Our land tour of Japan was coming to an end today. We had one last breakfast at the Hilton Tokyo before our car arrived to take us to Yokohama International Cruise Terminal and the Celebrity Millennium. The embarkation process was not smooth. The person taking our bags seemed confused and then we were all told we had to make copies of our passports even if we already had them. Then we sat in rows of folding metal chairs very close together before our boarding group was called. The person checking our Vietnam Visa was extremely thorough, going over it line by line and cross-checking every item. We had to listen to a gentleman next to us who did not know his stateroom number arguing with the agent that "they should know it" and that he didn't have service and could not look it up. If he had downloaded his pass to his phone like they recommend, it would have been in front of him. Security was fairly efficient although we were flagged originally for the sake in our luggage but that was allowed to pass through although they confiscated the knife we bought for ourselves in Osaka and we would get that back at the end, as we expected.

We dropped our bags off at our room and met our cabin steward and then went to the buffet for lunch where Janie got her first drink of the cruise, a white wine. Then we did our muster drill and went down to the martini bat for a sunset martini and a lavender lemon drop, followed by an espresso martini for J. R. He headed to Future Cruise to book a 2027 cruise for Janie's birthday and then went to the room where one piece of our luggage was waiting. The steward saw him and asked if we were waiting on any other bags and then went and fetched the second one. Janie came up and we unpacked everything for the next 14 days, filling up our first laundry bag with items we needed to be washed.

We went to Cafe al Bacio for tea and coffee and explored the ship a little although not much was different from other ships we had been on, although this one had been through the Celebrity "Revolutionize" project like Summit before COVID canceled that program. We went to the Solarium to relax and look out at Yokohama

It was sunset by the time we were ready to sailaway and it was starting to get chilly. Janie booked a pedicure in the spa so she missed us sailing barely under the bridge on our way out to sea.

The evening show was called "Strings Alive" and featured a vionist/singer (Simone) and pianist/guitarist (Colin) couple. They were very entertaining. We had to leave right at the end of their show to get to dinner because we had 8:15 dining and the Cruise Director had decided to schedule the shows at 7:30 and 9:30 meaning we either had to hustle out of the first show and be late for dinner or hustle out of dinner and be late for the second show.

Dinner service was a disaster. We realized we had not gotten a card in our room with our table number and the app showed nothing regarding dining. We went to deck 5 and they sent us down to deck 4. There the receptionist told us we did not have a reservation. We showed her a printout of the app and our cruise contract showing we had 8:15 dining. The condescending maitre'd came over and told us we didn't have a table and he was dealing with 2000 people. Not our problem, J. R. said, we have proof we do have a set dining time. He found us a table on deck 4 but service was poor. J. R. ordered pasta and the waiter offered parmesan but never brought it. When he asked how the pasta was, J. R. told him it would have been better with the cheese he had promised. Don't offer it if you aren't going to bring it. The maitre'd came at the end and handed us a card with our table number on deck 5 for the rest of the cruise, but no apology.

We were tired after a long two weeks in Japan and with Janie's ankle still recovering, we skipped the Silent Disco and headed to our room.

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