Cruising from Vancouver to Japan

Diamond Princess
Cruising is an amazing way to travel, especially if you want to go a far distance. I would gladly trade a 12 hour flight for a 22 day cruise any day! Well, that was what my sister, mom and nephew thought too! They are on their way now, and will be in Okinawa in 1 week. They departed Vancouver on the Diamond Princess (picture above) bound for the far east! Their cruise set sail, on September 17th 2011 and the crew will arrive at their final destination, Beijing China, on October 10th 2011

Port	Arrival	Departure
Vancouver, British Columbia		4:30 PM
At Sea
Ketchikan, Alaska	6:30 AM	2:00 PM
Juneau, Alaska	8:00 AM	9:00 PM
Skagway, Alaska	7:00 AM	8:30 PM
Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska (Scenic Cruising)	6:00 AM	3:00 PM
College Fjord, Alaska (Scenic Cruising)	5:30 PM	8:30 PM
Anchorage (Whittier), Alaska	12:30 AM	5:00 PM
At Sea
At Sea
Cross International Dateline	12:00 PM	1:00 PM
At Sea
At Sea
At Sea
Sapporo (Muroran/Hokkaido), Japan	8:00 AM	6:00 PM
At Sea
Vladivostok, Russia	4:30 AM	7:00 PM
At Sea
At Sea
Shanghai, China	7:00 AM	6:00 PM
At Sea
Dalian, China	7:00 AM	2:00 PM
Beijing (Tianjin), China	4:00 AM

After staying 3 nights in Beijing, visiting the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City, they will fly to Okinawa for a 5 night stay. While they are here we will go and see many sites around the island. I am most excited about our trip to Tokashiki Island, where we will swim with the sea turtles right from the beach. To get to Tokashiki we will take a ferry from Naha city which takes around 70 mins. I can take my car on the ferry which will make the trip much easier with baby Eithan. I am looking forward to hearing all about their adventures at the many ports they have visited on their way to Okinawa. It is an amazing feeling to board a ship in North America and get off in Asia! Definitely the most comfortable way to travel from continent to continent. 


I can confess, that I am an avid cruiser. Although this is a new form of travel for me, I have definitely had my fair share of cruises this year.  
In February 2011, I visited the Bahamas onboard Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas. This was short 4 day cruise but a good way to spend the weekend before starting my teaching practicum a week later!
In April I boarded the Ocean Princess with my best friend Jodie, and we ventured on a 28 day cruise that took us from Singapore to Rome. On the way, we were lucky enough to visit Malaysia, India, Oman, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Jordan, Egypt, Greece and Italy! It really was, a cruise of a lifetime. 

Top deck of the Ocean Princess leaving Singapore on her 28 day voyage to Rome

After that amazing month onboard the Ocean Princess we disembarked in May 2011. Jodie and I then flew to Nice, France where we set sail on a large Sailboat type cruise ship called "Windstar." On this cruise we travelled around the South of France and Corsica for 5 days. 

Tamara and Jodie cruising the South of France

Jodie flew back to Australia (so sad to see her go!).  In June 2011 I boarded the Star Princess and enjoyed an amazing 12 night cruise visiting the Greek Islands, Turkey, Croatia and Italy.

Now when people here about all this travel they think it must be so expensive, but in reality, cruising is the most economical way to travel these days. You pay one price and it includes everything with no hassle. You unpack once, get to see many destinations and no airport line ups or security checks! What more could you want?


If you are interested in cruising please contact me. I am a cruise specialist with Expedia CruiseShipCenters. You can also take a look at my website www.cruiseshipcenters.ca/tamararytter and sign yourself up for my 7Seas Club where you can enter to win a free cruise! To Sign up for this free service, click on the "log-in" tab at the top right hand side on the website and then you will see a link to join my 7Seas Club. Once signed up, you are automatically entered to win a free cruise for two. 
Please email me at trytter@cruiseshipcenters.com with any questions you may have about planning your dream holiday. I have travelled extensively to over 50 countries so when I say I am a vacation expert, I am not kidding!

Driving in Japan

This is my little yellow plate Daihatsu Move

Driving in Japan has been an interesting venture. To start off they drive on the left hand side like the UK and Australia. Good thing I hold an Australian drivers license or I don’t think the transition would have been so smooth. Secondly, they drive like maniacs! I’m not too sure about the rest of Japan but on this island it is mayhem. The back roads (the main ones I use to get to school) are the size of back alleys in cities like Vancouver and two cars have to pass through at one time. Also all the back roads weave in and out through the sugar cane fields and agricultural parts of the island. You will see old Okinawans on their tractors or burning their plant waste on the side of the road. 

Driving through the sugar cane

Thirdly, all the signs are in Japanese! This is the biggest problem for me. The board of education gave me a map but it is a little useless because all the words look the same to me. It just looks like pretty art! My neighbour Dee was without a car for the first two weeks, so I offered to drive her to school. Now, her school is 30 minutes in the opposite direction of where I had to go. This was all fine because the BOE (board of education) took me on a driving tour and showed me how to get to her school and then from there, to mine through all the back roads with no street signs. I was set! Well that’s until the typhoon came and washed out the roads so everyday I would drive her to school, a new road would be blocked off getting fixed up. 

Tree falling over from the typhoon

So there I was, left with the map I couldn’t read and sugar cane fields. So I used my wicked sense of direction and just figured it out. It was so fun and now I can say I REALLY know the southern part of the island. I was late everyday to work but they excused me because they knew I had to drive my friend.

