NINJA CRUISE Yakatabune Association

What’s Yakatabune? It’s a traditional Japanese sightseeing cruise. What’s a Ninja? It’s a sneaky spy from ancient Japan. What’s a Ninja Yakatabune? Its a new cruise from the Tokyo Yakatabune Association! Starting June 25th 2016!

A while ago I was contacted by a mysterious gmail account to go on this cruise. While I wasn’t sure if I was going to be kidnapped or not, I decided to throw caution into the wind and go with it.

Arriving at Asakusabashi station to take a one hour nap at a tiny discount hotel room because I had to work overnight the day before, the yakatabune pier was about 5 minutes away. When I first arrived I noticed a few things right away.

There was a bunch of people who I instantly recognised, but I’ve never met before. Turns out the association also invited a bunch of really popular YouTubers and Bloggers. Sharla in Japan, one of the top J-Vlog YouTubers in the niche at over 500k subscribers with her combined network, was there. She was really nice and really easy to talk to. After going through my own video I didn’t notice right away, but I saw Kyda and Eric, who had 30k subs themselves. The other YouTubers I didn’t really recognize, and I won’t name for fear that I might get it wrong, but they all had super nice DSLR cameras with selfie screens. But the nicest cameras was from Koichi, from Tofugu. Yes, Koichi. I’ve been using this guy’s blogs, books, and software to learn Japanese since 2012, and I got to meet him. Check out his blog: http://www.tofugu.com/

(bottom right to left, Koichi, myself, Tofugu crew) (top right to left, Ada and Eric from travelinboots.com, Ninjas, Kyde and Eric from Kyde and Eric, my fiancee Romi in the shadows, and Jason the tour captain)

I’ve been on other yakatabune and it was fun and had really delicious food, but this particular boat was the nicest out of all of them. It had a super nice fountain and genkan (entrance for taking off your shoes) and it was bigger than the rest. They started us off with a kampai (toast) and we started drinking. Then the food came out.

It was a giant bento box filled all sorts of goodies. Everything had a hint of black seasoning, or seared at the bottom, because black is power, according to the Ninja trivia paper that we received earlier. If you go on this ride, expect to take part in Ninja games, Ninja weapons, Ninja art, and Ninja drinking. You’ll be given the chance to win prizes and you’ll be able to see the lit skyline of Tokyo like never before; from a Ninja themed traditional Yakatabune.

This particular cruise is special because it was a promotion before the actual cruise. The first actual cruise will be April 23rd, 2016. Please check it out from the link below.

http://www.yakatabune-kumiai.jp/en/ninja/

Check out my virtual cruise from my video, as always: