I’ll start today’s entry be saying we seem to be a little more disorganised than usual unlike a very good friend of mine who will remain nameless but would never let this happen. We were enjoying breakfast this morning, when we met some of our friends we had made while on the Trip-a-Deal land tour. Anyway, they asked us if we were doing the 4-hour city excursion today and both Trudy and I said no that we were doing another longer excursion that involved visiting a wood-carving place and other activities. We had checked the tickets when we arrived in our room on the first day of the cruise and noted we needed to be in the Explorers Bar at 9.15am When I went back to the cabin and checked the tickets…….I realised that they were for the excursion that is on tomorrow in a different town. Woops. Had we not realised this, we would have been sitting in the bar for 24 hours, waiting for our tour to be called……well probably not. Anyway, there were a couple of days where we had nominated not to go on an organised tour but just to catch a shuttle bus into the main part of town and do our own thing and obviously, Akita was one of these town but we had not done any research as to what we might do and see here. We quickly booked the 4-hour city tour as there were enough spots available and so at least had something planned. The tour really ended up the best option as we talked to some more organised travellers after we returned who had chosen to do their own thing and by the time they took a bus then a train into the city they had no time to do a tour and had to head back to the ship. Akita is a delightful town, in the northern part of Japan with a population of only 300,000. It was lovely to visit places that were quiet and easy to move around. We had a lovely female guide who had taken the bullet train from Tokyo (3 hours), to be our guide. Our first stop on the excursion was a visit to a “normal” shopping market. Inside the large store there would have been at least 30 different businesses selling everything from meat, fish, fresh fruit and vegetables, clothing, cakes, packaged food etc. It was a little like the central market but not with individual stalls or as large, more like Woolworths in size. When you wanted to purchase something, you had to walk around for a while to find the correct cashier to take it to. We asked our guide, Henry on the land tour, if there was a problem with shoplifting and he said no. It seems pretty obvious that there are no concerns as there was no security anywhere and it was just expected people will do the correct thing. Henry did say that the only people who are shoplifting are a few elderly people who don’t have family or anyone to look after them. They want to get caught so they can be taken to prison where they will be looked after medically, they won’t be lonely, and they will be fed. Anyway, Japan really does seem like a very safe place to live with a very low crime rate. From the traditional supermarket, we were taken to the Folk Performing Arts Heritage Centre. Here there were many displays and artifacts about the Festivals that are important to Akita and its people. There were an impressive display of lanterns on long poles which are used in the Kanto Festival. They even had some there that you could try to hold up or balance but none of us were brave enough to try. We also learnt about the Boden Festival and Trudy did a great job of playing the Taiko drums! Next to this centre was an Old Japanese home, the Kaneko Family House. It was a clothing store and home from 1854 to 1975 and had been restored and set up to show visitors the appearance of the home back in the 1850’s era. It was very interesting and well worth visiting. Following this our coach took us to the magnificent Akita Museum of Art, a magnificent spacious building housing a huge mural called “The Events of Akita, Akita – The Country of Beauty to the World’. This was painted by the world-famous artist Tsuguharu Foujita and depicted Atika of 1937. This mural was 20.5 mt long and was painted in 15 days in a large rice warehouse. It was very impressive. He had painted other large murals of Japan cities, but this one was special as it was of his hometown. Many other displays of his work were housed in the gallery as well as other beautiful pieces of art works. He had also worked tirelessly from the late 1930’s to try to have an Art gallery built in Akita and finally in 1967 this was accomplished, a year before his death. There is a beautiful new gallery that overlooks a stunning pool and the old Museum of Art that he was responsible for. We returned to the ship for a late lunch and a bit of relaxation. I thought I’d end the blog here but tonight proved even more entertaining. We had agreed to meet Rob and Trudy in a bar around 5.30pm. We had met some other people from the Trip-a-Deal group and were having a pre-dinner drink with them, when I received a call from Trudy to say she had lost Rob. She had been in the bathroom and Rob thought she had left the room and went looking for her. Trudy saw that Rob had not taken his phone with him and therefore couldn’t call him. She called me and was a bit concerned as to where he could be without his phone. Anyway, we all have “medallions” which you have to wear when on the ship. They track where you are. We asked a waiter at the bar, to track Rob W and he was able to tell us he was approaching the stairs on level 6. I went looking for him but still couldn’t find him. Anyway, a few minutes later I met up with Trudy, and she then asked another of the staff to track where Rob W was. She said he was now in his room. As Trudy now had her phone and Rob’s phone she couldn’t call him. The woman said she could use the phone on the wall to call their room which she did and finally caught up with Rob. He had returned to his room to get his phone (which Trudy had taken with her) so he could call her and find out where she was! Anyway, finally they were reunited thanks to the tracking devices in our medallions. We had a delightful night with another entertaining musical production called Freddy’s Queen. A young woman with a beautiful and strong voice did an amazing job singing the songs of Queen.
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