Klaudio Juričić

We arrived in Nagoya on 30 December 1983. Even though our commanding officer prohibited us from drinking excessively, we were nonetheless a bit cheerful. The ship was moored in the port, next to a nice park at the passenger terminal, separated from us by a meter-high fence. People in traditional attire, women in kimonos, walked on the other side of the fence. That was how they met the sunrise and the new year, 1984. There was no shouting, no tumult, no music, no heavy drinking… While we, on our ship, played loud music, they gathered by the fence and watched us. At one point I ran to the crowd, grabbed a girl in a kimono and carried her onto the ship. Everyone on the ship was petrified, waiting to see what would happen next. And actually, a throng of those people came aboard, but caused no problems – rather they joined our celebration. Envoys from the town came aboard on the following day, bringing New Year’s gifts – a wooden arrow engraved with good wishes for each of us. Each day we were in the port people would stop by, wanting to talk to us. I was fascinated by the shining advertisements in the cities, as we were centuries away from that back then. In Kawasaki we entered a camera shop. The doors had a sensor. They happened to open when we entered, but we didn’t know how to get out. We didn’t know how the sensor functioned. Yet, someone passed by and the doors again opened by chance so we quickly ran out. We were fascinated by this technology. While moored in the port of Moji, some people from our ship stole some iron. Officials from the port authority arrived on the following day with video surveillance footage as proof of the theft. That was the first time we saw something like it. Japan fascinated me, but I have never had the opportunity to visit it again. The seas took me elsewhere.