Our only Japanese sea day. The weather has been quite cool and it was extremely windy playing deck quoits. Today was the final of the ship building competition. The contestants had from the time we left Australia until today to construct a boat. There were three tests. The first was for the boat to sail from one end of the Terrace Pool to the other. It was windy and they all succeeded. The second was a repeat but with passengers. Six cans of drink! Final...

A very long day today. Up at 6.15, breakfast and then Japanese immigration. I joined the queue that went from Carmens past Champions, Medina, Masquerades to the shops. When it eventually started to move, it went quite fast. I sat in the theatre waiting for my tour to be called and the line went all the way to the stage! The excursion left at about 8.15. I went to Kyoto. The drive was about an hour. There was no discernible difference between Osaka and ...

Definitely cooler today. The temperature has dropped by half over the last two days. Our last sea day before Japan. We've been given the immigration information and tomorrow I have to report between 7 and 7.30 for my face to face meeting. I also have to take any bag and stuff that I intend to take ashore. It's going to be a long day. Still at least the clocks go back again, we'll be GMT -9. I hope I can finally hit the Internet to send these blogs. I ...

Today started a lot cooler and ended up even more so. There was a coffee morning for half of the full worlders to meet the officers. It was ok, we really only spoke to the entertainment team people though. I wore jeans for the first time in a long while whilst playing deck quoits. It was also extremely windy up there. Amazingly I won again, so sticker number 3 nestles happily in my prize passport! Black and white night tonight. We decided against it an...

The beginning of week nine and another glorious day, unexpectedly so, as I assumed the weather would start to cool down. I guess that may happen tomorrow, as Japan is only two days away. Speaking of Japan, the immigration documents arrived in the cabin this afternoon. Some of the details had been completed, but the rest were very simple. Just like the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, we have to have a face to face immigration check. This is getting to be a...