Dispatch 5 from the North Pacific Crossing: Reflections on Our Trip

Well, another trip is over. We’re sitting at Narita Airport in the lounge for Zip Air.  (Yes, you heard that right. Great fares for lie-flat seats between Tokyo and LAX on this discount airline owned by JAL.)

Relaxing at the Narita Travel Lounge before our Zip Air non-stop flight to LAX

And we’re reflecting back on our first post-Covid cruise.  

As always, we met some great people. On this itinerary, there was a lively gathering each night of fellow LGTBQ travelers, including a fellow we first met taking a southern Pacific crossing from Sydney to San Diego back in 2018.  As usual, passengers were largely American and Canadians. On this route, there were also many Asian travelers, whereas on previous HAL cruises, even those in the Far East, we usually encountered far more folk from Europe than Asia.

Maybe it’s cultural or language barriers or just the chilly weather of the north Pacific, but there seemed less interaction among these guests than on previous cruises. Another thing we noticed is a distinct wariness about talking about anything political.

It was almost as though Canadians didn’t want to embarrass us by bringing up the GOP and MAGA madness.  And among fellow Americans, we all tread carefully quickly changing the subject whenever a topic veered too closely to topics in alternative universes—like vaccines, the 2020 election, and immigration. 

That’s not to say the undercurrents of political tension and cultural tension weren’t there. There was one old fellow who never appeared on deck without his anti-Biden hat. I had to chuckle at another passenger who felt compelled to proclaim that he would not have the dessert featuring Ben and Jerry’s because of the company’s politics. (In fair play, let me proclaim that I will not shop at Hobby Lobby.) Then there was the very drunk passenger who verbally abused one of our fellow passengers in what seemed a definite homophobic attack. 

On the plus side, I do have to say that at least on this ship, everyone seemed very sympathetic and supportive of any entertainer who hailed from the Ukraine. Maybe that still bonds us.

This trip marks nearly 40 years of cruising, beginning in the spring of 1984 with a Caribbean cruise on a Holland America ship called the Rotterdam. Along the way, we’ve seen many things come and go as traveling habits change. We don’t miss the skeet shoots off the back deck or the hobby horse derbies, but we do feel a twinge of sadness at the disappearance of the march of the flaming baked Alaskas, tableside service of cherries jubilee (flaming again), and the midnight buffets. But staterooms have become nicer in general, the public spaces grander, and the entertainment better.

Still, as a way of purging my sadness of things lost, I do need to create my own “In Memoriam” of all the things lost from the past decade due to what I surely believe to be penny pinching and cost cutting.  Play the sad dirge and imagine the cavalcade of photos . . .

• Having both an appetizer and a soup or salad course
• Finding chocolates on the pillow left at turndown service
• Turndown service itself (which they will do if it’s requested, and we did)
• Fresh flowers on the dining room table
• Fresh fruit in the room, refreshed daily
• Wine stewards in the dining room
• Nuts in the bars (again something you now generally need to request)
• Appetizers served at receptions, events and happy hours
• The daily 4-page New York Times Digest delivered to your room each day
• Dinner service planned for an hour and 15 minutes instead of 45 minutes
• Live music in the Ocean Bar during that otherwise quiet period of 5 to 8
• Classical music
• After-dinner mints handed out as you leave the dining room
• Salt and pepper shakers on the tables around the pool
• Stewards pouring coffee and orange juice outdoors on the Lido deck during breakfast time
• Cooking classes from America’s Test Kitchen
• Two different guest lecturers
• An on-board port consultant who had regular hours to answer any questions about the upcoming port and actually knew the ports he or she described during port talks
• Daily recent movies shown in screening rooms
• Trinkets and prizes (and earlier, those Dam dollars) awarded for trivia and other competition
• A Holland America magazine and guide in every stateroom

But do note that, as much as I enjoy them, I didn’t list the slow disappearance of formal nights. I recognize these occasions are something the majority of passengers themselves (not the accountants) are ready to discard. Some things simply disappear because of changing tastes. We even left our tuxedos at home this trip.

