The calm after the storm. Kyoto's "golden pavilion" Kinkaku-ji, visited on a day excursion when the Diamond Princess cruise ship eventually docked in Kobe.
High winds and a missed port: How to cope when your Japan cruise experiences an unexpected day stuck at sea, writes Kim Knight.
It’s 2am and I’m googling “how to read Japanese marine weather warnings”. The ship pitches and shudders. There’s an unexplained banging in the ceiling and a cupboard door creaks like a horror movie.
I wedge a bag of dirty washing against the noisy door. The wind is at 45-knots, the swell is nearing 5m and my lurch across the cabin has tripped the night light sensor.
My sister continues to snore. One woman’s howling gale is, apparently, another’s lullaby.
Cruise ships are built to withstand serious weather. I’m in no danger but the sea is bona fide heavy; as dawn breaks, it’s clear we are not where we should be. A loudspeaker announcement confirms we are no longer docking at Kochi on the southern coast of Japan’s Shikoku Island. Shore excursions are cancelled. The Diamond Princess will instead sail all day and all night until we reach Kobe.
“While we may still encounter some rough seas, this change will enable us to provide you with the most comfortable cruise,” says the captain’s letter delivered to every stateroom.
Have you ever wondered whether you’re a cruise ship person? Nothing will answer that question more comprehensively than an unexpected day stuck at sea.
“I’m so glad we have a balcony,” said my sister. (When we realised there were pull-down beds in the roof we were also glad there were only two of us sharing the quite compact bathroom).
It had been more than four decades since we’d slept in the same room. Normally, we live on different islands but for six nights onboard the Diamond Princess, we would share a 22sqm cabin. Separate beds, but so close to each other, we could have held hands.
We had joined the ship in Busan, South Korea on the halfway point of its round trip Japan Explorer voyage from Yokohama. Our media contingent’s plus ones included a flatmate, a mum and a little sister. I think a cruise might be the ideal holiday for friends, siblings and anyone else you don’t normally live with - hierarchies and tension fall away when you don’t have to navigate your way to your next hotel and/or country.
On a cruise, you unpack once into the many drawers, shelves and coat hangers (easily three times more of the latter than I’ve found in my past three hotel rooms combined) and never worry how you’re going to get home from a night out.
The bathroom is compact, but you enter it through a separate space that can also serve as a dressing room, offering additional privacy to a shared situation.
Mirrors make the whole cabin seem bigger, wind and waves cancel out snoring and nobody says you have to sit next to each other on a shore excursion to a golden temple in Kyoto et al.
On an evening “sail away”, we glide under a bridge as the sun sets on Nagasaki. One morning, we wake to a view of one of Japan’s most active stratovolcanoes. We glimpse the tip of Mt Fuji and it is magical. But these were the calms before and after the storm.
How crowded did it feel with 4000 passengers and crew on our unexpected sea day?
The ship is 17 decks high and 290m long, but we were not so much a floating village as an entire small provincial town. What if everybody wanted breakfast at the same time?
Fun facts: every stick of bread on this ship is baked fresh. Almost half of the 1100 crew are dedicated to food and beverage service. The team includes two ice carvers, 92 waiters (and another 80 junior waiters), five butchers on meat prep and another three on fish. Every day, passengers consume 37 litres of mayonnaise and half a tonne of flour.
At breakfast, I do my bit for the cause and drown multiple mini French toasts in maple syrup. I never eat this on land. At sea there is, apparently, nothing I won’t eat twice.
The buffet is open from 5.30am to 10pm and there’s unlimited pizza, burgers and ice cream sundaes by the pool from 11am to 9pm. Five of the 10 bars don’t close until “late” and if you can’t be bothered leaving your room, try the OceanNow on-demand service.
The Princess Premier package (an extra $155 a day) buys drinks, Wi-Fi and unlimited access to specialty restaurants. I ate pan-seared sea bass at Sabatini’s Italian Trattoria, a sushi feast at Makoto Ocean, my body weight in meat at the Churrascaria Brazilian Grill, excellent steak at the Crown Grill and thought the add-on was worth it. The bigger question: why was I eating cruise ship food in one of the world’s greatest culinary destinations?
