Lunch on Day 11. The Diamond Princess docked across the pier from us. The speaker today was  Adam Tanner , author in residence at Harvard.   He spoke on:  Japanese View of the Pearl Harbor Attack--How Tokyo justified its World War Two aggression. I already provided some background information about this subject in my  24April2025  posting. Having been born in 1940 in Honolulu, I was a little more than one year old when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.  I thus was a U.S. citizen, and being of Japanese descent, lived through my life with a sense of discomfort about what people felt about my loyalties.  Of course, I was American, and schools taught me about that Day of Infamy, and how terrible the Japanese were about starting World War II in the Pacific. Now in my 80's, for the first time I'm beginning to realize that just maybe, Japan was cornered in desperation, and had to become aggressive to survive as a nation. Not shown in the  graphic to ...

The highlight of Day 9 in Japan was lunch in my hotel room.  Clouds still blocking a view of Mount Fuji.  The Sheraton Yokohama Bay Hotel sits over a large underground shopping mall.  A close-by market supplied chutoro and hirame sashimi and a bento of beef curry over rice.  The hotel provided the hot green tea and cold beer. Our final Club Lounge session was five hours and, below, last breakfast on Day 10. Best croissant I've had in years.  All in all, in consideration of price, this has become our favorite hotel in Japan. Then off to the Oceania Riviera.  Azaleas are in bloom. Approaching our ship.   I've been on more than a dozen cruises, maybe two.  Checking-in almost always involves standing in line, with long waits.   Perhaps an hour or more.  This time, a lot of personnel to get our luggage off the taxi and wheeled to the baggage check area.  Then, maybe a five-minute processing period.  We were on the ship ten...

Japan had the first bullet train more than 60 years ago.  It was 10October1964, when the opening ceremony was held in Tokyo in anticipation of Japan's first-ever Olympic Games, which began that day. The  Shinkansen,  meaning  new mainline , with a separate track, arrived when normal train traffic had reached the limit for carrying passengers and freight.   A train trip between Osaka and Tokyo dropped from 6 hours and 40 minutes to 4 hours, shortened to 3 hours and 10 minutes by 1964, and is now 2 hours and 30 minutes.  From the Shin-Osaka Station to the Shin-Yokohama Station only takes a little more than 2 hours. In 1964 the track was 320 miles long.  Today, it's up to 1484 miles.  The original itinerary incorporating Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka now carries 159 million passengers/year.  In this 6 decade period, more than 10 billion passengers have been safely handled.  CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT NOT ONE PASSENGER HAS YET BEEN KILLED IN A DERA...