastries….I told you, random, but tasty. Plus coffee and ‘detox’ water of ginger and beetroot to help offset the coffee.

 

I let DS and DM investigate and report back

 

 

By 9am we were suncreamed up and ready to go. Our expectations were high. The weather forecast was much more promising -  no rain, sun and some clouds.

 

DS had our afternoon and evening plans already sorted, but we had kept our morning plans flexible depending on how we were feeling, so we didn’t book anything in advance. So while in the Executive Lounge last night, I booked a free 2 hour walking tour of the  Asakusa district, mainly concentrating on the Sensō-ji temple, the oldest in Tokyo. I figured it was best to have something structured in the schedule rather than random wanderings.

 

Getting to the starting point of the tour would require navigating our first metro trip. We had downloaded the Suica app on all our phones before we arrived which made travelling by public transport really easy. Just  open your apply wallet, tap, and go. We initially put 3000JPY on each of our cards, although we had to top up a couple of times. Suica seems to work on all public transport  in Japan (metro, trams, buses, some trains). It made life much easier than having to constantly buy tickets at the station (this was a CC tip, thanks!).

 

We google mapped our way to the metro stop closest to the starting point at the Kaminari-mon gate, and then walked about 15 minutes.

 

Strolling from the metro to the meeting point

 

 

 

 

I have a Japanese colleague who recommended the Asakusa district, so I just googled ‘walking tours of Asakusa’ and booked the only one that was available for Saturday morning. It was grand, not great, but then again, this is usually the case with ‘free’ walking tours. The tour was maybe a 6 out of 10. It was fine as an introductory tour to Tokyo, perhaps a little surface level. However, it was good to start our first day in Japan with some structure. We visited both the Buddhist temple ‘Sensō-ji’ and a Shinto shine, and walked around what was the main entertainment area of Tokyo in the pre-war period.

 

Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate)

 

 

Five Story Pagoda

 

 

Five Story Pagoda and me

 

 

More Five Story Pagoda

 

 

Bad fortune…typical!

 

 

You looking at me!

 

 

Just hanging out

 

 

While tipping is not encouraged in Japan, this obviously does not apply for ‘free’ tours, so we tipped our guide in cash. [SIDENOTE: I was sceptical when DS said that Japan was still very much a cash society. I never carry cash, phone only. Luckily DS got some cash in advance, but we would need more].

 

Tour end: Sky Tree Tower & Ashai headquarters

 

 

We ended the tour near the Asahi beer headquarters, well it would be rude not too, so decided that a short reprise and a beer were needed after all the sightseeing in the sun. We had some small beers (and an apple juice for DM) in the bar ajoining the headquarters….Asahi of course.

 

Cool beer

 

 

I regularly use an umbrella to shield myself from the sun when travelling in Europe during the summer (it is never needed in Ireland; an umbrella only has one purpose in Ireland). To say I sometimes get funny looks is an understatement. But Japan is my country! Here using a UV umbrella to protect from the sun is the norm, I feel vindicated at last! However, I only brought a ‘rain’ umbrella with me, so after the beer we popped into an ever present 7-eleven to buy two 90% UVA protection umbrellas. DS refused to use one.  Just you wait and see.

 

Me and my umbrella (later in the cruise)

 

 

DS had booked tickets (well in advance) for Team Labs Borderless which is in the Azabudai Hills district, which appears to be a quite fancy area of Tokyo.

 

Very fancy

 

What is Team Labs Borderless you ask? I asked the same. It’s pretty much a digital art exhibition, and to quote “is a world of artworks without boundaries, a museum without a map….where artworks move out of rooms, relate to other works, influence each other, and at times intermingle, without boundaries”. Indeed, best to just look at the photos below to get an idea.

 

Our entry tickets were for 2.30pm so we navigated our way there via metro as its on the other side of Tokyo (again, thank you google maps). If visual art, light and sound installations, are your thing, this is the exhibition for you. I have been to similar exhibitions in Paris and Singapore, but this is the most impressive one to date. The gallery is in a super fancy shopping mall. We had planned on having lunch beforehand, but the restaurant situation in the mall was too mind-boggling for our increasingly jetlagged selves, plus time was tight, so instead of lunch we had coffee and cake in this very minimalistic café.

 

Very cool cafe….not sure why they let us in

 

 

The exhibition was wonderful and disorientating. There is no set ‘route’, you just wander from room to room, walk forward, walk back, who knows where you are. It’s an explosion of the senses, each room as a different smell, lights, art, smoke, and music.

 

Teamlab photos…a select few from the thousands taken

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s impossible to figure out if you missed anything, but after 1.5hr we reckoned we had seen everything, plus we had another important pre-cruise task to complete….buy wine to bring onboard. As we have no drinks package, this is important! Being in a fancy shopping mall, we went to a fancy food store, and bought one bottle of fancy wine. Then en-route to the metro, we passed a regular grocery store and acquired one bottle of regular wine. Then, totally randomly, we passed an actual proper wine shop on a side street, and purchased our final bottle (of Japanese wine no less). I’ll let you know what it’s like, first time having Japanese wine. 3 bottles acquired, one per person, we had our limit.

