Sunday Oct 25, 2026
Hi Gang! We were docked in Shimizu today and did a tour to see Mt Fuji. But guess what? It was shy today and stayed behind the clouds all day! We did get a little glimpse of the base and I included a pic of what it would look like on a clear day. I guess I really didn’t rub that lucky ox hard enough! But hey, you can’t control the weather!
Our tour went to four places today which were Lake Tanuki near the base of Mt Fuji, Shiraito & Otodome Falls, the Fujisan Hongu Sengen Shrine that was built to honor Mt Fuji, and finally to the Omiya Yokocho Alley for some fried Yakisoba noodles for lunch.
Today we learned that Mt Fuji is 12,380 feet high (when you can see it!), that there are 85,000 shrines and 65,000 temples in Japan, that the shrine we went to was 400 years old, that shrines practice the Japanese Shinto beliefs and that temples are for the Buddhist religion. But the wildest thing we learned was the water for the waterfall we went to takes 10 years to travel from Mt Fuji to there due to it having to travel underground. Crazy!
It was a great tour but I’ll let the pictures do the talking. A woman I had contacted on the Cruise Critic website organized this independent tour and the whole group of 5 other people were very nice. We’ll be doing a couple other tours with them in the next week or so.
After the tour we got ready for dinner and went to the main dining room. It was dressy night again so the menu was a little better. I had the escargot for my starter, the Gruyère-Brioche Crusted Sole for my main and the Caramel Lava Cake for my dessert. Once again everything was very tasty!
After dinner we went to the show which was a new guest entertainer named Sueli Tang. She was a very good piano player and played some timeless hits from ABBA, Queen, and Disney. What a great show! And since we hadn’t had enough piano, we finished the night listening to our favorite piano player Kelly. Tomorrow we have a sea day so it’s sleeping in and watching NFL Football!
PS: We started our NFL game watching tonight catching the start of the Steelers vs Saints game in Paris! Plus when we got back to our room we had a new towel animal and I knew this one was a dog! Lol.
