Back to Japan. We had an early tour with Cruise Specialists, our travel agent. We were on the bus and off to Kyoto at 7 am. Kyoto was the first capital of Japan so has a lot of historical sites. It started raining while we were on our way. We arrived at our first destination, an old temple and garden. The garden was the most significant. It had 15 rocks and gravel raked to perfection. I don't get it myself but it is supposed to be beautiful and that was a famous one. Next we went to an old home for a tea ceremony. The house had been in the family for many generations. The lady of the house was our hostess. She explained what the master of the ceremony was doing, cleaning everything in front of us then preparing the tea. It was made from a green tea powder and very bitter. We were served sweets to eat before drinking to take away the bitterness. I was the first served. You had to take the bowl with your left hand, hold it in your right then turn it clockwise 2 times. Interesting. I took a sip, blach! It was AWFUL!!! Then I took a bite of the sweet and took another sip. Amazing the difference! It was actually drinkable. You are supposed to slurp your last sip to let your host know you are finished. I guess my slurp was a bit loud. Even the master of ceremonies laughed. She was a beautiful Japanese woman in a kimono, on her knees doing the ceremony and VERY serious about it. She couldn't contain herself, too funny. We then had a tour of the house. It had 5 gardens and was quite beautiful.
Our guide was a young Japanese woman. Her english was with a heavy accent but very good. She told us a lot about Japan and the people while we were riding. Interesting to me was about the religion.
The majority of Japanese are Shinto during their life. They believe there is a god in everything, the sky, water, candy, you name it. Once they die they become Buddhist to reach paradise. But one day a year they are Christian, celebrating Christmas and giving the children Santa Claus presents.
She also gave us a long description of Japanese toilets. She rated them with stars, 5 being the best. A 1 star toilet is the traditional hole in the ground with a wet floor. Two star is the same with a dry floor. For 3 stars you have a standard western toilet. There is at least one of these in every restroom as they are considered handicap toilets. Four stars have buttons for a bottom shower (her words) and dryer. For a five star toilet you have many buttons, shower, dryer, heated seat and even a recording of a toilet flushing to drown out other sounds. But she said to be sure to be seated when pushing the buttons or you would end up with a 1 star, wet floor. She was very cute.
Back on the bus we headed to the golden temple. It was completely covered with gold leaf, surrounded by a beautiful lake. There were several small islands in the lake with overgrown bonsai trees on them.
Would have been beautiful in the sun but by now it was raining steadily. We walked around the gardens then headed to the bus. Next stop was another temple and lunch.
We sat in short chairs in front of individual tables. The entire meal was vegetarian. Some was good, some was inedible, IMO, but it was served in a beautiful way. After lunch we were given the option of walking in the rain thru a bamboo forest or shopping. I chose the latter. It would have been nice to see the bamboo also, but so little time. We found a store filled with mobiles made entirely of fabric, small animals, food, flowers, etc. They also had fabric sushi and fruit. It was beautiful. We bought a couple of things then headed down the street. It was very crowded and had mostly food stores but was a nice experience. We were back on the bus and headed back to Kobe at 2:30. Because of traffic we didn't get back to the ship until 4:30 which was all aboard time.
There were quite a few people from our ship in the terminal using the free Internet. We talked to them about our schedule and all aboard was now at 2 am. Because of typhoon Wipha, our stop at Okinawa was canceled. We would now head for Nagasaki going thru the Inland Sea of Japan. The capt said the swells in the open ocean were up to 20 feet with a very strong wind. This new route would be much safer.
We had dinner then went back to the terminal to use the internet. It was just not working, very frustrating. At least we can turn on the cellular data in our phones to check emails. Hopefully there will,be free Internet that works in Nagasaki.
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