My final day in Japan, I took a train up to the historic city of Kyoto with a friend from the ship. We arrived with little fuss, and got tickets for the sightseeing hop on hop off bus that allowed us to see many different sites in the city. We enjoyed a sampling of the …
On my third day in Japan we took a bus back to Osaka from Hiroshima and on the way we stopped in a town called Himeji to see the beautiful castle there. It is the finest feudal fortress left from the Sengoku (warring states) period, and the architecture really does shine. Touring the grounds I …
Early the next morning I boarded a bus in Osaka and we headed to the Shin-Osaka bullet train terminal. The city was pretty empty still compared to the bustle I’d seen yesterday, but you can see there are signs of it awakening. Japan is very train focused and there’s a whole separate terminal for their …
Some of us on board woke up very early to watch the ship come into Osaka harbor. I was one of them and got a few shots of looming islands in the darkness. When we made our formal entry to the harbor, we were greeted by the local fire boat crew who made a sweeping …