Yokohama!

Sunday, July 17

Today was our big day of public transportation!  Time zones are strange things, so of course, we woke up wildly early.  The plan was pretty much to get from our hotel in Tokyo to the international port in Yokohama, so after having a delicious breakfast in Tokyo, we headed back to Tokyo Station.  

We managed to get on the correct train heading south (lots of unsung heroes in that statement – special shout out to the conductor who turned us from the north side of the platform to the south), and forty-five minutes later, we successfully navigated Yokohama’s subway system.  Really pretty straightforward (thank goodness!)

All this success meant that we were wildly early for our boarding call time, which was 12:30.  Having dropped off our luggage, we decided that walking around Yokohama was preferable to hanging out at the incredibly humid cruise terminal.  So, we turned around and walked to the Yokohama Bay Stars stadium, which had, just the night before, hosted the Japanese All Star Game.  While we weren’t able to go inside, we were able to go to the Bay Stars official store, which was all sorts of interesting.  The team has a theme song, which played on repeat the whole time we were there – Troy’s been humming it now for the last three days.  Additionally, the Bay Stars players all have individual slogans, including our favorite: “Be Sincerity and Hunger for Baseball.”

On the way back to the terminal, we walked through the largest China Town in the world, which was, as you may imagine, pretty overwhelming, especially because it only got hotter and more humid as the day went on.  Just before noon, we got back to the cruise terminal, to find that they were ahead of schedule, and that our floor was going through the check-in process. 

Princess had maybe the fastest check-in process of any cruise I’ve been on before.  It took us less than 15 minutes from walking into the terminal again to boarding the ship, and, also for the first time, our cabin was ready for us when we boarded.  Our luggage showed up maybe two hours later, which was awesome too.

During the afternoon we explored the ship some, read some, and took the first of many afternoon naps.  We also finally selected excursions for the first two days, in Shimizu and Kochi.  So far, pretty awesome!