We, a company of 4 have just finished a 12days Diamond Princess cruise starting and ending both at Yokohama with the main attraction to watch four festivals in 4 different cities in Japan. We were very disappointed with the tour. The only good thing we were happy with was the relatively smooth embarkation and disembarkation procedure. Since the cruise centers around Japan and the majority of passengers are Japanese, we expected certain Japanese element prevailing in the ship as reflected in Japanese cuisine in food and the dedication to service of being helpful. True enough we discovered there were some Japanese food served but the variety was limited and the quality was also average, so was the manner and attitude to offer service and help to customers, especially in the buffet restaurant. In the dining room, we found it annoying when our waiter kept selling liquor, despite that we explicitly mentioned that we do not drink.

This was particularly true in advising land tours not organized by the ship. The staff were rather ignorant about the places we visited and quite often just referred us to go aboard and seek help from tourist booth next to the parked vessel. On the guided tours we joined, the guides were Japanese and on the whole they failed to introduce good background information nor highlights of the tourist spots due to their limited English skill. Entertainment part of the cruise is also below par and the performances were mostly conducted by the same cruise staff. There was little variety in comparison with the other cruises we had been on. On the whole, I would give the cruise a marginal pass as the ship is rather old, entertainment quite minimal, and the management rather inadequate . We unanimously agree that mostly likely, we would not join any of the diamond Princess cruises again.