Hello everybody,
It's the Lunar New Year time, which means 5 days holiday, to be spent in Japan, touring the shipyards (mostly). Traveling - by trains (Japan Rail Pass) and occasional boat/ferry. Sleeping in cheap (and not so cheap) hotels.
Currently it's the end of Day 3, so let's see the results so far.
Day 1 saw me arriving in Osaka together with hordes of other tourists, which translates as 1.5 hours line at the immigration, and being 2 hours late for the train as initially planned. First shipspotting location is the Akashi bridge, with all its traffic bound to/from Kobe and Osaka. One of the best locations in Japan, except: the light was poor, and there were almost no ships to speak about. Oh well...
Train to Marugame on the Shikoku island, with its big Imabari yard. Night.
Day 2: Imabari yard has a couple of bulkers on display. The sun is on the right side, so all is cool. Train to the town of Imabari, taxi to the yard of the same name. The ships are so close there, you can almost touch them. Then continuing on a train to Matsuyama, to get on a ferry to Hiroshima. There was another yard along the way, Shin Kurushima, with a couple of new K Line car carriers, but the schedule did not allow for a stop...
Car ferry from Matsuyama to Hiroshima passes by Kure, with its JMU shipyard. I was expecting some crude oil tankers, but got 2 best looking big container vessels that I' ve ever seen, a couple of 14.000 TEU vessels for NYK. You can say something along the lines of "Seen one, seen them all", but still - it's all in the superstructure...
Also, at a small Kegoya shipyard, there was one new small ferry for the Filipino owner.
Train from Hiroshima to Sasebo. Night.
Day 3: boat ride from Sasebo to Oshima island, with its Sumitomo shipyard, and another bunch of bulkers. One US nuclear sub returning to base reminded me that Sasebo has this important role...
Train to Nagasaki, to see whatever is going on with the Aidas, and (finally) catch the Prima afloat... Fail. AIDAprima is (again/still) in the dock, and the Mia looks like "find 10 differences" from the photos I took of her 3 months ago. Train to Hakata, to prepare for Shimonoseki tomorrow...and then we'll see.
I'll keep you posted, and expect couple of dozen photos here on the site.
And, my "wide" lens (Sigma 17-50 2.8 ) decided to become a 30-50 lens, the zoom ring refusing to go any lower. Good thing that the other one (70-200 1:4) is still OK...
Until later
Vlad