This port sort of sneaked up on us. It's one we've visited twice before so we didn't focus on getting up early enough to see the sail in. But we had to be up early enough for me to lead the 8am interdenominational service which coincided with our projected arrival time. Fortunately we arrived before 8am so the arrival announcements were completed before the service so it went on without interruption.
Afterwards Angela and I left the ship, grabbed a map and purchased an all day tram pass for 500 yen ($5) each and set a primary goal of riding each of the four tram lines to their end. And along the way we would hop off, do something interesting, and then hop back on to continue the ride to the end of the tram route where we'd get off, sometimes visit an attraction of interest if available and then get on the next tram on our agenda. For those curious, we rode the lines in the following order: red, blue, yellow, and green.
On the red line, we attended the 11am Sunday service at the Japanese Baptist Church and visited the Suwa-jinja shrine. On the blue line we took a ride on the Ferris Wheel on top the CoCo shopping mall for 500 yen. On the green line we stopped to photograph the Meganebashi (Spectacles) Bridge and the Confucian temple.
At the temple, a very elderly lady was trying to carry a very heavy sack of garbage and assisted by an elderly man. He left her to move the sack, but in her elderly hunchbacked condition that wasn't happening very well or fast. So I walked over and picked it up and carried it out easily but with her not letting go. In the end when we set the bag down at the curb, she thanked me profusely in broken English and excellent Chinese. And with shared smiles about the shared task completed we went our separate ways: her back to the temple and us on to Chinatown.
Chinatown was a ghost town and we quickly walked through it looking for a Nagasaki postcard. We found the main shopping street and after looking for a bit, we asked a shopkeeper where we might find a postcard. She directed us to a stationery store which we located and purchased a postcard which was added to the collection we have posted on our stateroom door. To get back to the ship, we took a blue line tran to a transfer point and switched to the following green tram. A short walk later and we were back on the ship just in time to join the evening program.
It was a special evening with a presentation of gifts (typically done in conjunction with a ship's first visit to a port) from the port to the ship and vice versa. Normally this is a private event, but the port wanted a public event. After this we watched local talent perform an excerpt from the Madam Butterfly Opera. The costuming was colorful, but I couldn't understand a word!
The final entertainment was the 'Guess my name' game show with Lance, his replacement, and Tim Kaminski, the comedian. We went to the Lido to find some dinner and ended up chatting with a pastor and his wife for the next couple hours.
Tomorrow is a full sea day on our way to Amani, Japan
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