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The itinerary for cruise #2
While the first cruise was mostly about “sea days”, once w arrived in Japan we’ll have a port a day for about the next three weeks. |
Leaving Tokyo, we cruised overnight to the town of Shimizu (pop. 240,000). The port is a combination of commercial and cruise ships. While it has a bit of an industrial look to it, it’s listed as one of Japan’s most beautiful ports. The beauty is in the mountainous, tree covered coast line and snow capped Mount Fuji (12,000+ feet) in the background.
We arrived early (7:00 AM) and were off the ship shortly thereafter, with a goal of getting the best views of the mountain, which is still considered an active volcano even though it’s been dormant since 1707. We gathered some information from the port visitors center and decided to take a cab to the Miho Shrine after being assured that would be the best place to view the mountain. We ended up hiring the cab by the hour and shared it with two nice ladies from Australia, one of which is celebrating her 70th birthday tomorrow.
The cab driver spoke very minimal English, we spoke no Japanese, but thanks to the folks working at the cab stand and some brochures we quickly got on the same page. It was about a 15 minute drive to the shrine, which is located in a coastal pine forest. It was cloudy as we drove, but the cloud cover cleared and we had a great view of the mountain.
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Mount Fuji from the Miho Shrine. We were probably 30 miles away
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| Seeing the mountain made us go goo goo eyed for each other |
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| Part of the Miho Shrine |
We also enjoyed visiting the Sumpu Castle Park which was the home of Ieyasu, a Japanese warlord. The castle is gone, although extensive excavation has given clues as to what it looked like in the 1600’s. We did enjoy seeing the excavation site and the Momijiyama Gardens which were located on the grounds.
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| The castle excavation site. The exterior wall of the moat is in good shape for being over 400 years old! |
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| A few photos of Momijiyama Gardens which is located in the castle park |
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| Lots of beauty in the gardens! |
We intended to hire the cab for an hour, but ended up enjoying a three hour tour, laughing and attempting to communicate with our friendly driver along the way. He seemed to be enjoying himself as much as we were enjoying him and the tour.
After getting dropped off at the port we spent a little time roaming around the area. There were numerous shops and restaurants and we discovered Japan’s version of Dollar Tree, which is nice for picking up small items.
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| Shimizu Port |
Everyone we came in contact with along the way seemed genuinely glad we were there. As we sailed away there was even a small fireworks display. I think they wanted to wish us a smooth sailing………or celebrating our departure?