End my sad crawl through cruise traditions lost. And I’ll admit that a couple of those losses simply reflect a general move to making all information available on line and using the cruise ship app. (Although it is disconcerting to see couples on board during dinner just paging through their phones instead of enjoying the cruise experience.)

So let me give some advice to myself: buckle up and acknowledge that life moves on.  Sail on!

Please check out all my novels in either paperback or Kindle format, including The Long Table Dinner, The Finnish Girl, The Devil’s Analyst, and Tales from the Loon Town Café.  All titles are available to read for free to Amazon Prime subscribers. 

www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

Dispatch 4 from the North Pacific Crossing: Landfall in Kushiro

It’s official. Robert has now made it to Japan and he can add another country to his list of countries visited. For me, this stop is my first visit to Japan since business trips in the 1980s when I worked for Xerox.

Our port call was the city of Kushiro on Japan’s northern most island of Hokkaido. Although it is near several major Japanese national parks, the town is more known as an industrial port with its fewer than 200,000 inhabitants. Still, it provided us with an opportunity for a bit of Japanese history and culture.

The area is famous for its red crested Japanese cranes. From the local museum

For most of Japan’s history, Hokkaido was sort of a no man’s land, inhabited only by the indigenous Ainu people and controlled by the Shogun military rulers of Japan. But after the Meiji Restoration in 1869 when the emperor regained control and ousted the long-ruling military generals, Japan not only opened up to the West but also decided to develop the island of Hokkaido in part to keep the Russians out. They encouraged development and promoted Japanese from other parts of the country to homestead land.

That history makes Kushiro and Hokkaido an odd place to first experience Japanese culture. It’s like exploring United States history by first stopping in Phoenix. In Kushiro, everything has been built up in the last century or so. Moreover, American experts were very influential in defining much of its initial development—which probably makes it seem as much American as Japanese.

Our tour guide asked our group if any of us had ever heard of Dr. William Clark. We all looked at each other with befuddlement. “I can’t believe it,” she said, “he’s so famous here.” It turns out that this American helped define education models on the island in 1876 and founded its best university, now known as Hokkaido University. His most famous phrase is apparently on public buildings all over the island, “Boys, be ambitious.” Put that fact in your memory banks for some future obscure trivia game!

Our tour, however, was very traditional. We visited the local city museum and saw an incredible display of Ainu fabrics and artifacts, which I have a feeling was more interesting and informative than a competing tour to an Ainu village might have been. 

We visited the local fish market. Kushiro is also a major fishing port, and this market is famous for its katte don, an as-you-like-it bowl, where you can get a scoop of rice in a bowl and then go around to various fishmongers to add small pieces of various sliced fresh seafood. The end result: a custom sushi bowl. Perhaps, it was a Freudian slip on my side, but I forgot all my yen on the ship, and because the market was Japanese cash only we didn’t participate. Instead, we wandered around nearby streets, and visited the train station to examine a photo exhibit of Kushiro’s famous sunset. (Supposedly, it rivals that of Bali. But on our day in town, it did not.)

We also toured the Kushiro Crane Reserve, which has been instrumental in nurturing back the Japanese red-crowned crane from only 10 in Japan a few decades ago to nearly 2,000 today. The crane of course is a major symbol of Japanese culture. We were even more pleased to have spotted three cranes in the marshes as we drove away after the visit. Our other bus mates were too busy looking at their phones to have noticed. We felt a little smug. (Another piece of trivia:  The crane is red-crowned because it lacks any feathers on the top of its head, and the skin with its blood vessels near the surface shines forth.)

Finally, we visited the Kushiro Shitsugen National Park which protects the largest marshlands in Japan. In addition to its being a habitat for the crane, it is home to over 600 unique plant species. We took a mile or so long hike on a boardwalk through its landscape.

