Japan 2023

It's the third morning on the ship, a sea day between Kagoshima, Japan and Busan, Korea. I'm sitting – actually, kind of reclining – on a deck chair, the kind of thing they mean when they say “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” It is not lost to me that Cunard bought the White Star line before WWII, and the Titanic was a White Star ship. We're on Cunard's Queen Elizabeth, not the original, or the QE II, which is currently a restaurant moored in Dubai.  This must be the QE III, I guess. Anyway, the ocean. Or, actually, the Korea Strait. Out of sight of land. Moderate seas, some whitecaps. Waves seem chaotic, but after a while I can see the organization, generally moving, in ragged lines, from here to there. It's a misty but warm day; the sea recedes into the mist and disappears long before the horizon. The flight from Albany to Newark seemed over before it actually began; the flight from Newark to Tokyo was 14 hours. It is unpleasant to be strapped into...

Sunrise near Nagasaki   So – Nagasaki. What is there to say about Nagasaki? As you know, our original itinerary included both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Then the G7 (as I remember, it was G8 before Russia was kicked out) decided to have their rich-nations conference in Hiroshima, so that was it for tourists. We were there first, but I guess that doesn't count. We stopped at Kagoshima instead, which we liked a lot – what's not to like about an active volcano? I had heard from a number of people that the atomic bomb memorial and museum was awesome and unforgettable in Hiroshima, and I was really looking forward to it. It's the only city that I really wanted to visit specifically. Oh, well. Nagasaki will have to do. We pulled into the long, narrow bay early in the morning, and at the end found Nagasaki, probably the smallest city we'd visited so far. The harbor pilot boarded the ship and did a very neat 180 at the end of the bay, in the center, and we docked facing...

I can't believe that I left out The Man in Black. Walking up the hill to the Ido castle (it's Monday night, so that was yesterday), the group stopped while the guide was talking to some actors in traditional costume. She turned to us and said, “Now we will have a dramatic performance!” A woman screamed, and a moment later one of the costumed figures, an older man, came around the corner dragging a young costumed woman, still screaming. The man's henchman followed close behind. They got right down in the middle of our group – and then – from the opposite direction, Clint Eastwood appeared. I could almost hear the whistling, almost smell the cigarillo. In this case, Clint was a black figure with the samurai sword and knife; he stepped out of the crowd and confronted the man with the woman. The older man gestured to his henchman and said “Fight him!” (someone translated). They fought, a quick, intense, stylized swordfight, and Clint, of course, saw his opening and del...