I could feel it coming on, that scratchy throat, the overnight postnasal drip.  So, I decided to skip the tour we had booked in Toyama and spend the day resting. 

Suzi went out on tour to look at temples and gardens.  She called me from the dock and told me I should come down, at least to the gangway to see people in costume greeting us,

At the pier, one of the tourism volunteers handed me a map and told me I really should get on the free shuttle bus to town.  I looked at the map and asked how far the Great Budda was from where the bus dropped us off.   “Seven minutes.”  I figured 10 and got on the bus. 

Off the bus I asked a different volunteer.  “Seven Minutes” 

I walked seven minutes and saw another “Volunteer interpreter.”  When I asked her, she said “Fifteen Minutes.”   Either she gauged my gait correctly or plate tectonics works really fast in Japan.

I decided to stop right where I was, at the Wing Wing Plaza, and admire the statues honoring Doramon (In Japanese it means “Stray Cat.”)  Doramon is a character in Japanese Manga cartoons.  I discussed Manga in my last post.  Originally it was black and white cartoon art, although Doramon is blue.  He’s a robotic time traveling cat who, due to manufacturing defects, has no ears and a host of other problems.  No one in the 22^nd century, when the cat was manufactured, wants to buy this defective robot cat.  So, he comes back to our time help a boy called Nobita.  Probably most of you reading know more about this than I do.  But Doramon is featured in comic books, graphic novels and several TV series.  There is a whole Doramon universe.  Doramon was born in September 2021, according to the backstory, but was really created in 1969 by Fujiko F. Fugo.

Back on the bus, I noticed that there were ashtrays at each seat, haven’t seen that for a while. 

At the dock Taiko Drummers are giving us lessons, encouraging us to try our hands.  We’ll see them later.

Suzi’s got back.  We had a light lunch and sat up on deck 9 watching the sail away show on the pier below.  Each port seems to try to outdo the other in the elaborateness of the sail away.   In Toyama here were twirlers of different age groups performing, including little girls dressed as bumblebees. 

But the highlight was the troupe of Taiko Drummers who were giving us lessons earlier on the pier.  Watching the movements, the stance, the handling of the drumstick from the perspective of height I thought, “This is really a martial art.”  I looked it up and some consider it to be.

The people on shore kept waving as we pulled out from the dock sideways kept waiving when we got into the middle of the small harbor, between the breakwater and bulkhead, kept waiving as we used our Azi Pods and bow thrusters and did a 180^o turn in place and kept waving as sailed out of the harbor.  They may still be waiving.

This morning, Captain Mark told us we almost aborted our call because of winds.  He could not bring her around to come in stern first and contemplated not landing at all.  But he was able to bring us in bow first, which required the turn on our departure.  Fortunately the winds had subsided by then.  For the last couple of days, the captain has been describing a tropical depression that may form into a typhoon which he plans to avoid.  No change in port calls yet but stay tuned.