Finally, a note about Kushiro itself. As mentioned earlier, it has a grid pattern with wide streets similar to any industrial midwestern American city. Because this is a pretty cold climate, the houses seem very well constructed and most are recently built. They are mostly single-family houses that would almost fit into any American suburb. Only the exterior finishes, which often appear plastic or ceramic, seem unfamiliar.

Unfortunately, the town also feels American in another way. Many industries have closed down and been abandoned. The stores in the business center are frequently empty and boarded up. And there is virtually no life on the streets, except for our cruise visitors. It was a little eerie. A little bit too much like being in the Rust Belt.

Please check out all my novels in either paperback or Kindle format, including The Long Table Dinner, The Finnish Girl, The Devil’s Analyst, and Tales from the Loon Town Café.  All titles are available to read for free to Amazon Prime subscribers. 

www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

Dispatch 3 from the North Pacific Crossing: Jumping Off From Juneau

Alaska:  Evergreens marching down steep hills. Icy inlets. Bald eagles soaring high. Whales and sea mammals. Native languages. Totem poles. Majestic scenery. Hardy people.

What do you think of when people reference a cruise to Alaska? Perhaps some of those same words and, maybe, a few more.

We, of course, are not on an Alaskan cruise. With only two ports along the way, this journey is probably not even a true cruise, but rather a crossing to get a ship from one point to another.

Still, we did stop in Juneau for a day, and it was a chance to reflect on what a great place Alaska can be to visit. Many of our expectations were met if only for a few moments.

On the sail north from Seattle, we were often within sight of the shoreline or sailing passages with islands on either side. And that continued for the first half day or so after we left Juneau. That gave us our taste of icy waters, majestic mountains and interesting inlets.

When we docked in Juneau, we stood on our verandah looking down at the harbor. Just below us, we had a great view of a bald eagle snacking on a carcass as it rested on one of the pylons that was soon to have ship’s ropes tied around it.  We also spied a few heads of harbor seals swimming about and taking a look at our ship.

Once on land, we headed toward the tram line so we could get a different kind of eagle view from high up the mountain. The threat of stormy weather held off and we snuck in a quick half mile loop hike while high above the channel.

Then, we walked the streets of Juneau. Many of the shops were holding end of season sales as we were one of the last cruise ships for this season. But the bars were doing a land office business.

Since normally we seek out travel that includes a lot of warm weather, our last cruise to Alaska was over 20 years ago—and we booked that trip largely to sail the historic Holland America Rotterdam built in the 1950s as it made its final run for the line. That Rotterdam was the first cruise ship we ever traveled, and it will always have a soft spot in our hearts.

In the decades since, the cruising industry has exploded. That was evident as soon as we disembarked our current ship, the Westerdam, to walk the main streets of Juneau.  It was as jumbled with jewelry, watch stores and souvenir shops as any Caribbean port. It was also evident by the size of the other ships in port. When I get home, I will have to dig out old scrapbooks to see if I have any pictures of this place back in the Nineties.

Even though we are not on an Alaska cruise, the ship itself just ended a summer season of just such weeklong cruises.  And its entertainment crew delivered all of Holland America’s well-produced exploration lectures about Alaska.  So, in the first few days of this trip, I got a quick grounding in native languages, locals arts, the Iditarod, the challenges of Alaskan living and the majesty of the whales.

And, of course, we celebrated the eating of salmon in the dining room. We didn’t inquire as to whether our fish were local and native, or farm raised. Just like we didn’t ask about the authenticity of the totem poles lining the harbor of Juneau. 

Sometimes you just let yourself indulge in the echoes of reality, and imagine what once was or perhaps someday can be again.

Please check out all my novels in either paperback or Kindle format, including The Long Table Dinner, The Finnish Girl, The Devil’s Analyst, and Tales from the Loon Town Café.  All titles are available to read for free to Amazon Prime subscribers. 

www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

Dispatch 2 from the North Pacific Crossing: We Missed Our Cruising

It’s true. There’s been something missing from our life—sailing the ocean blue.

