Today was an interestng and kind of exciting day. I have no pictures but a story to tell. We docked just before 8 AM at Miyako Island, part of the Okinawa Prefecture of Japan. Everyone on the ship was to go and have a face-to-face encounter with a Japanese customs officer. I was scheduled to go on a tour but decided this morning to skip it because I didn't feel like sitting on a bus again. Someone was looking out for me. The people on tours were the first to be called to take a shuttle bus for their inspection. They left and then alarms started coming in.
My phone sounded an alarm and when I looked there was lots of Japanese writing on the screen. The captain came on the PA and said alarms had been received and they were looking into the nature of them. I googled and saw that at 7:58 AM our time there had been a major earthquake in Taiwan and there was a tsunami warning. The captain came back on and said we were casting off and heading to deep water. The people already ashore were being moved to high ground and before you know it we were off. Everyone was in a tizzy and people were talking about "The Poseidon Adventure." Once we were at sea we hung out until an all-clear had been sounded and the authorities told us we could go back and pick up our folks. But not so fast. We still all had to go ashore for a face-to-face because tomorrow we'll be in Naha, Okinawa. The process was interminable as we lined up to board one of two shuttle buses to go through customs. We wondered why the customs people couldn't come aboard as they've done in other ports. It was apparently because they had fingerprint scanners which they wouldn't have been able to use on the ship. Now my prints are in a Japanese database somewhere. It took until nearly 4 PM to complete the process and our departure time was around 5.
My first reaction when I heard about the quake and subsequent aftershocks was how thankful I was that it didn't happen yesterday morning. I feel for the people impacted in Taiwan but I'm happy that I wasn't there. I've read since online that some highways have been damaged and closed and we might have been stuck where we were. There was apparently some damage in the places we visited but the epicenter was not that close to Taipei and they have really stringent building codes, at least in the capital. So that was our sea day in port and out at sea drifting.
2 comments:
Ann, I am so glad to know you are safe and sound! When I read on my Apple News about the earthquake in Taiwan I was immediately concerned because your last post indicated you were headed to Taiwan. Thankfully, I had your itinerary which indicated you should have been gone. How frightening it must have been for all the passengers to experience the warnings once you got to Japan. Whew!
The history of this region is interesting and extremely complicated! Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge with us.
Oh and thanks so much for letting us know that you are OK and what happened with the earthquake we’ve been reading about it wondering about how it might affect you and hoping that it would not affect you badly.
I have never been to Taiwan and has on many occasions so we were very anxious to hear your report. Thank you so much.
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