It is daybreak on the Sea of Japan and I have the top-most deck of the Clipper Odyssey to myself. In the distance, misty mountains pile upon misty mountains on their way to wade into the sea, looking all the world as if transported from an ancient Japanese scroll. Our watery path - herringbone-patterned by the Odyssey's pulsing engines - turns from steel gray to silver to salmon to rose as the sun clears the mountains to emerge as a brilliant round of red, identical to that centering the flag of Japan fluttering aft.

I am circling a marked "jogging path" of but 70 meters. Twenty-two times around equal a mile if I extend the designated path to round a line-up of teak deck chairs forward and to clear the edge of a stack of Zodiaks aft. Sixty-six times around complete my rather dizzying, daily, three-mile ritual aboard the small-ship Odyssey - a morning ritual that by midway on this twelve-day cruise through the islands of Japan I've come to think of as some sort of weird, meditative, Zen experience......

"Sailing into Japan"
Odyssey