The Haphazard Holiday – Part Two
And then we got on a ship.
I’m saying ship because apparently cruise people get a bit twitchy if you call it a boat.
Although this particular boat, sorry, ship, had restaurants, bars, a theatre, swimming pools, a casino and enough alcohol onboard to make the distinction seem increasingly unimportant as the evening went on.
Our home for the next couple of weeks was Celebrity Millennium, sailing from Yokohama around Japan, over to South Korea and then eventually back again.
Before we went, I wasn’t entirely convinced cruising would be for me.
It looked suspiciously organised.
There were schedules.
Dress codes.
Dinner times.
Excursions.
People who apparently knew what “port side” meant without having to think about it.
None of this really screamed Haphazard.
However, it turns out cruising mostly involves waking up somewhere new, wandering off the ship, doing whatever you fancy, coming back onboard and having somebody hand you a drink.
So actually I’m a natural.
Osaka
Our first proper stop was Osaka and the ship stayed overnight.
We had various sensible options.
Temples.
Culture.
History.
Kyoto.
All perfectly good choices.
Instead, we stood on our balcony, looked across and realised we could see Universal Studios Japan.
So obviously we went there.
No grand plan.
No carefully researched itinerary.
No deep cultural reasoning.
We could see it.
That was enough.
This is probably the most Haphazard decision of the entire holiday.
One minute you’re looking over the balcony thinking, “Oh look, Universal Studios is over there.”
Next minute you’re on your way to it.
Japan is extremely dangerous for people with poor impulse control.
Universal was brilliant.
Crowds, rides, Mario, Harry Potter, enormous amounts of merchandise and the general feeling that your bank card is slowly being mugged by fictional characters.
And because this was Japan, everything was ridiculously well organised.
Even chaos in Japan queues politely.
Kochi
Kochi was somewhere I knew almost nothing about before arriving.
Which I increasingly think is the best way to visit somewhere.
If you’ve spent six months researching every street, temple, cafe and public toilet,(Keep your eyes peeled for an entire blog about Japanese toilets), there’s not much left to discover when you actually get there.
Kochi was more of a wander.
Get off.
Look around.
See what happens.
One of the weirdest things about cruising is how quickly the ship becomes home.
You walk away from this enormous floating building in the morning and then hours later spot it in the distance and genuinely think:
“There it is.”
Like you’ve left your house parked beside the sea.
Except your house has 2,000 other people in it and several bars.
Sea Day Number One
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do on a sea day.
There is nowhere to go.
No station to find.
No shrine to visit.
No reason whatsoever to check Google Maps every three minutes.
Turns out the answer is:
Nothing.
Absolutely bloody nothing.
And it’s magnificent.
Breakfast.
Coffee.
Sit somewhere.
Walk around a bit.
Consider doing something healthy.
Decide against it.
Eat again.
Watch the sea.
Have a drink.
Possibly have another drink because you’re on holiday.
At some point someone suggests going to the gym.
Laugh.
Continue watching the sea.
There were quizzes, shows, talks, swimming pools and all sorts happening onboard.
But sitting doing absolutely nothing while the Ocean goes past is surprisingly addictive.
Busan
Then we went to South Korea.
Because apparently Japan wasn’t enough.
Busan was our only stop there, meaning I can now legitimately say I’ve been to South Korea while having almost no useful knowledge whatsoever about South Korea.
We wandered around, explored a bit and generally did our usual highly professional tourism technique of walking in whichever direction looked interesting. Went up the second tallest building in South Korea
At one point every mobile phone around us suddenly made the sort of noise that normally means:
YOU HAVE APPROXIMATELY FOUR MINUTES TO LIVE.
Some kind of emergency alert.
Nobody else reacted.
Nobody ran.
Nobody screamed.
A woman nearby carried on shopping.
So we did too.
I’ve developed a very sophisticated international emergency procedure:
Look at the locals.
If they’re running, run.
If they’re buying coffee, buy coffee.
Nagasaki
Nagasaki was different.
This wasn’t a fun holiday stop in the usual sense.
We went to the Atomic Bomb Museum, Peace Park and the hypocentre.
And it was tough.
Really tough.
The museum contains photographs, personal belongings and objects recovered after the bombing.
One of them is a clock stopped at 11:02.
The exact moment the bomb exploded.