 

Random grocery store

 

 

 

Walking back to the metro station, it started raining (again), no fear, we have our trusty UV umbrellas, well at least 2 of us do, told you DS!

 

DM and her UV umbrella double jobbing

 

 

 

Rain stopped

 

It was 5.30pm by the time we got back to the hotel. We had reservations for 7pm in a restaurant on the other side of Tokyo. But that was just not going to happen. So instead, after a short rest we went to the Executive Lounge for a ‘girl’ dinner i.e., lots of snacky bits. Jet lag is still messing up my hunger levels, so despite not being particularly hungry I still ate, and maybe even a glass of wine. The lounge was crazy busy when we first arrived, but by 7.30pm it was empty, weirdly enough, ‘happy hour’ ends sat 7.30!

 

Girl dinner

 

 

DS was keen for us to visit the teeny tiny bars in the back streets of Shinjuku. It was a definite no from DM, it was also the last thing I felt like doing, but if going to a bar, would kept me awake for another few hours, then going to a bar it had to be. The sacrifices I make! So DS and I headed out for the 20 minute walk to the ‘small bar’ area of Shinjuku. Not sure if that’s its official name.  It was cool to see all the neon at night. Crazy busy.

 

Tokyo at night

 

 

 

 

These tiny bars are on the back alleys off the main drag. They each seat maybe 10 people, so it’s a tight squeeze. We ended up in ‘Book Store’, where indeed there were books, but also Lemon Spritz, and only Lemon Spritz, no idea what was in said Lemon Spritz, but it tasted pretty strong and delicious. We were the only non-Japanese people there, but everyone was friendly and even offered us seats on the stairs (a coup in such a tiny space!).

 

Wandering the alleys

 

 

Book Store

 

With Books

 

 

And Lemon Spritz

 

 

One drink was enough, its been a stimulating but exhausting day. Time to walk back to the hotel and sleep….hopefully the 28,500 steps walked today will help.

 

Good night

 

[villauk]

My plan was to buy a parasol as soon as we landed in Tokyo. I’ll definitely be looking for one of those UV umbrellas 👍. Looking forward to reading more.

[lettrich]

Loving your review.  We were on this cruise also.  It was an amazing trip.  I found most of the cultural information was provided by the tour guides on the excursions.  You are right - they should have had more enrichment talks about Japan while on the ship.  Looking forward to reading the remainder of your review- Laura

[Provence55always]

Thank you for the tip re the Free Walking Tours I will definitely look that up as we will be there for 5 days pre cruise. Was the group very big? Also UV umbrellas gone on the list.

[Justpackingmybags]

Loving the review!

Can I ask a question about the Suica app? I’ve downloaded it to my iPhone but I can’t decipher it! How did you get to read it in English! Thanks in advance.

[Lunastella]

2 hours ago, lettrich said:

Loving your review.  We were on this cruise also.  It was an amazing trip.  I found most of the cultural information was provided by the tour guides on the excursions.  You are right - they should have had more enrichment talks about Japan while on the ship.  Looking forward to reading the remainder of your review- Laura

 

Thanks Laura, great to hear you were on the same cruise, feel free to comment on your experiences if you wish.

[Lunastella]

2 hours ago, Provence55always said:

Thank you for the tip re the Free Walking Tours I will definitely look that up as we will be there for 5 days pre cruise. Was the group very big? Also UV umbrellas gone on the list.

 

There were maybe 10 people on the tour. Word of warning, UV umbrellas are great for the sun, less so for the wind, my died eventually!

[Lunastella]

2 hours ago, Justpackingmybags said:

Loving the review!

Can I ask a question about the Suica app? I’ve downloaded it to my iPhone but I can’t decipher it! How did you get to read it in English! Thanks in advance.

 

Good question, I can't remember having to decipher it, I think it was automatically in English when I installed the app. Although, I just checked and there are some youtube tutorials on how to change the language setting in Suica so maybe try following those steps 

 

[Justpackingmybags]

1 minute ago, Lunastella said:

 

Good question, I can't remember having to decipher it, I think it was automatically in English when I installed the app. Although, I just checked and there are some youtube tutorials on how to change the language setting in Suica so maybe try following those steps 

 

Ah you’re a star! Thank you very much

[Lunastella]

 

 

Correction regarding our first night in Tokyo courtesy of DS – the areas with bars is called Golden Gai, the bar we went to was called Open Book (not Book Store); and the drink was called Lemon Sours (not Lemon Spritz)…well it was a very long day!

 

Also correction courtesy of DH (husband), Aer Lingus is no longer a government owned airline, it was bought by BA.

 

And here I was thinking they never read it!

 

[JackE]

Great review! I am thoroughly enjoying your writing. We are on a best of Japan cruise on the Millie in March of 2026! 

[Ciaranaman]

Loving your review!  And looking forward to more!  You are your sister are so blessed to be able to have this trip/time with your Mom.  Wonderful memories!

~Bernadette