On Okinawan roads you will see white plate, yellow plate and Y plate cars. Yellow plates are like little K cars and white plates are normal bigger cars. Y plates are issued to anyone in the military so we call them Yankee plates! My car is a yellow plate, which means it has little gusto, so going up the hills on the back roads is quite an adventure. To get full speed and thrust up the hill, it is best if you turn off the air conditioner. When you do this you can actually feel the car move faster (its hilarious)! There is one radio station that plays in English and it’s from the military base so they have very strange commercials. One commercial I heard the other day was “You are never to young to make a will” It was geared toward military families and was a bit sad actually. They also have a history segment that blasts US military history tidbits that are pretty insightful. My antenna in my car is snapped off so I get bits and pieces of the radio as I drive. This is going to be my first purchase.  It is actually torture for me to drive with no music and the only other 2 stations that come in are Japanese stations. They rarely play music and all they do is talk. Well they do more than talk! They laugh and say very strange things over and over and over again. It is the most bizarre thing I have ever heard and I honestly can’t listen to it for more than 5 minutes. So I have resorted to listening to radio fuzz with the occasional 5 seconds of music as I turn a corner or move through traffic! At night I will be in my apartment or on my balcony and I will hear cars and vans drive by making announcements. It’s not like once or twice, it is everyday and I don’t really know what they are saying but its funny to listen too!  I see tons of cars with speakers mounted to the roof. I guess it’s a popular job/hobby?

Driving home from work

Even though people drive crazy here, they are still very respectful. When driving you will often have people bowing to you as a sign of respect! A little bit dangerous maybe, but it’s nice to know they care haha. Also the kids will bow to you or if it is a young boy they will take off the their baseball caps to you, as you drive by. All the boys wear baseball uniforms everyday. It is a huge sport here. If they are not playing baseball you will see all children in their school uniforms. I honestly don’t think the students bow to every car that drives by, but they definitely do it to me, because they know I am a teacher. I am the ONLY blonde person in my town and therefore I am highly recognizable.  My days of shoplifting and petty crime are behind me. Haha Joke! I don’t live in the same town I teach in so the kids who usually take their hats off to me have never even seen me before, they just assume I am a teacher and they are very respectful. It’s really a breath of fresh air. 

Driving to work -the bridge in Chinen

My Japanese Apartment

I wanted to share what my apartment looks like. It is a Japanese style apartment with an ocean view; about 10 minutes walk to the beach. These pictures are taken the day I moved in.

All the windows here are covered in these bamboo mats

Japanese style sliding doors made with paper and wood

I'm so close to the ocean

Japanese apartments come completely unfurnished so you have to buy the fridge, the stove, the air conditioner ect… Luckily I bought it all from my predecessor, so all I had to do was move it up one flight of stairs from the third floor to the fourth.  Everything I bought was written in Japanese (obviously). For the first couple of days I had no idea how to turn on the air conditioner, and it was sooooo hot here. For the first week I couldn’t cook anything because I was too scared I would blow up the microwave/oven.  The microwaves here are very different from back home. Here they are ovens and microwaves together. You can put metal trays in them when you are using the oven but if you accidentally press microwave it is a BIG problem. So that being said, I didn’t go near it until I could find out how to use it.  So what I did was, I took a camera with me everywhere I went and anything that I wanted to know what it said I would just snap a shot and then bring it to school. The teachers at school have decoded everything in my house, except for the air conditioner. I actually took the remote to the Internet shop where I knew a guy spoke English and had him write down what everything on the remote was. I am sure he thought I was nuts but was happy to help! I get mail from time to time that I can’t read either. So all this gets brought to work and my colleagues try to help me.

These are the instructions???

Japan has a very interesting garbage system. When I moved in, I was given a huge time table with pictures and colors and that was what I was suppose to follow each week. Now, since I couldn’t read it, I took it to school and asked someone to explain it to me.  So how it works is there are three different colored bags that you have to buy from the grocery store. You have to buy them from a grocery store in your own town because your town name is written on the bag. Each town has different colored bags that go out on different days. Let’s say you buy a blue bag with a different towns name written on it and then try to put it out on the day you are scheduled for, they wont pick it up. Also if you put something in the bag that shouldn’t be in there (and they check) they will not even take the garbage. Then they will put a big strip of yellow tape on it, which basically indicates that you are too incompetent to figure out the garbage system. I have never experienced this yellow tape thing yet but I have heard and seen all about it! 

Where in the world is Tamara - Sensei?

I have come to the conclusion that some of you have no idea where I live! I realized this after receiving numerous emails from family and friends, concerning my welfare after two typhoons hit mainland Japan.

Since I don't have a television (not like I could understand it if I had one), can't read the newspaper and can't communicate with the majority of people, I really have no idea what is going on in this country and around the world. It wasn't until I received these letters of concern, that I went online and looked at the news. Wow there were major things happening in Japan! I had no idea! It's kind of nice/bizarre to be so far removed from what is happening in the world. Especially since I used to be addicted to BBC world news! I guess I could go online and look at the news, but I never feel the need. So I live uninformed, with the notion, that ignorance... truly is BLISS! XO

With that being said, a geography lesson for all! Okinawa is a tiny island located South West of mainland Japan. It is actually closer to Taiwan then Japan itself. Okinawa Prefecture, the southernmost region in Japan, consists of 160 large and small islands. The history of Okinawa has been strongly affected by overseas influences unlike anywhere else in Japan. Due to it's geographical positioning, the original Ryukyu Kingdom developed for trade with Asian countries. This Kingdom lasted until the middle of the 19th century and then Okinawa became a territory of Japan. Today, over 50,000 US citizens live here. Majority of the Americans live on the fourteen US military bases located in the central region of the island. These bases were established after World War II and are still a controversy today.

Check out this link for more information on Okinawa

www.okinawastory.jp/en/