Well the most important thing to report has to do with that typhoon that formed the day we originally departed Yokohama.  According to  Wikipedia : Typhoon Koto , known in the Philippines as   Typhoon Verbena , was a fairly strong and erratic  tropical cyclone  that impacted much of the  Visayas  and portions of  Luzon and  Mindanao  in the  Philippines . The twenty-seventh  named storm  and fourteenth  typhoon  of the  annual typhoon season , Koto developed off the eastern coast of Mindanao on November 23, then tracked westward across the country, making seven landfalls before emerging over the South China Sea, where it strengthened into a typhoon. However, the system gradually weakened and became virtually stationary off the coast of Vietnam before dissipating altogether. Let me begin with Day 9 on the Diamond Princess.  Did not do much except eat and sleep.  Lunch came in two parts. ...

The Shinkansen takes around 3 hours to get from Sendai to Shin-Hakodate.  A car, perhaps 8.5 hours.  Our cruise ship leaves Sendai at 3PM and is expected to arrive in the Port of Hakodate at 7AM, or 16 hours later.  Our ship would need to cruise at 22 MPH.  The Riviera's top speed is 23 MPH. The largest cruise ship today is the Icon of the Seas.  She has a top speed of 28 MPH.  The Titanic could just about reach that speed. The Oceania Riviera was supposed to depart at 3PM, but instead left at 2:50.  So this is the only photo I took. Sendai is a special place for me.  I have stayed at the Sendai Westin at least ten times.  Photo to the left, sunset from the Executive Club.  The room price now is around $350/night.  I remember a few months after the 11March2011 Great Tohoku cataclysm, with the Fukushima damaged nuclear reactors only 50 miles away, I only paid $45/night. 2012 :  In April, 13 months after the Great Tohoku disaster...