August 22, 2025

Tokyo at Night!

Tokyo reminds me a lot of New York City minus the grit, graffiti, trash, homeless, honking horns, sirens and crime.  It is amazing how clean the streets are everywhere!  Our hotel is in a lively Times Square kinda neighborhood. There are huge billboards everywhere you look. We went to a Samari dinner show and on the walk there we caught our first sightings of Godzilla !

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The Samurai Theater itself  was a calidescope of all things sparkly and glitter! WOW! The show was lively, loud music, strobe lights and neon and tons of moving parts. The dancers and musicians portray a ton of classic Japanese images, samurai warriors, geshi, dragons and lots of colorful images. We had seats right along the stage and ate a dinner of sushi and udon, while we watched the performance. Afterwards we strolled more of the neighborhood  and got to see the Cat in a Box billboard.

We squeezed in one more FUN excursion, in this long first day in Tokyo. We met up with ship friends (L to R )Theresa, her son Riley, his visiting friend Gavin, Me & Bosco and Alan to drive STREET KARTS around the City. This was a BLAST and a great way to see the city and sights all lite up at night! Plus we got to get in costumes! They supplied a variety of onesie outfits!

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A GREAT FIRST DAY IN A FUN TOWN!!! Really LOVING Japan !!!

COLONIA, YAP STATE, MICRONESIA

By Patricia Patrick • October 16, 2025
Got to love a place that sells shirts saying " Where the heck is Yap? " Colonia ( population 3,100 ) is the Capital and Harbor town of Yap State ( population 11,600 ) one of four states in the Federated States of Micronesia. We are in the Pacific Ocean or Philippine Sea just north of the equator, Papua New Guinea and Australia.

TERNATE, INDONESIA

By Patricia Patrick • October 13, 2025
Ternate, Indonesia, which is both the name of the city and island, and is part of the Maluku Islands in eastern Indonesia. It is a port that sees maybe 3 Cruise ships a year. However, they really made an effort to show us the best of what they can offer. It's mainly a Muslim country, and we knew we had to dress discretely, but we knew little else. We didn't have our typical port talk prior, due to a technical issue with the AV equipment. Ben a fellow resident, organized an island tour, with about 8 stops, for 90 of us residents.

CEBU, PHILIPPINES

By Patricia Patrick • October 10, 2025
Cebu greeted our Ship with a big warm welcome, despite having just been rocked by a major Earthquake, days before our arrival. The Minister of Tourism arrived with a motorcade and she proceeded to chat with the residents and thank us, for all our support.