Navigator of the Seas in Shimizu: The Transpacific Stop
Navigator of the Seas reaches Shimizu on 17 October 2026 doing something none of the season’s other callers are doing: crossing the Pacific. Fifteen nights out of Los Angeles, she arrives via Hakodate and Yokohama with a shipload of passengers seeing Japan for the first time — and Shimizu hands them the thing they crossed an ocean for: Mt. Fuji, at the time of year it’s most likely to actually show.
The call
| Date | Arrives | Departs | Time ashore* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat 17 Oct 2026 | 07:00 | 18:00 | ~10 h |
*Back on board by 17:00 under the 60-minute rule. Times are the line’s published plan; the port confirms officially about a month ahead — see the full schedule for every ship this season.
With around 3,300 passengers, Navigator is among the biggest ships Shimizu will see in 2026. Two practical consequences: get off early (the first hour ashore is also Fuji’s best hour), and check your berth the night before — big-ship days are exactly when a move to Okitsu, the container pier you can’t walk out of, becomes possible.
An 07:00–18:00 call is the full menu
Ten usable hours is the most this port ever really gives, and mid-October is its best month — clear-summit odds peak in the cool autumn air. So read the mountain at dawn and choose:
Fuji is out. Go big. This is the one call profile where a proper Mt. Fuji day trip — Fujinomiya’s shrine and the foothills, or the classic Nihondaira–Kunozan loop — fits without sweating the clock. If you’d rather not organise it yourself, a private car with port pickup does it door-to-door.
Fuji is hiding. Don’t chase it. The water bus to Miho no Matsubara (25 minutes out, ¥1,000), a tuna lunch at Kashi-no-Ichi, and Shizuoka City by train make a day that doesn’t need the mountain — and If Fuji Hides has the full playbook.
Either way, end at the fish market side of the pier around 16:00 — souvenir tea and wasabi at the market stalls beat anything in the terminal, and you’re five minutes from your gangway when the clock starts mattering.
First port day in Japan?
If Shimizu is your first real Japanese town after Hakodate’s tourist waterfront, two orientation reads: the complete Shimizu cruise port guide (terminal, shuttle, cash and Wi-Fi — Japan is more cash-dependent than you expect) and money, Wi-Fi & eSIM. Both take five minutes over breakfast on the crossing.
Times are the line’s published plan as of August 2026; official port confirmation lands about a month before the call. Your ship’s daily programme always wins.
