Sea Day/Fukuoka

April 14th and 15th
Sea Day/Fukuoka

Surprisingly, there’s not much to report back about either day. The sea day was the usual, with a couple big band set’s that night. But during the sea day we were informed that the crew would be denied shore leave in Japan due to our failure to return all of the shore permits we were given. How the process works in Japan is that as a crew member, you have to pick up an orange card from the office that the Japanese government issues and uses to track how many people get off the ship. Once you return to the ship, you use this pass as a passport to get back on board and are then supposed to return it to the crew office. Due to 30 or so people not returning the passes, despite the announcements, we were all denied leave on the 15th. So that made it real unfortunate when all I could do is go to the back deck and read my book looking out at the city I wasn’t permitted to visit. And then with a day off that night, it meant the entire day had absolutely nothing going on, so I did my reading, internet work, and watched a movie about Jim Morrison that night, and there’s my day in Japan…Hopefully the crew will have learned it’s lesson and this won’t happen again. We’ll see…