Jen and Jerry's Excellent Adventure

 Once again, the ship made good time overnight to get us to our next scheduled port. I’ll include yet another sunrise in Japan, but this one has more clouds than sun. Perhaps we should have heeded that as advice for taking an umbrella…The temps are getting warmer—up to 70 today—yet it’s still autumn even here and I haven’t yet stashed all the winter clothing we packed. Good thing, since during our tour, a huge storm moved in, temp dropped about 15 degrees, wind came up. But we were safe. Our bus driver had a stash of umbrellas under the coach. It's doubtful that this city receives many cruise ships, but our tour guide did her very best to connect with us and to teach us. Her broken English was more than compensated by her energy, enthusiasm, and laughter. Again, we saw some deep historic areas. The first was Kairakuen, a large park/garden in the true Japanese mindset, covering acres upon acres of flowering trees and bushes. Not a lot of flowering now but the fall colors were lovely

 Today was more like the Japan I was prepared to see: the classic Japanese shapes of shrines, history of shoguns and feudal lords dating back to 1600s and further back, and consequences from WW2. What I didn’t expect was that I was going to enjoy the learning and the seeing and the introspection. Therefore, dear friends, get ready for lots of photos and lots of stories. As we disembarked for a tour, a group of costumed samurai met us for photos. I didn’t know that samurai warriors smiled!!! Sendai is one of the larger cities in the country with about 1 million population. It hosts the third most prestigious university in Japan, a very modern city center, and is, like all the places we’ve seen so far, pristine! We visited three important sites in this historic city; as we traveled between, he educated us. Sendai City was severely bombed in WW2. The city itself rebuilt and the buildings are obviously new and modern. A few delicacies that people love in this city are green pea paste that

There are days when we are sightseers, then there are days when we see God in God’s glory. Today was the latter. It’s Jen’s birthday and the day started on a celebratory note with a “Welcome to Miyako” on the dock as we sailed in. A group of elementary students in costume with props, the town’s mayor, flag bearers, and an entourage of parents and supporters enthusiastically welcomed us to their town. I tried to attach a video along with photos, but it didn’t send. Apparently, the town gets only about 6-7 cruise ships per year, so they are grateful for the economic boost. First to note as we drove in our large tour bus was the 20-foot, thick wall that was built in 2011 after the third (!) time the town had been demolished by a tsunami. Now there is a wall; yet due to fishermen who protested of the lack of sight out onto the ocean, a set of windows was installed into the wall so that they can look out and judge the sea prior to setting sail. Fishing is the main economy of this island. We

Well, our land assault has started. It was another beautiful day with sun and the temperature nudging over 60 degrees. We ate breakfast outside for the first time in two weeks. The breakfast buffet where we eat almost all our breakfasts has an outdoor seating area which has been closed off because of wind, rain, and possibly temperature since the second day of our cruise.  When we did our around-the-world cruise we ate outside almost every day regardless of temp. This ship seems to be a little less excited about serving outside when it is “cold”. Anyway, it was nice to eat outdoors again. The sail-in this morning was spectacular. For some reason I don’t think of Japan as volcanic islands with amazing topography, but I should. They are beautiful, filled with color, and very mountainous. Landing was a bit later than usual with our arrival set for 11:00. We cruised under another spectacular bridge to get to this harbor. With the way clocks are set it is getting light at 5:00 AM and pitch