Monday Oct 12, 2026
Hi All! As a proud Italian-American, I want to say Happy Columbus Day to everyone! It’s actually a holiday here too in Japan but they call it “Sports Day” to commemorate the day the first Olympics were ever held in Japan. Who knew??
We also learned some other fun things about Japan on our tour today. When looking at the moon, instead of saying they see the “man in the moon” they say they see “rabbits in the moon”. They say it looks like two rabbits pounding a rice cake. (Maybe they had too much Matcha tea??) Lol
Instead of calling it a “Sunny side up egg” they call it a “moon side up egg”. Heck even their McDonald’s has a burger with a “moon side up” egg called a moon viewing burger! Isn’t it crazy how the same thing is called different things around the world?
We had a fun tour today that stopped at three different places. We first went to the oldest existing privately constructed building in the area called the Ogane House. The Ogane Family was an old samurai clan who originally came into prominence in the 1300’s. It was cool to check out the old style Japanese home.
We then went to the Horai Bridge which is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest wooden footbridge. It was originally built for agricultural use in 1879 by the local farmers but is now used solely by pedestrians and bicyclists. We walked it and were rewarded with a nice view of Mt Fuji!
After that we went to a huge green tea plantation. This area produces the most green tea in Japan and even has a green tea museum. (Again, who knew??). It was actually pretty interesting to learn the history of all teas from around the world. We also got a chance to try some and it was really tasty!
We then got back to the ship and had lunch. After lunch we walked around the pier area where some of the locals put on some dance shows. They were also selling various souvenirs as well as some homemade food. It was a fun day in our first port! I’ll do another update tonight after dinner.
