We’re back in Japan now for two weeks. Our arrival into the port of Sakaiminato is serenaded by a group of drummers which is most entertaining.
Firstly we have to go through Japanese immigration which means after those customers on a ship’s tour are processed then anyone who isn’t on tour goes though a deck at a time. All customers must be disembarked at the same time, a so-called “zero-count” is required.
As soon as our deck is called we’re off, passing quickly though immigration and customs and then out of the the port heading northwards.
Sakaiminato is on a peninsula, actually a sandbar so very flat. It’s also a very wet area getting almost three times the rainfall of Manchester! Happily for us it is a dry day, although rather cold at first, later we are constantly juggling jumpers on and off.
We start walking towards the town centre, aiming for the Shofuku-Ji temple, which is closed to visitors when we arrive although we can clearly hear the chant and occasional bell being struck, it’s a delightful sound in the near silence surrounding us.
Moving on we follow the railway up to the town, along a path I hasten to point out, not actually on the track as we have been know to do on other occasions, passing baseball practice as we go. We happen on some excellent instructions, that we hope we never need to heed, but it’s good to document just in case!
The town has a ferry port which take a quick peek at but return to the high street for the main event, the brass characters based around GeGeGe no Kitaro, who did infamous in Japan. The author was brought up in Sakaiminato.
It’s quite amusing to see even the police station has engaged with GeGeGe! There are 177 of these statues along Mizuki Shigeru Road, the high street. I resisted the temptation to document all of them, here’s a (mostly) cute selection.
Afterwards we enjoy a leisurely walk back to Quest, although Mr Google did try to pull a fast one, we had to plot a course correction at the end. The view in the distance is of Mt Daisen, which being similarly volcanic does look like Mt Fuji, and indeed Mt Teide, but is only half the height of these at 1700m.
We relax in the jacuzzi for a while, before it’s gin o’clock and time to shower and dress for dinner.
We head down to deck four, MDR again, and make our choices. Dungeness crab salad, asparagus velute and coq au vin for the Husband, spinach and duck confit scald, asparagus velute and lamb for me. The duck was really disappointing, the texture didn’t convey the idea of confit (or it’s taste) and there wasn’t enough anyway. Thankfully the other courses were amazingly good. We finish with apfelstrudel and Venoise Sundae, both absolutely gorgeous.
This evening we’re entertained by a Japanese pianist Tomono Kawamura who is quite incredible. We get Monti, Greig, Shostakovich and two Japanese composers too. An excellent performance!