It’s one of those objects that doesn’t really need much explanation.
You just stand there looking at it.
We then walked through Peace Park and visited the hypocentre — the point directly beneath where the bomb exploded in the air above the city.
I’d wondered beforehand about taking photographs.
It felt strange.
Not disrespectful exactly, because these places exist to be remembered.
But definitely not somewhere for holiday poses and grinning selfies.
What struck me most was the message.
Not revenge.
Not hatred.
Peace.
Remember what happened.
Don’t let it happen again.
It was probably the hardest day of the trip.
And I’m glad we went.
Love & Peace.
Kagoshima
Kagoshima has an active volcano casually sitting next door.
Sakurajima.
And by “next door” I mean right there across the water.
Smoking away occasionally.
As volcanoes tend to do.
Everyone in Kagoshima seems remarkably relaxed about this arrangement.
Personally, if Worcester had an active volcano just outside St John’s I’d probably check Rightmove.
But apparently Sakurajima erupts regularly, drops ash on the city and everyone just carries on with their day. It in fact erupted while we were there, not fire and brimstone but very smokey
Very Japanese.
We looked at the volcano.
Took photos of the volcano.
And naturally I bought a Sakurajima T-shirt.
About 2,300 yen.
Absolute bargain.
If a volcano might destroy the city at some point, the least you can do is buy the merchandise.
Another Sea Day
By now cruise life had become worryingly normal.
Someone makes your bed.
Someone cooks your breakfast.
Someone clears your plates.
You disappear for the day and when you return there’s a cold towel waiting for you.
Then somebody asks what you’d like to drink.
This is how it happens.
This is how perfectly sensible people become Cruise People.
One minute you’re saying:
“I don’t know if cruises are really my thing.”
Two weeks later you’re looking at future sailings and saying things like:
“Ooh, Norway would be nice.”
Dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Shimizu
Shimizu was one of the last stops before heading back towards Tokyo.
And of course this meant another opportunity to see Mount Fuji.
Fuji likes to play hard to get.
It is enormous.
It is famous.
It is theoretically difficult to miss.
And yet somehow it can vanish completely behind clouds.
This feels deliberate.
Millions of people fly across the world to see it and Fuji basically goes:
“No.”
Still, the whole area is beautiful and by this point the trip had started getting that slightly weird end-of-holiday feeling.
You know you’ve still got days left.
But your brain has started counting them.
Life on Millennium
Celebrity Millennium isn’t one of those absolutely enormous modern ships with rollercoasters, go-kart tracks and presumably a branch of IKEA somewhere on Deck 17.
And I liked that.
It was big without being ridiculous.
After a few days we mostly knew where everything was.
Mostly.
There were still occasions near the end when I’d get out of a lift, walk confidently for about thirty seconds and realise I’d gone entirely the wrong way.
The staff were brilliant.
The food was excellent.
The Classic Drinks Package was… useful.
Possibly too useful.
And one of my favourite things was simply sitting outside at night.
Pitch black ocean.
No land anywhere.
The ship moving quietly through the water.
Drink in hand.
That feeling of being somewhere very far away from normal life.
Lovely.
And Then We Were Back
Eventually we sailed back towards Yokohama.
Two weeks earlier I’d boarded Millennium thinking:
“I’m not sure cruising is really my thing.”
Now I was thinking:
“So where else do Celebrity sail from the UK?”
Which I’m pretty sure means they got me.
And looking back, the whole thing had been slightly ridiculous.
We’d gone from Tokyo to a cruise ship.
Gone to Universal Studios mainly because we could literally see it from the balcony.
Visited places we’d barely heard of.
Crossed over to South Korea.
Received an emergency alert and decided everything was probably fine because nobody else looked bothered.
Stood at the hypocentre in Nagasaki.
Looked at an active volcano.
Spent entire days doing almost nothing.
Drank cocktails in the middle of the ocean.
That’s quite a fortnight
Not especially organised.
Not always sensible.
Occasionally educational.
Frequently involving food.
Pretty much perfect.
This was just a brief flavour I will probally do some more in depth stuff in the next week or two as i haven’t even mentioned thinks like getting bit on the arse by a deer.
I also realise that my readership is about 2 and those lovely people probably only say they have read this so as not to hurt my feelings but I really do this for me else i would forget 🙂
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