Cruise

The original plan for today was simple: absolutely nothing.

That lasted until about 9:15.

Cruise ships have a clever way of making "relaxing" feel surprisingly exhausting. After breakfast we somehow found ourselves attending a sushi-making class, followed by a few hours by the pool, a quick lunch, bumper cars, games, more wandering around the ship, and, for me, the highlight of the day: the FlowRider.

For anyone wondering, yes... surfing on a cruise ship is exactly as difficult as it sounds. The instructor makes it look effortless, while everyone else spends most of their time discovering new ways of falling into a few thousand litres of moving water. Great fun, though.

The kids, unsurprisingly, had already declared this the best holiday ever. A ship where you're actively encouraged to spend all day in a swimming pool, eat ice cream between meals and race bumper cars? Whoever designed this clearly had children.

One thing I've learned about cruising is that there's no pressure to do anything. You can spend the whole day reading a book by the pool, or you can try to fit in every activity on the daily programme. Naturally, we chose the second option.

By the evening, we'd somehow managed to walk over 15,000 steps without ever leaving the ship. That's quite an achievement when the destination for the day is... the middle of the East China Sea.

Tomorrow, Japan comes into view, and after a surprisingly busy day of doing absolutely nothing, we're ready to set foot on land again.