Appearances at the Pier

 Saturday, April 27, 2024

Today is the first day of Golden Week. It’s a week with four holidays, so everyone takes the whole week off and goes somewhere. It’s kind of like Thanksgiving Weekend in the US. I will point out the different holidays as we come to them. 

Here is a decoration that we saw in the vestibule of our hotel. I think it is a typical Golden Week decoration. The Armor and Helmet represent the samurai philosophy and ward off evil spirits for boys. (I know. What about girls? There is a special day for girls, Hinamatsuri, on March 3.)  Carp streamers are also traditional during Golden Week.

Before I talk about our trip to Daikoku Pier, I want to provide a little background. There was a big kerfuffle about why we weren’t going to be embarking from Osanbashi Pier in Yokohama, the customary place where cruise ships dock in Yokohama. Osanbashi Pier might also be described as the convenient pier, the pier with an excellent terminal, the pier with lots of amenities, etc. 

We were notified rather last minute that Royal Princess would be docking at the evil and disgusting Daikoku Pier. At least, that’s how some people on CruiseCritic reacted. There is a really a surprising amount of displeasure over this. People had booked hotels near Osanbashi so they could “walk to the ship.” Now they whine that they have been cheated out of the ability to walk from their hotel to the ship. Oh, woe is them. 

We were always planning to take a taxi to the pier, so it didn’t seem like a big deal whether it was this pier or that. 

There are two reasons why we had to dock at the unpopular Daikoku - 1) Osanbashi was fully booked with other ships, and 2) Royal Princess will not fit under the Yokohama Bay Bridge, so it is impossible for her to dock at Osanbashi. In fact, it has always been impossible for Royal Princess to sail under the bridge and dock at Osanbashi. It was always knowable that she would have to dock at Daikoku, and Princess should never have listed Royal Princess as docking at Osanbashi. A correction could have been made much sooner. 

Princess could have handled it better by letting passengers know sooner, by updating the information on the website and on our cruise documents, and by providing an explanation as to why the change was necessary. 

We did get an official notice from Princess yesterday (yesterday!) telling us of the “change” to Daikoku Pier. 

Yokohama Bay

Photo taken from Daikoku showing two ships docked at Osanbashi

Photo taken from Daikoku showing the Yokohama Bay Bridge.
Osanbashi can be seen in the distance, under the bridge.

You know where I’m going with this, right? Being at Daikoku Pier made a big, bad difference. The traffic was awful. Virtually everyone had to come by taxi because they had luggage. Taxis are slow to unload because you have to pay at the end. There were a number of bad bottlenecks: coming off the bridge onto Daikoku, the turn onto the access road to the port, the entrance to the port. Other taxis kept cutting into the line. It was utter gridlock. It took us an hour to get off the bridge and to the pier, and the taxi meter kept running.

When we finally got to the terminal building, the shore staff there had no idea what they were doing. They made us wait in the wrong line. People were just walking in and getting in any line they felt like when the staff weren’t paying attention. It was pretty chaotic. It was hot. We didn’t have water because we had to go through security and also because we had expected that the whole process of getting to the terminal and boarding would take 30 minutes, not two hours.

It’s very unfortunate when you have to start your vacation with a stressful, frustrating experience like that. I really think Princess could have managed it better. Maybe all those people who were so upset had a point. Oh, well. First world problem.

We made it, and we went to our room, and it was very nice and there were beautiful purple pillows on our little couch, and it was quiet and calm in our room.

We knew it would be a big culture shock to go from Japan to Cruise, and we steeled ourselves for the adjustment. Some of the differences were welcome, some were not. Royal Princess had just completed a twenty-something-day cruise from Sydney to Tokyo (Yokohama) and there were about 300 Aussies and Kiwis from that sailing staying on for the next leg with those joining in Yokohama. Also plenty of Canadians and a few Americans. We decided not to go to the show. We weren’t ready to be in a big theater full of our shipmates.

But we did go to Sabatini’s for dinner, and it was delightful.

Arancini

Tuscan bean soup

Branzino

“The best part”

Today’s fabric is cut velvet. These are the accent pillows in our cabin. I chose this fabric because the richly-colored pillows made our cabin feel so inviting, luxurious, and comfortable.