20241003 Tokyo Arrival

20241003 Tokyo Arrival

The ship had to blare its horn to shoo a couple of small Japanese fishing boats out of its way as we approached the Tokyo International Cruise Ship Terminal.  This is our first time at this terminal which opened in 2020.  The last time we arrived in Tokyo via cruise ship, it was at the Yokohama cruise ship terminal.  This new Tokyo terminal is on the manmade Odaiba neighborhood, built on landfill.  The Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation is just a short walk from the pier.  We had spent the better part of a day there on our last visit to Tokyo in 2017.  Also very near by is a large building in the shape of a naval vessel that is currently under renovation.  This houses the Museum of Maritime Science.  

We watched the sail into Tokyo harbor while having breakfast, and after a quick lunch, we walked through the modern cruise terminal and boarded our included tour bus.  It is a good thing we had previously toured Tokyo because the bus tour was mostly sightseeing through the bus windows in very heavy Tokyo traffic.  

We had decent weather with overcast skies and a light breeze.  The temperature would otherwise been a bit warm.  We drove over the Rainbow Bridge, and caught views of the Tokyo Sky Tree and Tokyo Tower.  We also drove around the Japanese parliament which is called a Diet.  Then we drove around the perimeter of the Imperial palace to admire its stone walls and moat before parking near the main ceremonial entrance to the Imperial Palace entrance called the double bridge entrance.  

Japanese Diet

Rainbow Bridge is actually Grey

Tokyo Skytree at 2080' is the 3rd tallest manmade structure 

in the world.  It is a broadcast and observation tower.

Tokyo Tower is taller than the Eiffel Tower

but just a little more than half the weight at 4000 tons

Tokyo Lamborghini Showroom

There is a large park with beautiful black pine trees and large bronze Samurai statue in the park.  The bridges include a stone one with double arches, and a steel bridge.  At one point in time, the steel bridge had been a wooden one that had two decks to support its weight, which was the original reason this was called the double bridge entrance.  

Japanese Black Pines

Samurai in the park

Modern day Samurai

Japanese Imperial Palace Double Bridge

Japanese Imperial Palace Double Bridge

Our guide was quite proficient in English and had spent several years both hosting American exchange students and studying in Utah, and then living in California and Texas when her husband, who worked in the microchip field, was assigned in the US.  It’s interesting that she remembers her household transitioning from the traditional squat hole Asian toilet to a western style toilet when she was a little girl.  She had never seen a western toilet before, and the first time she used it, she got in trouble because she left dirty foot prints on the toilet seat where she squatted above it.  It’s funny that we now see signs in many places with sign language for Do Not Stand on the Toilet Seat where travelers from Asia may encounter their first western styled toilets.  It’s also funny that because her household had a western styled toilet, they were chosen to host western students in the foreign exchange programs.  

After we returned to the ship, we finished up packing and had tea.  We had earlier considered walking around on our own, but the clouds opened up and it began raining in earnest.  Again, it was a good thing we had already spent a considerable amount of time exploring Tokyo 7 years ago.

Tokyo Tower, Rainbow Bridge in Evening

We had our final dinner in the World Cafe.  They had another seafood and sushi set up in addition to roast leg of lamb so we indulged ourselves one last time.  

We wrapped up our cruise with a cultural show in the theater. A local dance troupe came aboard with their musicians and did a demonstration of Awa odori dancing.  This is something we had never heard of before, but the troupe consisted of both men and women doing a cultural dance as part of festivities welcoming one’s ancestors back to this world for a few days each August.  It was an immersive and fascinating demonstration full of colorful costumes, rhythmic and expressive dancing, music and drumming.  We were fascinated to see the women dancing in the platform sandals, tipping them onto their toes like ballerinas, and the men performing aggressively reminiscent of some South Pacific Islanders’ dancing.  It was a fantastic show, and a great way to wind up our 22 day North Pacific Crossing on the Viking Orion.

Tomorrow morning, we disembark and will transfer to the airport via a Viking provided hotel hospitality lounge, although since we are flying business class, we could also hang out at the Canada Air lounge as well.  

The time as gone by so quickly.  It seems like the Rocky Mountaineer trip was such a long time ago.  We have made some good friends with our trivia partners who we had met on the Rocky Mountaineer excursion.  Even though there was only one trivia game per day on the many sea days, we had an enjoyable and relaxing trip.  

Since our last Viking Ocean cruise on the Viking Star in 2018, Viking has made great progress on improving the quality of their entertainment offerings.  The vocalists and instrumentalists for the most part were top notch talent.  While the production shows were few and far between, and lacked dancers and the production values possible with much larger ships, like on Princess, the vocal talent and quality of the shows made them very enjoyable.  Also, the lack of crowds and ease in finding seating for most shows (port of call talks being a marked exception- those were always standing room only), compensates to a large degree for the simpler shows.  We also did get to know the vocalists and Arianna on a much more close level than we would ever have on a much larger ship.  

We tend to do a lot of trivia on our cruises and it was nice to achieve a solid win on the progressive with our fellow Rocky Mountaineer travelers.  Arianna’s trivia were very well done with good questions that were well vetted.  There were no questions with demonstrably wrong answers, and we could tell she had taken time to weed out questions that could have ambiguous or multiple correct answers.  Our only complaint was that there was only a single trivia each sea day, and aside from the general trivia quizzes, there were only 2 music trivia during the 22 days.  But Viking does still put a premium on being a “thinking person’s” cruise, providing several different lecturers who each did multiple presentations.  You could easily attend 3 or 4 lectures each sea day.  

So in the end, we feel a lot better about Viking Ocean cruises’ entertainment offerings, and won’t hesitate to book longer Viking Ocean cruises in the future.  
We have a Viking Nile River cruise coming up in February 2025, and just booked a Viking Ocean China, Tibet and Mongolia adventure for fall 2025.