Turning Japanese – part 2
Posted by Gypsy on Oct 2, 2010
I can’t even describe how awesome it was to wake up that first morning in Japan. I slept like a log and woke up completely rested, on the opposite side of the world, in a country I have always wanted to visit, curled up next to Andy. Perfect morning. We had some problems getting a hotel room on one of the military bases for the whole trip, so we were spending the first two nights and last three nights in Naha. So we had a whole day in Naha to bum around and see what we could find. After sleeping in and having a bit of a lazy morning, we walked down to the mall and shopping district. The mall was really where I had my first experience with the differences in our culture versus the Japanese culture. American malls have various stores, all separated by walls and responsible for their own security. In Japan, the mall looks more like a department store. You can tell that there are different shops, but there are no walls in between them. Since there isn’t a theft problem in Okinawa, there is no need to separate shops with walls and doors. This is actually very economical because it means less space is required.
After our walk through the mall, we wandered down the street to the shopping district. This area is very touristy, but it’s still pretty interesting to walk through and see the different shops and what they have to offer. Since we were getting hungry at this point, we decided to look for somewhere to eat. Here we found a fun little steakhouse and met the awesome T. Shinya, who was our chef for the afternoon. While the soba the night before was good, the steak and vegetables we had for lunch this day was even better. And it was a lot of fun to have him cook for us and put on a little show. Andy and I hadn’t really been to anything like this in the States, though we do have them here, so it was an experience. After lunch we were worn out from walking around. I always thought it was hot and humid in Charleston, but that is nothing compared to Okinawa and after a few hours in it we were both ready for a shower and air conditioning. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, with us mostly relaxing in the room and having dinner at the hotel.
On the second day of my trip, we moved to MCAS Futenma, where we would be staying for the majority of my time on the island. After checking out of the hotel, they called us an on-base cab, which took us right to the hotel. The rest of the week is really a blur. It rained every single day, so there wasn’t much we could around the island. Instead, we took the bus to Camp Kinser, where I got to see Andy’s barracks, meet some of his coworkers, and get some groceries for the hotel room; and to Camp Foster, which is the nicest of the three bases. We also made the trek to Kadena Air Base, which is where my dad was based when he was stationed on Okinawa.
Near the end of my first week two awesome things happened. First, the weather finally started to let up and gave us some sunny skies (though it still remained very hot and humid) and second, Charles finally returned from training in Twenty-Nine Palms. Charles left San Diego about a month before we did and was getting ready for an Afghanistan deployment, so I definitely wanted to make sure we spent time with him while I was there. Plus, this is Charles’s second tour in Okinawa, so I knew he’d know the best places for us to visit while I was there. Unfortunately, the first couple days all the guys who came back were restricted to base. This meant Andy and I had to go to Foster to hang out with him and Paul, though we were able to escape for curry at Coco’s Ichibanya before word of the restriction was officially passed. (Shhh, don’t tell their chain of command.)
After lunch there was still a question of whether or not the guys were on restriction, so Paul, Andy, and I set off for American Village. American Village is basically a little resort area with a small beach, tons of shopping and restaurants (many of them American), and a giant Coca Cola ferris wheel. This was where Andy and I finally got a photo together before heading back to base to hang out a little.
Unfortunately, the restriction wasn’t lifted before Paul was set to go on leave, so his last night there we had to eat at the Macaroni Grill on base. However, where you eat really doesn’t matter as long as it’s with the right people and the four of us were still able to have a great time. The guys spent most of dinner harassing other guys from the unit who were also dining there, while I alternated between apologizing to the waitress for their rowdiness and trying not to encourage them by laughing.
Unfortunately, the next day Charles was still on restriction and we were still on our own. However, with the weather finally nice I was done sitting in hotel rooms doing nothing. So Andy and I set off on our own adventure…
Flickr sets in this post: Japan August 2010.
