Kagoshima

March 15, 2024

Our ship docked in Kagoshima sometime around 8:00 this morning.  As is Tim's want, when he awoke around 8:30 he immediately went out on the balcony to check the weather and the view.  It was a beautiful cloudless morning this morning except for a cloud just above a mountain top to the right of our view. Later at breakfast Tim confirmed with crew members that the cloud at the mountain top was definitely steam from a volcano. Tim posted a picture of the volcano on his Facebook page.

We had an excursion scheduled this morning but when we reviewed the tour yesterday it carried a warning of gruesome pictures of war atrocities.  Deciding that we had seen enough gruesome pictures in Hiroshima and Nagasaki we canceled our tickets on the excursion. Instead we left the ship about 11:00 and took a schuttle bus into the city center of Kagoshima. We enjoyed a walk about going into several different stores.  Tim made a brief stop  in a large golf shop. He saw a new driver he has been thinking about purchasing which was listed at 94,000 yen. That is the correct number of zero's.  Upon leaving the shop he had Lynda convert the price to dollars: $699.00, which is $100.00 more then in the States.  Tim is going home driverless.   We must have spent ast least 30 minutes wandering through a grocery store marveling at how different it was from an American grocery store.  There were many items in the produce section that we did not recognize, and we were very impressed with how good the produce we did recognize looked.  We were taken back at how little beef there was in the meat department and how much fresh fish was on offer.  As we passed through the shelves in the rest of the store we found very few American products on display. Coke products are very where in Japan and Korea but not much of anything else. We went into a Women's shop that featured intimate wear.  The bra and panty sets were very different and very beautiful compared to what we see at home.  Lynda thought the bra's were a bit expensive but the panties pretty cheap.  Tim suggested that as little material as there was in the panties they should be cheap.  We had planned to find a Japanese restaurant for lunch to enjoy real traditional Japanese food.  Unfortunately, the ones we thought looked interesting had no english menus and no one spoke English or had no English menus, no one spoke English but there were pictures of the dishes available. We decided to return to the ship for lunch. Despite this disappointment we still enjoyed our leisurely walk  around the city center.

We are nearing the end of our cruise.  Tomorrow we spend the day "at sea", arriving in Tokyo Sunday morning.  We have booked an excursion for Sunday and then Monday we leave the ship.  However, the adventure continues as we have also booked a three day extension in Tokyo so the Facebook pictures and blog postings will continue.  We return home next Thursday.  We will visit with you again in a couple of days from Tokyo.