Pre-Cruise Challenges (January 2025)

I'm finally attempting to start our blog for this year's world cruise.  We have had a whirlwind of activity for the last week since we left home.  Preparing for this year's cruise has been a challenge.  There were complicated issues regarding taking medications into Japan, which is the starting point of this year's world cruise.  Many items which are over the counter in the U.S. are banned or restricted in Japan.  Also, only a one-month supply of any mediation could be brought into the country without approval from their government. It seems that for all products brought into Japan each ingredient is considered and compared to their list of banned substances.  If an item contains any of the banned substances they are immediately confiscated. Their list is quite extensive and includes many over the counter medications so it presented a major problem for world cruisers. There is an extensive amount of paperwork to be filled out and submitted to their Ministry of Health to receive approval before any medications can be brought into the country.  I worked for weeks on the paperwork but couldn't understand it and couldn't secure an approval.  Finally, our wonderful travel agent took over, filled out the paperwork for me and secured the approval.  So, I was able to take my six-month supply of medications with me.  

However, even after our cruise line tried working with Tokyo customs there was still a problem with getting everyone's luggage through customs, so Silversea made the decision to send everyone's luggage to Hong Kong, and the ship would put the luggage on there, since it was on its way to Tokyo to pick us up and then we wouldn't have to deal with Japanese customs.  That worked for all passengers, EXCEPT US!!!  We had put in air tag trackers in our luggage before the cruise line picked them up at our house so we were able to see that although the ship had arrived in Hong Kong, loaded everyone's luggage and was on its way to Tokyo, our luggage was still in Hong Kong!  It seems that we had so many banned products in our suitcase they were kept in Hong Kong to keep them from being confiscated in Japan.  So now the problem was how to get our luggage from Hong Kong to Tokyo and onto the ship!!  Thankfully, Silversea has a wonderful port agent in Hong Kong who kept our luggage and confiscated items with him in Hong Kong until our issues could be sorted out.  It was decided he would personally fly with our luggage to Tokyo and put them on our ship. He would keep our "banned" items in Hong Kong in his office until our ship returned with us on board in about two weeks.  Then, he would bring our items to us. It meant that we were without some of our products for about two weeks but it was the best we could do, so we made it work. That's exactly what happened.  We were greatly relieved when we finally had all of our medications and other products on board and we could settle in and start enjoying the cruise.  So, even though we had many challenges we are thankful for the help of so many many people.