4-Master

The weekend was kind of an oddball bust. I picked up a translation clean-up job on Thursday, and had to focus heavily on that for the entire time. But, I also had classes at the English school near city hall Friday and Saturday, and I also needed to do a lot of running around for shopping between my classes on Saturday. Only to have the 5 PM class get canceled on me.



Anyway, I had one class from 1:30 to 2:30, which ended up starting 20 minutes late, meaning it ended 20 minutes late. I was going to return home after that to get a little work done on the translation clean-up, but as I got out the door, I spotted some masts sticking up over the skyline down at Dolphin Port. I'd planned to take the streetcar up to Amu to get a bit of fast shopping done then go home, but I just barely missed the next streetcar. Instead, I figured I might as well go down to the bay and see what was going on.



Thursday and Friday had been beautiful, warm and clear skies, but Saturday and Sunday were rainy and miserable. I shuffled through the rain to get to the loading docks next to the city aquarium, and nearly slipped and fell into the mud several times. There were a couple men on the docks taking pictures of the ship, but I stopped at the entrance gates when I saw the sign "closed to outside people, danger, speeding forklifts." I stood just inside the gates to get a few pictures, and someone came up to me to make sure I didn't get any closer to the ship.





According to the text on the lifeboat, this is the Kaiwo Maru, and is operated by the National Institute for Sea Training.





If I'd had the time, and someone let me, I would have liked to go onboard and look around.



At the same time, I noticed that someone was setting up tents in the waterfront park in front of Dolphin Port. I didn't see any signs, but I'm inclined to think this might be for the Ramen-Oh contest. Can't say anything about that for sure, though.



Does look like a dining area under the big tent to me, anyway. It's just that the timing is wrong. I took the photos on Saturday, and Ramen-Oh is a two-day event. I didn't come back on Sunday so I don't know if they were done setting things up. Or, maybe they were just trying to get ready one week in advance.