The cruise starts in Tokyo or, to be more accurate, Yokohama. However, getting to Tokyo is roughly a 13 hour flight so, rather than use Viking’s included Economy flights, we decided to make our own flight arrangements. So, we cancelled the included flights (and got a small refund on the holiday cost), booked our own flights and then waited to be told how to get to the ship after we landed in Tokyo.
It turned out that passengers making their own way to the start of a Viking cruise doesn’t seem to be something that happens very often. Viking provided no information up-front about getting to the ship. When I rang Viking, they said they’d get back to me as there were a couple of possible places where the ship could dock. While I waited for their reply, I did some research about possible ports that the ship could use. I knew from the itinerary that it would be somewhere in Yokohama, but there are a few ports there!
I eventually found the Viking Orion (our ship) listed at https://www.city.yokohama.lg.jp/kanko-bunka/minato/kyakusen/nyuko/2023.html but the named port - Xingang Pier - didn’t return any results when searching.
Viking replied to my inquiry but neither port listed matched what I had found so far. Thankfully, the ships have their own email address, so I contacted the Orion directly and they informed me that it would be docked at Shinko Pier Cruise Terminal … which didn’t match either of the two ports listed in the email from Viking. So I turned to “MarineTraffic” - an app that I installed on my Android phone to track the progress of the Orion in the days leading up to our boarding date. Each day, I would open the app and watch the ship’s progress as it moved ever closer to Yokohama until, on the morning on 28th April, it was docked:
Well, that was certainly a relief! Now it is time to catch the plane to Tokyo …