Cherry Blossom Land

Tuesday March 3
Day at sea. Learning some new music in choir. Taking a run at ABBA again. Hard music to learn but fun. Weather starting to get a little cooler as we head north to Japan. Starting to get into some very deep water. The Marianas Trench is about 4 miles deep here. Walking on deck was a little dicey with the winds at 30 + MPH
Wednesday March 4
Day at sea. Cloudy and windy. Interesting lecture on plate tectonics. All the juicy geology stuff like volcanoes, tsunamis and earth quakes. Actually got some canasta in today. Catching up on laundry.
Thursday March 5
Day ay sea. Sue’s yoga- Choir practice- Tune up lectures on Japan and Broadway hits sing along highlight the day.
Friday March 6
Osaka Japan: A rainy and chilly day welcomes us to our tours. But the sites involve a lot of walking so we stay warm anyway. Where ever we go it is clean, colorful, and well -maintained. All the buildings have a ceramic tile exterior. The people love black and white for their cars and the way they dress. They all are quite attractive. Osaka is very cosmopolitan and the 3rd largest city in this country of 127 million. We drive through Osaka, the city that is said can build anything, to Nara where we visit the largest brass Buddha in the world. Deer are considered sacred and 2 thousand roam the grounds amongst the visitors. The structure that houses the Buddha is over 100 feet high, more than 800 years old and put together in a post and beam style joinery of wood. Looking at all the pictures in the world can never replicate the sights sounds and smells like the majesty of the real thing. Then off to a sprawling Shinto shrine. The central theme is nature. This experience of strolling thru gravel paths in a forest of eight hundred year old statuary swallowed up in a beautiful forest of unimaginable green, bathed in sounds of water and birds, and currents of soft smells absolutely drain any sense of angst and replace it with overwhelming peace. Our last stop of the day was the Osaka castle. The scale and dimension of this 12th century fortification rivals any in the world. It’s Hoover Dam-ish in appearance. The museum which is now in the castle features a fine collection of 800 hundred year old examples of battle dress and armament. We finished with a stroll through a just starting to blossom cherry and plum orchard.