The Diamond Princess

Our metro tickets got us a good way out of Tokyo but not to the cruise port. So we had to get off at Meguro metro and buy a train ticket to Nihon-Odori. Annoyingly we would actually be getting back on the same train on which we'd arrived; it apparently became a 'train' rather than a 'metro' at Meguro. However finding how and where to buy tickets from became a bit of a mission. Whilst the ticket machines have English options, tickets are sold by distance travelled rather than by station travelling to...argh! Google was great at giving us the route and getting us this far but this was another matter entirely. After trying to converse across a language barrier, we eventually found a map on which the cost of each station was noted and we took a chance on the ticket we needed.

At Nihon-Odori, having managed to get out of the station with our tickets, we walked to the port and boarded the Diamond Princess, along with 2,800 other passengers. Throwing the luggage in the stateroom, and watching the dodgiest safety video ever (where the safety instructions were sung to the Love Boat theme time) we headed upstairs for sailaway. Impressively, we sailed under a bridge with just two metres clearance, whilst the cruise director and staff danced joyously to Gangnam Style underneath.

The evening was Ben's time to shine - music trivia. 20 tiny snippets of song introductions, from which the goal was to name the song and the artist. We/he scored an impressive 26/40 but sadly not enough to win the champagne. So we headed off to dinner where we avoided talking to the tables next to us, enjoyed a lovely meal and then headed back to the room to read.Read more