It’s not enough to see the water from your living room. Sometimes, you have to be on it.  And after some four years without an ocean voyage, it feels good to be on a ship again.

We chose this itinerary, with its many sea days and only two port stops between Seattle and Tokyo, precisely because we wanted to test whether our cruising romance still carries a spark. It does.

This route has many sea days ahead.

It’s amazing how easily we settle back into the groove again. Walking with our regained sea legs as the ship rocks to and fro . . .  falling asleep with the rhythm of the waves . . . listening to a jazz trio as we sip our pre-dinner cocktails . . . attending lectures in the morning and watching live entertainment after dinner. Yes, it’s still all here and we still like it.

It remains a pleasure counting up the laps as we walk the promenade deck to get our miles in.  And maybe Covid culled the herd of people who don’t want to follow suggested rules and common sense, but there’s seems a dearth of upstream-salmon-walking folk on this cruise. We’re all ambling counter-clockwise as generations of cruisers have been wont to do.

Luckily, we started the cruise in Seattle on a beautiful, warm and sunny afternoon. Our verandah cabin, on the eighth level at the aft of the ship, is about 20% larger than the normal verandah cabin on this ship, and its deck is also larger and better sheltered. It proved a perfect to place to enjoy the pre-departure sunshine.

(Although we soon discovered that we are right below the back pool deck. During the departure party, conversations from above floated down. I am sure no one above suspected that they were being listened to by ears below. We were so tempted at one point to rush up the stairs to inform one seemingly clueless Southern gentleman—who fretted about his shy, retiring, never married tenant—that his tenant and friend simply sounded gay and was probably quite happy!)

As has been our custom for the last decade or so, we have continued to catalogue all the ways Holland America eliminates once cherished features in its never-ending quest to squeeze out profits.

Gone are the fresh flowers on the dining room tables, the fruit bowl freshened each day in one’s cabin, the chocolates left after turndown service, and the complimentary nuts at the bar. There are no longer cooking classes and there is no more movie screening room with free popcorn. I guess we are supposed to prefer watching films in the privacy of the cabin rather participate in a public group—and maybe most people do.

On one hand, lectures and shows have become increasingly sophisticated and elaborate with film clips, multiple screens, and pre-recorded music. On the other hand, they have become less involving and interesting. Cold media versus warm media.

Food has remained tasty and service good in the restaurants. I do wish they didn’t sneak in so many ways to try to sell you more things like fresh-squeezed orange juice, espresso, or extra-cost menu items in the free restaurants. We routinely ignore all such come-ons. However, the moment we saw the multi-course menu with main wine pairings at a significant added cost, we signed on without a moment’s hesitation or word of reproach . . . thus proving it takes all kinds.

Curiously, the obsession with dousing one’s hands with cleaning gels before entering any restaurant that marked the norovirus days before Covid seems to have become an afterthought at most.

Finally, in a triumph for the written word and the pleasure of books, we were delighted to see that Holland America has brought back its shipboard library. The last time we were on board, they had been removing them from all their ships in order to create multi-media exploration lounges. Today, every one of the multi-media displays in the exploration lounge is turned off (and probably no longer works, like hands-on displays in so many museums). But there is a library again which in many ways is an improvement over the old version. The current library feels like a well-curated bookshop stocking only a hundred titles, but with tons of copies of each title, displayed face up and easy to peruse. And there’s not a check out process, just a request to turn them back in before you leave.

One hopes for Holland America and its new library that Covid has also weeded out those people who like to debark with things that they don’t own. With blue skies ahead, and a wake behind, we sail on.

Please check out all my novels in either paperback or Kindle format, including The Long Table Dinner, The Finnish Girl, The Devil’s Analyst, and Tales from the Loon Town Café.  All titles are available to read for free to Amazon Prime subscribers. 

www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann