On the Go

Having had a good time on the cruise to Europe I took two years ago ("being taken care of" once on the ship probably had something to do with that), the thought of going on another one did appeal to me. I also suppose the thought "go now, you don't know what'll happen in the future" came to mind, and so I booked a cruise last fall that would start in Japan and cross the Pacific making stops in Alaska. I knew it would only give me a taste of both places (and yet might give me a "real" awareness of Japan at last), but there was always the possibility of going back.

However, the recent collection of unpleasantness in northern Japan seems to have disturbed a lot of the other people booking that cruise, as the cruise line contacted my travel agent about a month ago with the news that they were cancelling the stops in the Tokyo area and Hokkaido and replacing them with South Korea and Russia. I did wonder for a little while if I still wanted to go, but decided in the end that now stopping off in four countries (I'm still going to fly to Japan and get on the ship there, although thoughts of "awareness" not changing that much now even sort of interest me in a strange way), even if for a single day in some cases, isn't that bad.

I decided to hold off on making a big deal of this until it was almost time to go. Again, there's the possibility I'll still be able to make the occasional post from the ship. As for the full experience, I'd like to think I'm getting into the mood for it; getting on the road and into the air will put me into it.