Luckily we only have 2 days at sea on this voyage – so not a very big challenge on what to do to spend the time.  We are up at our normal 6am, having coffee in a normal Lido deck buffet – no more craziness at 6:15 in the morning – it was definitely that hour time change!  Then the gym, which is a little frenetic – I did have to wait for a machine a bit, but not too terribly bad.  Breakfast isn’t too terribly bad either, but we have a routine where we get in and out as fast as possible and sit in the Lido pool area where we are not crowded by the craziness.

Today we have Coffee with Gage and the Chief Engineer.  Only the Chief Engineer has some engineering issues and can’t make it so it is only Gage, who delights us with his life story – all over again. But he is so funny and entertaining, we could listen to him all day.  And he loves to talk – self-admittedly!  Then it is on to the Shore Ex talk – only to get good seats for the Ian travel guide talk which is next.  We sit next to Sue and Norm, our Canadian friends who we sit next to at virtually every lecture.  Same seats, same seat mates.  Yeah, rut. But hey, they are the BEST seats in the house – so there is that!

As we are sitting there, suddenly Norm says, why isn’t the ship moving? I’m like – uh oh – you’re right – the engine vibration has suddenly disappeared. And the lights are all dim and low and not right. Um, guess Chief Engineer did have some problems to deal with!  Ed goes to the bathroom and all of a sudden – boom – out go the lights!  And all the engines.  Uh oh. The Captain (who btw is a brand new Captain, just took over the helm yesterday and is probably dialing up the old Captain and yelling obscenities at him) comes on the PA to tell us that we have had a total power failure and have lost all our engines and electrical. They are working hard to restart everything, but not to worry, just be careful walking around because of the dim lighting and the movement of the ship that will be more pronounced (since we are essentially dead in the water Cathy adds!).  Oh man – we’ve been here before!

We all sit in the theater with bated breath.  The Shore Ex manager who is supposed to give his presentation just starts telling us about the shuttles that are available since he can’t use his computer for the big presentation (FYI – there are 4 shuttles in places where we actually need them and we have happily already purchased our tickets!).  20 minutes later, the Captain comes back on to tell us that the power and electricity is back on, but we don’t have the Azipods back up yet. Um. That’s our propellor systems….kinda important…..  20 minutes later, the good news comes that the Azipods are back in service and everything should be coming back on line shorty – not to worry.  Phew. We were thinking NCL Star once again!  Only these waters are definitely not as lake-like as we had at the time of that complete melt down!

So, on with the show – sort of. Shore Ex continues to talk about the shuttles. People scream stupid questions. And finally Ian comes on with his presentation on Aomori and Otaru. He’s good and gives some decent information (although there is some that is suspect, but overall he’s great.)  We take a quick break for lunch – luck out with an outside table (because we are earlier than usual today) and have a great salad and noodle bowl lunch (noodle bowls are the special today – I had yakisoba and chicken, Ed had ramen and chicken).  Then because we saw the nutso jam packed theater in the morning, we went back at 1pm (well, ok, 12:30) for Dr. Kam’s History of Japan Part 1 lecture.  We’ve seen it before – but we wanted the seats for the 2pm Ian Hakodate and Akita.  I blogged the whole time – looked like I was taking notes!  Strategy paid off – not a seat to be had.

So, our day has been filled with excitement and now we have down time before our nightly routines.  We are trying the dining room tonight as we like the menu – but it is dressy night and we just know what we are in for…..And in for it we were. Oh lord have mercy!  The line was long – as expected, and the dining room? Packed to the gills.  I mean jam packed craziness.  We had a good waiter, and the service was decent considering, but I ordered the salmon bowl, which I’d had before – this was a different one from the other night – and even though I asked the waiter to try to get one that hadn’t been well done….yep…it was well done.  Not as hammered as the other night, but still way beyond its necessary doneness-temperature.  Oh well, how much food to I really need? Not that much!

Then it was Ocean Bar and cabin for The Bank of Dave, a really cute movie that they say is “true-ish.”  Cute, but meaning not really all that true to exactly what happened. Didn’t matter, it was good and fun and since we’ve already seen the show, why not?

And that was the end of our lovely 2^nd to last day at sea!