Although we toured Honshu, the main and largest island in Japan, Last spring we took our old cruise buddies, Hettie and Ronnie, up on their invitation to cruise with them around this fascinating country This spring. We’ll be going clockwise starting and ending in Yokohama. Seems we can’t get enough of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Our nonstop flight from Dulles to Haneda was 14 hours and passed quickly with 3 movies: The Zone of Interest (haunting), No Reservation (cute), and Pricilla (a walk down memory lane); a couple of naps; two meals and a snack; and a few chapters from a new book, The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewel. Unnoticed we slipped across the International Dateline somewhere west of Hawaii. Home to hotel was just shy of 20 hours. Just as we were completing our journey Hettie and Ronnie were starting theirs.

Dan and I arrived, fried but excited to be back, two days early in an attempt to wrestle the jet lag. A quick taxi ride dropped us at the Hyatt closest to the pier we will need in a couple days. The hotel is beautiful and offered a warm welcome by means of a cool face cloth and cold iced tea. We defaulted to a light meal in the hotel and then settled in for an early night.

All day today, the 8th, was free, so we decided to wing it and ended up having a very nice day. We strolled down by the water and toured two early-1900s-era brick warehouses that have been beautifully refurbished and now house shops and restaurants. The waterfront is clean, well maintained, and nicely organized for tourists and locals alike. From there it was a quick stroll to the Cup Noodle Museum. You read that right…there is such a museum. I’d actually call it more like an experience than a museum. It told the story of the man who invented Cup Noodle. There are a couple of noodle inspired art installations, a life-size statue of the inventor, an old fashioned noodle shop, and the big attractions: the opportunity to make ramen noodles from scratch and/or decorate and assemble a personalized Cup Noodle that you can take home. Since we were flying by the seat of our pants we arrived too late to snag a place in a noodle class. Darn.

We grabbed a cab from there and headed to the Kirin Brewery. Thankfully we had a lovely driver who asked at the brewery gate if we could get a tour. Shockingly the guard said no, they were sold out. What are the odds? We did a quick pivot and requested the cabbie take us a few miles more to the Ramen Museum. With my translator app I was able to thank him profusely for taking such good care of us. Here is the funny part of the story: the trip to the Ramen Museum ended up costing us $59 with the wasted stop at the brewery and the time it took, with the meter running, to pivot. We got a senior admission price at the museum which was, seriously, $0.66 each! So much for the wisdom of seasoned travelers. Once inside we learned the history of ramen, its importance during times of food scarcity, and its rise to Michelin Star status. There were wonderful mock ups of an old ramen cart, a narrow street lined with noodle shops, and a charming food court built to look like it was a couple hundred years old.

Back to the hotel for tea which we finished moments before Hettie and Ronnie arrived. Perfect timing.

… On a Need to Know Basis …

We gained time as we flew west, but once across the pesky International Dateline
we were suddenly dropped into tomorrow.

There is a 13 hour time change between the East Coast of the U.S. and Japan.

The yen is the third-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market
after the U.S. dollar and the euro.

151 yen (Y) = $1.00 so 1,514 Y = $10 which means 3,028 Y = $20 and so on and so forth.
Sidebar: when Dan and I lived here in the early 1970s the rate was about 171 to the dollar.

As a complete aside, facial recognition software was used in lieu of boarding passes for
our flight out of Dulles and again when we went through immigration in Japan.

Guess who did a TV commercial for Cup Noodle when she lived here in the early 1970s?