A typical day for us today.  We are up early, as usual, and in the gym when they open at 7.  Then we have 2 lecturers – one who focuses on history – she is German and lives in Tahiti of all things! Very good and thorough and interesting – and she fills in some holes from our last lecturer on HAL, particularly since we missed one of his lecture on culture!  The 2^nd lecturer is an ex-US military Colonel who has been all over the world and worked at the Pentagon, visited all the places we are going in a military and attaché capacity and is talking about the political climate.  He is fantastic – totally interesting and knowledgeable and, well, just an excellent speaker and topic.

The rest of the day is, well, the rest of the day.  We hit the Living Room for drinks listening to the excellent party band, Fantastic Beats.  Have dinner in the dining room, listen to Rob on piano in the Den – who is absolutely great – then finish off the night with Amanda’s (CD) show.  Perfect first day.

Although one caveat – this doesn’t seem like a happy ship.  We can’t quite put our finger on it, but the staff isn’t as outgoing and happy as we have experienced in the past.  Normally you get smiles and greetings and chats – and so far today, only Mark, our bartender, is smiling and chatting.  Hmmmm….will reserve our judgement for later as it is only day 2, and who knows?  It could have just been a bad turnover day or something else that is happening down below that we aren’t aware.  We’ll see…in the meantime, we’re ready for our last day in Osaka/Kobe tomorrow.