Turning Japanese – part 1
Posted by Gypsy on Sep 26, 2010
I’ve now been home from Japan for about 5 weeks, so I figured it was finally time to get around to writing a blog post about my trip. I fully intended on doing this much earlier, but as so often happens life gets in the way. Or I just get lazy. It’s really a mixture of the two.
I was a little nervous about my flight to Japan. I’m generally a nervous flyer, but normally have no issues once the plane reaches 10,000 feet, which is when the flight attendants get up to start preparing beverage service and passengers are allowed to turn on electronics. However, a 14-hour flight that takes place mostly over a vast ocean where there is no place to land in case of emergency is a completely different story. My first flight was leaving around 6 a.m., which meant getting up very early. Luckily, I was flying out of Charleston, which meant I didn’t have to get to the airport until 5 a.m. and I still had time for a little breakfast before my flight. Once I got to Houston I had some time to prepare for my second flight, which would take me into Tokyo. I had already bought a neck pillow to help me sleep on the flight, but had forgotten about getting an eye mask as well. Realizing it would be daylight for the entire flight, I went ahead and grabbed one to match my pillow. After grabbing a second breakfast, calling my mom, and picking up a little bit of reading material, it was finally time to board the plane.
As a side note, I’ve always made it clear that I’m not a fan of the legacy carriers. I just tend to have far better experiences on Jet Blue and Air Tran than I’ve ever had on Delta and Continental. However, when it comes to international service, Continental really brings their A game. The seats are nice and roomy, wrapped pillows and blankets are provided, and the in-seat entertainment was top-notch. Even the food was pretty good. Beyond that, I was pretty impressed by the size of the plane as it was the biggest I could ever remember flying in. Snagging a nice aisle seat in the middle group of three, I got comfortable and settled in for 14 hours of total free time. As I rarely sleep on planes, I only got about 2 hours of sleep during the flight. The rest of the time I watched a bunch of movies and started reading The Passage by Justin Cronin.
We landed in Tokyo around 1 p.m., leaving me about five hours to kill before my next flight. The first hour was spent finding my bag, going through immigration, traveling to the other terminal, and checking into my third and final flight of the day. By this point I had been traveling for 20 hours and was starting to feel a little rough. However, Tokyo’s Narita airport thinks of everything, including shower rooms that only cost 500 yen (about $7) for 30 minutes. Even on little sleep a shower and clean clothes can make all the difference. The rest of the time before my flight was spent surfing the Internet and relaxing. Though I was a little hungry, I was also ill-prepared to deal with the language barrier in my sleep deprived state and opted to just grab some Pocky and a Coke at the shop in the terminal. After what seemed like eons, time moving slowly because I was finally mere hours away from seeing Andy, we hopped on busses that would take us to our Japan Airlines plane. At this point I was so exhausted I passed out the moment my seat belt was buckled. I awoke once, briefly, to eat an interesting cookie-type thing and a Coke, before quickly passing out again.
For all the excitement I had felt leading up to this trip, as soon as I landed in Naha, the main city on Okinawa, I started getting nervous. It’s the same feeling I had when Andy came home from Iraq because it’s always a little awkward after so much time apart. Luckily my hunger and exhaustion overruled that nervousness and as soon as I grabbed my bag I hugged Andy and hopped in the car for the ride to the hotel. Even though it was 11 p.m. and I’d been traveling for about 30 hours, I needed to eat. Since we had no idea what was open this late, we went downstairs, found a taxi and told the driver we wanted soba, Japanese noodles. The best thing I can compare where we ended up to is a canteen. It was an open place with a bar to sit at and an old woman and her daughter cooking behind it. The taxi driver helped us order, which involved putting money in a machine and hitting a selection, but it’s hard to choose a meal when you can’t read the menu. Out came a ticket, which we gave to the woman, and minutes later we had this delicious meal that completely made my night. After that, I was spent and we walked back to our hotel (only getting lost a little along the way), where I crawled into bed almost immediately to finally get some real sleep and be ready to start the first full day of my trip fresh.
Flickr sets in this post: Japan August 2010.
