April 14 - Hitachinaka, Japan

 Hitachinaka is in the Ibaraki Prefecture on the Eastern Coast of Honshu Island.  Our tour today went to Hitachi Seaside Park, a 350 square-hectare park with lovely open areas, beautiful flower gardens, and an amusement park.  There are four gates for entry, and our guide pointed out our gate on the map when we entered.  We walked about 15 minutes to the hill where the "baby blue eyes" were blooming.  That was the guide's name for them.  It was amazing.

The translation is "Nemophila; Insignis Blue"

These only bloom for about 3 weeks and they are at about 70% right now.  There are supposed to be around 5 million when they are all in bloom.  Wonder who counted.  Today was a beautiful Sunday so there were a lot of people here, as you can see by the pictures.

We made our way down to the tulip gardens.  They seemed to be almost in full bloom also.

The blue are grape hyacinth

The amusement ride section had a huge ferris wheel and a few other rides.

This giant field had people setting up tents for shelter during the warm day, I guess.  This is a great park for families and we did see many out today.  Don't think I ever saw any families with more than 2 children.  Japan has a dwindling population with many young women choosing not to have children.

We probably saw as many dogs in strollers as we did children!

This cute little train ran all around the park.

At our scheduled time to be at the bus, we were missing two people.  The guide hustled back to the entry gate to look for them.  He learned that they had gone to the wrong entry gate and decided to take a taxi to the fish market.  Fortunately, they had the sense to let the gate staff know and that information made it to our guide.  

The next stop was to another fish market.  This one was a real mix between beautifully wrapped fish and open containers.  The smell wasn't great in parts.  There were also many people lined up to get a freshly shucked oyster, but I didn't get a picture of that.

Octopus leg sections

Different types of octopus

The squid were spinning around, perhaps drying.

A Curves in Japan? I don't know if they are still in the US.

The yellow license plates are for "K Cars" which are a specific class - only hold 4 people, 63 horsepower, and certain minimum gas mileage.  They cost around $15,000 (according to the guide) and get special discounted licensing and tax breaks.

We were left waiting once again for the same two people who kept us waiting at the Park.  This time at least they did eventually show up. I'll have to keep a lookout on future tours and see if we can get on a different bus.

Once back on board, we had lunch up at the Pool Grill where we ran into Jan/Tom who were also just sitting down.  It was rather crowded, which is different from the last segment.  The weather was perfect, but this new batch of passengers seems to eat earlier or something.  That certainly seems true at dinner.  There were no lines last segment when the restaurant opened, but this time there are lots of people getting there early.

We met with the Cruise Consultant to get some quotes on a couple of possible future cruises.  We have a few days to decide and we'll consult with Jan/Tom about possibly doing something together again. At Trivia it was men against women, and we beat the guys by 2 points.  That wasn't enough for points, but that's OK.

Tonight was the Captain's Welcome Party, but we skipped it.  The 7 of us ate together at Compass Rose and had another really good meal.