Along the Ryukyu Islands

 Wake up to a calm sea, a die down of the wind and still a low temeperature. Obviously Sammie had failed to book an improvement on that score.

We are continuing northwards with the Japanese Ryukyu Islands to our east. Tonight we should reach the Hugashi Suido Strait between Tsushima Island and Kyushu, the big southern island of Japan. Tsushima Island was the site of Japan’s great victory over the Russian Baltic (yes, Baltic!) fleet in 1905, which ended the Russian-Japanese war and led to the first constitutional reforms in Tsarist Russia. We are all counting on a similar Ukrainian victory to lead to a more constitutional regime in Russia after Putin. However, dream on. It ain’t gonna happen. Not with China guaranteeing Russia’s survival.

That morning I attended a talk on the Empire of the Sun where the speaker Geoff Roberts explained how and why Japan started that disastrous war which led to firebombing of Tokyo and Hiroshima, after 8 bloody years of conflict. He listed the role of autarky, militarism, anti-Communism and a form of imperialism, justified in their eyes by the fact that they were destroying and replacing European imperialism. Their aim, after being bogged down in a war in China, was to set up an economically self-sufficient area in Southeast Asia covering Indochina, Philippines, Burma and the Dutch East Indies. The attack on Pearl Harbor was an attempt to prevent the United States from interfering in this expansion. In the end, although the Japanese were initially militarily successful, it proved a massive miscalculation of course.

After the lecture, at which I did not fall asleep for once, I went along to the Ocean Bar and watched family teams compete in the Indoor Kurling competition. There were around 30 people participating. It was a simple adaptation of an outdoor Highland game to be played in the comfort of a room on a luxury cruise ship. One of those taking part was Helen, one of the many activities she gets involved in. I have to admire how the different activities in the ship, no matter how trivial, manage to keep passengers occupied on those long uneventful sea days that stretch way into the future.

I went for a bracing walk on the open upper deck. The sun had come out but the wind had not yet died down. Eventually I moved into the Observatory to get out of the wind. There I watched the Dance Class practice some new moves to waltz music. It was a great way for couples to maintain their romance by refreshing their dance moves together. It was something I would have loved to do with Albina but regrettably her physical infirmities make that impossible now. I could only observe these couples, largely in their fifties and sixties, with a certain amount of envy. I watched them shuffle around the dance floor at various levels of ability, but all managing to cement their relationships closer. Some ladies had come here without any partner, and I could see them imitating the moves to the music at the periphery, hoping perhaps that their partners, currently enjoying themselves elsewhere on the ship, could be taught these moves directly by them sometime later. I wished them luck.

The bracing walk in the open had tired me out. After we had lunched together, we both dozed off in our cabins.

I got a note from Sammie provisionally fixing my lecture date for April 14^th. That will be after the Hawaii excursions, when we will be sailing across the eastern Pacific. That suits me well.

As we had a high tea again Albina and I skipped dinner for the third time. Only three of us for the general quiz tonight in the Morning Light Bar, as Helen and Tony did not make it. The questions seemed easier than usual. So much so that we ended up with 15 out of 15. Apparently, there were four teams in our situation. We were asked a tie breaker question. When were cards, pom poms and drums added to the majorettes’ regular equipment? We guessed it was the 40s. Our four teams were asked to have one person stand up. Ranald did for us. First, the quizmaster asked all those who put down before 1920s to sit down, One team rep sat down. Next, he asked all those with an answer from the 1950s onwards to sit down. That left only Ranald standing and someone in the Sports Bar whom I could not see. The quizmaster ran over to us and to the other team to check our written answer. Then after a bit of a dramatic pause and som  e unnecessary verbiage he announced that the right answer was the 1930s. We had lost. But certainly nothing to be ashamed of.