Kushiro Welcomes Us Back to Japan

Day 14, Grand Asia 2018

Sunday, Oct. 14, 2018, Kushiro, Japan:

For the second year in a row, the fog escorted us into Kushiro. It isn’t known as “the town of mist” for no reason. As we neared the port, a fog bank hung just off the balcony. From the other side of the ship, the sunrise was spectacular through layers of clouds and fog.

Once we docked, the fog disappeared and we had a mostly sunny day in the 50s for our first Japanese stop.

Kushiro is on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It has hosted Olympics and is known for its beauty and fishing.

Japanese immigration is thorough. We are called by assigned group to the Explorer’s Lounge, where there are nine stations staffed by Japanese officials. They review your embarkation and debarkation forms, check your passport and take fingerprints and a digital picture.

Joyce and I explored town on our own, just as we did last year. We met on a cruise in 2011, and it is nice to visit ports with someone you know. We each remembered different things about Kurshiro, but the highlight again this year was the Washo fish market about a 15-minute walk from the ship.

The market is full of booths, most with fish but others with candy, small toys, chocolates and other packaged foodstuffs that were a mystery to us. There is little if any English labeling.

For “katte-don,” the iconic dish at the Washo market, you start at a booth that sells rice, choosing one of five sizes. Then you go to the sashimi booths and pick your fish. I went with the familiar ahi and yellowfin tuna, shrimp, mackerel and crab. Each tray is marked with the price in yen. (The quick and dirty currency conversion is to move the decimal two numbers to the left for the U.S. equivalent – it’s close enough.) I had lots of Japanese coins left from last year, and the vendors were patient as I counted out my 1080 yen for the lunch.

We saw lots of “ship people,” as we call our fellow passengers, wandering through the market but seldom eating. I’m sure some are just waiting to eat back on the ship. Others say they aren’t adventurous. I knew I survived last year’s katte-don lunch so assume I will again this year.

As we walked the major streets of this small city, we were struck by the nearly constant voices coming from loudspeakers along the way. We later learned they were warnings to cross the roads safely. That seemed excessively cautious to us, but it was Sunday morning so the streets were pretty deserted.

There are helpful instructions everywhere. The sidewalks have rows of yellow raised lines with dot patterns anywhere the lines make a turn – we assume this is for the blind. The changing of crosswalk lights is accompanied by the chirping of different birds. Loudspeaker warning voices – alternating male and female – are constant on busy streets, broken occasionally by the sound of children singing. Our impression was that it is a noisy city on a quiet Sunday morning.

It also is a beautiful city. They have placed scenic pictures on the backs of the overhead directional signs, for example.

We managed to find the cosmetics shop where Joyce wanted to replace the eyeliner she bought there last year, and it was one of the few shops open on Sunday. We briefly browsed a second-hand bookstore, but didn’t see much in English other than some familiar LP albums.

The friendly Japanese people welcomed us to every port last year, and this year is starting out the same. Near the pier are two buildings called the MOO and the EGG. The MOO is full of fish and souvenir kiosks.

The EGG is an enclosed atrium where Japanese volunteers offer to dress us in traditional clothes and teach us various crafts. We wrote our names in Japanese calligraphy and made folded paper cranes.

There are crane motifs everywhere in Kushiro, because it is one of the few places where the rare tancho (Japanese) makes its home in the marshes. Several ship tours went to the crane preserve, or you could take a bus from the train station. I sketched some of the crane motifs found on the city’s light posts and manhole covers.

I spent my last hour ashore at the visitor’s center near the dock, where the WiFi was free and fast. The ship’s WiFi is barely working – I can get email and texts, but no images and can’t load any websites. My blog posts were stacking up, so I used the service ashore to post a couple and to load a lot of pictures to the blog site for future posting. There was a rumor someone was coming aboard in Kushiro to fix the WiFi, but we haven’t had any communications from the ship staff about the problem or potential solution. Maybe in Yokohama.

A lively crowd marked our Kushiro sail away during happy hour in the Crow’s Nest, and the band played Anchors Aweigh as we cast off our lines. We have a sea day tomorrow and then five straight days in Japanese ports.