My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
July 2024
Tsuruga was another port that we only went to once during my contract. I had no idea where in Japan it was, but I was happy to have the day off, even if it was ridiculously hot and humid. I arranged to hang out with Kotoha (our resident Live Character) and when I met her at the gangway, Dave, the resident guitarist, was also coming along with us. We had quite the welcome in Tsuruga. At the port they handed out free hand towels (It’s very Japanese to carry around a towel with you, probably to wipe your sweat because it gets so humid, in spite of every Japanese person I see constantly looking cool and flawless), and there was a shuttle that took us into town. We got off at the second stop which was right around the corner from a shrine.
It was already hot and humid. On the shuttle bus we talked about how we wanted to take advantage of the day and see as much as we could before we needed to be back on the ship.
The area around the shrine was beautiful.
I realized this was my first Japanese shrine. On the ship when I asked the guests about their day, they often described visiting a shrine, but my priorities (tagging along with Japanese crew) had been eating and discount shopping.
At the shrine there was a ritual (for good luck I think) about going through this ring three times.
Kotoha read me the instructions so we could accurately perform the ritual.
Around the corner from the shrine, we found a street fair! We later learned that the street fair had been arranged just because the ship was in town. There was someone on a loud speaker calling people to come try their balls of rice. I was game!
They had a website about something about rice balls and comedy, but I didn’t have the patience to wait for the QR code to load on my slow international data.
There were lots of places we wanted to try, but Kotoha had researched a restaurant with local food and we were hungry. We wove through the streets of mostly closed businesses (hence the street fair) to what seemed to me was a nondescript commercial building. We waited for a class of Japanese children to descend the stairs before we went up. Dave chatted with them as they passed. Koto and I went up ahead and stepped into the sweet, sweet air-conditioned restaurant. I was delighted to step out of the heat. I was amazed – I never would have found this place on my own! The restaurant was busy! We found the solo empty table by the window, removed our shoes and lowered ourselves down onto the pillows surrounding the table.
You can’t tell from the pictures, but on our side of the room, the tables were down low on the floor, as is the traditional way to eat in Japan (the other side had regular sized booths).
We now that we were no longer starving, we returned to the street fair, where they were offering Green Tea Beer. I had to try this!
We looked in the shops and realized that though we had had the intention of having a great adventure and exploring more things in the town, it was too hot and humid. I now needed a nap more than I needed adventure. So instead of taking the long way back walking through the town as we had planned, we caught the shuttle by the temple back to the ship.
We felt very welcomed by the town, and of course I love the chance to eat and drink locally (I mean, how can you beat rice balls on the street, and two kinds of green drinks?!). Dave, who is from Ireland, has traveled all over the world and Japan is his favorite place. I think he is as smitten with Japan as I am with Italy. I really enjoyed hearing his stories about how he fell in love with the country and his plans for figuring out a way to stay.