chiba factory scenery night cruise

This Saturday I got to go on an evening cruise of the nighttime factory scenery in Chiba Port! This is actually only the second time that this has happened here (I believe the last one was in February), but I've heard this sort of cruise is actually getting pretty popular around the country, and depending on interest it could become a more regular thing here in Chiba, too!

I met up with one of my coworkers and a friend at the station before walking over to the port together. After checking in we waited a little bit before getting on the boat, which was very sleek and fancy-looking, with cool blue lights along the sides. The cruise included a free drink, which was a choice between what I think was a sort of fruit cocktail (tasty) or juice. After getting our drinks, we decided to go up to the top of the boat for a better view, even though I'm sure the downstairs was much warmer, haha.

After a little bit, we were off! I was surprised to discover that there was actually a guide on the cruise to explain what we were looking at and give us some background. It was only in Japanese and I didn't understand all of it, especially when he was explaining more about the factories, but I was glad that he was there to explain things to us.

As we were heading out, we got a really nice view of Port Tower, which is currently doing a nighttime Christmas-themed illumination starting at 5 every day. It's basically a Christmas tree shape and lots of colorful twinkling lights,  which is actually quite pretty. From the boat we could see the whole Christmas tree design, which for whatever reason you can't see from shore, so that was pretty awesome.

As the cruise went on, we heard explanations of what factories we were passing by (what they were, what they did, etc), and we also got to see things like the Makuhari New City District in Chiba (where Makuhari Messe is) and Tokyo Tower and the Tokyo Sky Tree across Tokyo Bay, which was really cool.

We slowed down and got close to factories at two points, one at JFE Steel and another whose name I didn't catch (oops). There was actually something surprisingly pretty about all the lights from the factories, which you don't really associate with factories, and it was really cool to be able to see them up (relatively) close. They even brought the boat closer once upon somebody's request and told us what settings to use on our cameras for the best pictures, which I thought was really nice of them.

Near the end they also let us go through the captain's cabin at the front, where we saw all the navigation stuff, which I thought was really cool. I also noticed that a lot of the switches were labeled in English instead of Japanese, which I found interesting.

All in all, I think it was super interesting and I'm glad I got the chance to go! It got pretty chilly on the boat with the wind blowing the whole time, but I was relatively prepared and also I love boats, so I enjoyed it. :D Someday I'll have to go on one of the regular sightseeing cruises they offer in Chiba Port, because I'm sure those are also awesome.