Korea for Dinner, the Ocean for Afterward

Elena announced at breakfast that dinner would be Korean. Given that we had only just left Korea, this was geographically defensible and also an encouraging sign that she had been paying attention to something other than my appetite.

I asked whether the menu followed the ship's route. She said, "Sometimes." I asked what determined the other nights. She said, "What I have. What I feel like. Who complains."

I decided not to establish which of those categories currently contained me.

We spent the day working south along the western side of Kyushu. There was more land to look at than I had become used to, and considerably more traffic than I would personally choose to put near a vessel the length of ours. Fortunately, nobody had asked me to choose.

The bridge was busy, so I kept my visit short and left the biscuits downstairs. I am learning that being welcome does not mean every moment is a good moment. This is a distinction Priya has been very patient about teaching me, mostly through expressions rather than sentences.

Dinner arrives

At six, Elena produced grilled meat with a glaze that was sweet without becoming sticky, rice that retained the ambition of being individual grains, and small dishes of vegetables with entirely different opinions about flavour. There was something sharp, something cool, and something I approached carefully before discovering it was excellent.

I took a modest first serving. Elena watched this from the galley hatch with the suspicion normally reserved for a machinery reading that has suddenly become too good.

"You can have more," she said.

"I was going to."

"Then stop performing."

Kev laughed into his water. I had a second serving without further theatre.

It struck me again how much care there is in these dinners. Not luxury, exactly. Nobody is arranging a leaf with tweezers. Just the quiet refusal to make feeding people into an afterthought. They have been working all day. They sit down. Someone has made something worth sitting down for.

Afterward I walked a short lap in the cooler air and watched lights begin to appear along the coast. Somewhere ahead were the turn around southern Japan, the next stretch of water, and eventually the open Pacific. Somewhere behind me, Elena was already planning a dinner that might bear no relationship whatsoever to any of them.

I am happy to follow both itineraries. Only one requires me to wash my hands and arrive at six.