I did frequently lament how many miles offshore we’d sailed from the nearest Japanese convenience store. The trick is to make the most of local food on your day trips and properly explore the onboard options. I happily discovered the likes of oden (fishcakes, veges and dashi broth), chirashi, takoyaki and a ramen station at the buffet. One of my more surprising conversations was with a passenger with severe seafood allergies. She wanted to experience the culture of Japan without (in her own words) “dying”. Cruise ship kitchens were the solution to her dietary restrictions.
You can’t spend an entire day eating. One of the joys of a 62.4m high ship is it creates its own natural weather barriers. Bathed in sunshine in the lee of the wind, I miraculously encountered empty spa pools. Inside, the library cupboards were stacked with board games, and there was a Japanese calligraphy class in the Explorer’s Lounge.
Other ways to visit Japan when you can’t land as planned include taking your clothes off on deck 15. Izumi Bathhouse is a full-scale onsen with sea views – indoor and outdoor baths, a dry sauna, steam and mist rooms and waterfall showers with the usual caveats (no swimsuits in the segregated bathing areas and a compulsory scrub down ahead of your soak).
The day prior, I’d enjoyed a seaweed wrap at the Lotus Spa. Just me, a tiny pair of paper undies and a thick layer of goopy green, all bundled up in a giant sheet of tinfoil. Human sushi with very clean pores.
My sister spent some of her sea day getting a pedicure. People knitted, read and slept on deck chairs. It wasn’t until I saw kids screaming with delight in a swimming pool turned sloshing theme park ride that I realised how much the ship was still lurching. The onboard entertainment, meanwhile, was at full volume. I entered an art quiz but decided against karaoke.
“Fresh air and keep your eyes on the horizon,” said the man in the elevator to a very wan companion, but the passenger contingent mostly had the feel of a workplace with an IT outage; a day of guilt-free mooching because all plans were, literally, all at sea.
For the crew, it was the exact opposite. The digital medallions that serve as both a room key and personal locator beacon were doing double time. Go to the app on your phone, order a drink, and someone will track you down wherever you are via the medallion technology. This is only creepy until you get your first drink.
Cruise ships are ridiculously companionable. “Get your swimsuit,” urged a complete stranger clutching two beers and a towel. “Come join.” On an average day, the Diamond Princess’s dishwashers process 21,500 glasses. Today was not an average day.
If your party of two doesn’t want to meet new people, then don’t sit at a buffet table for four. If you’re travelling solo and so inclined, there is an organised meet-up every evening. And if you really don’t feel like people, take to your bed and laugh/cry at The Love Boat (the originals were filmed on real 1970s and 80s Princess cruise itineraries).
During my spa treatment, the therapist had told me there was no single reason people take a cruise holiday, “but for many, it’s because they have lost something”.
I was struck by her use of the word “something” rather than the more obvious “someone”.
So much of life is shifts and transitions; lurching from one situation to the next with no breathing space in between. Jobs. Relationships. Ages and stages. Imagine being able to hit “pause” and reinvent yourself as someone who eats three breakfasts and no dinner before heading to an all-singing, all-dancing 45-minute stage show featuring the greatest hits of the 1980s?
“Do you think they’ll bring us a cocktail?” asked my little sister as we took our seats. When you are stuck at sea on a cruise ship, it’s best to just keep riding the premier package wave.
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland to Tokyo direct with Air New Zealand.
DETAILS
An interior cabin on 11-Day Japan Explorer Cherry Blossoms is priced from $3308 per person twin share on a Princess Standard fare; a balcony cabin starts at $5655. Pay an additional $155 per day for the Princess Premier Package which includes unlimited specialty dining, drinks and WiFi. Prices have been converted from $AUD and are subject to change.
New Zealand Herald Travel sailed courtesy of Princess.