Shorewoods Photography-Boarding Group 2 Travel Blog

Art and I are off on our next adventure; revisiting Japan. Art travelled there frequently while working, and I was able to join him once, which is when I also fell in love with the country and the people.

This cruise was originally scheduled for 2019…then the lock down happened, and it was postponed to 2020. Then 2020 happened, and it was postponed again. Japan remained closed to tourism until November of 2022, and our cruise was rescheduled for November 2023. We will be sailing around the southern part of Japan for 12 nights, along with a stop in South Korea.

We planned our travel to Japan in 2 flights: Washington to LA, an overnight, and then the long flight from LA to Narita the following morning. We will have a few days of touring and sightseeing on our own around Tokyo before we board Celebrity Millennium, or “Millie” as she is fondly called. We travelled on Millie twice before, once to Alaska and again around Asia.

We are traveling with our Z8 camera body and just 2 lenses; our 14-24 with z mount adapter, and our 24-200. There has been some debate between us as to whether we really need to bring a wide angle, so they were packed, and we will let you know the ultimate verdict on them. The new addition to our photography gear are Peak Design travel tripods. Our travel tripods we used in the Grand Canyon served us well, but we wanted something smaller and lightweight yet sturdy to support the camera and lens. The Peak Design so far fit the bill for being lightweight and they fit easily into the side pocket of our camera bags, also Peak Design Day Camera Bags.

We settled into the Strings Intercontinental Hotel in Tokyo where we stayed on previous visits. Spacious and very comfortable, it was a good base location for some sightseeing we planned over the next 3 days.

While were exploring the area around the hotel we discovered the Nikon Museum and global headquarters nearby. So our first outing was taking our Nikon Z8’s to the Nikon Museum. It was great fun to see the displays of every Nikon camera, lens and accessory ever made.

It was also interesting to see our own progression of Nikon cameras we had owned (film, CoolPix, D5100’s, D5200’s, D600’s, D750’s, D850’s to the current Z Models)in a historical chronological display.

What also impressed us was the extent of involvement Nikon has in other areas such as medical imaging, manufacturing, scientific measurement, and space.

As with all good museums, they had a gift shop where we picked up our Nikon coffee mug and tote bag, and best of all, a Nikon Museum coaster. You might say the museum really clicked with us.