Catching up is hard to do – Part 3
Posted by Gypsy on Aug 30, 2010
I had really hoped to keep this to two parts so I could get right to sharing about my trip to Japan, but it’s hard to cover six months in a few posts. However, I think I can finish the catch up with this post. Unfortunately, I have very few photos of the events that took place after I returned from The Bahamas, but I am getting better about remembering to bring my camera places. It’s high time I get back into keeping my writing and photography skills sharp as you never know when they will come in handy (that may or may not be a little foreshadowing *wink*).
After returning from The Bahamas, I chilled in Charleston a little longer before heading back up to Maryland. I had promised my mom I’d come home for Easter weekend and figured I’d spend some time with Kevin and Maria before hopping on a flight up to Rochester. Not too much exciting happened while I was home for the long weekend, and that was exactly what I was looking for. Most of the trip was spent hanging out with my parents or spending time with Jason and Amanda.
After enjoying the Easter holiday with my family, I flew back down to Maryland, where I relaxed a few more days before returning to Charleston. I’ve said many times before that Charleston is one of my favorite cities and somewhere I’ve always wanted to live. So I kept traveling back and forth while I wanted to hear from a potential job opportunity in the D.C. area. While back in Charleston I was informed I didn’t get the position. That, along with an offer from Joe and Nicole to let me stay with them while I searched for work, led to a final trip back up to D.C. to handle any loose ends before heading south. Nicole traveled up with me to help me take care of things and to join me (and some other friends) at a Q&A Kevin Smith was going to do in the city. Nicole and I also took some time to check out the Air and Space Museum (my favorite of all the Smithsonian Museums) and the National Zoo.
With bad weather rolling in, we ended up having to leave a day early, but it wasn’t so bad as it gave Nicole a day to relax before going back to work. Going with the theme of never actually staying in one place for very long, a few weeks later we ended up leaving Charleston again. This time it was all three of us and our destination was Asheville, North Carolina, a cute little city way up in the mountains where a locally owned book store was hosting a reading by Chuck Palahniuk, an author Joe and I both love. I honestly don’t know what was better: seeing Palahniuk read an original story and chat with the crown or explore the amazing little city. Had I discovered Asheville a decade ago, I would’ve loaded up my beater of a car and gone straight there and never left. Even now I check every once in a while to see if there are any jobs I’m qualified for there. It’s definitely at the top of the list of places I want to retire to. Joe and Nicole also fell in love with it, opting to spend their anniversary there a couple months later.
And that brings us to my trip home for Jason and Amanda’s wedding, which I’ve already written about. Next up: my long awaited reunion with that guy I’ve been missing.
Catching up is hard to do – part 2
Posted by Gypsy on Aug 25, 2010
Clearly I’m horrible at catching up as it’s taken me another two months to get to part, but I think I can keep up once I’m caught up so here is the rest of the story. Plus, I really want to get on to talking about my trip to visit Andy and I can’t do that until I walk about everything else I’ve been up to since Andy left.
So after Andy left for Japan, I head down the coast to Charleston. The goal was to hit up Joe and Nicole’s and chill for a few days before heading all the way down to Florida. While I was a last minute addition, they, along with a ton of other people we know, had been planning this trip for months. When they found out Andy was going to be gone and I would be on the east coast, they invited me along and Andy insisted I go as so I wouldn’t be sitting around bummed and missing him. The first part of the trip started in Orlando, where some of our group were spending the weekend at MegaCon and the rest of us were hitting the amusement parks. This was a million kinds of awesome for me. For one, I got to see a ton of people I hadn’t seen in awhile, including the lovely Drena, and meet some people I had been looking forward to meeting for awhile, such as Carrie and Garth (and a ton more who I would list but it’s been months and I don’t want to forget anyone). Since this was my first time in Orlando, and I’d never been to any of the parks there, I opted to go that route with Joe, Nicole, et al. This included two days at Universal Studios (though, unfortunately, before the Harry Potter section opened) and a day at Disney World. While the two days at Universal were amazing, the day at Disney was pretty lacking as it was packed and half the rides were broken.
After Orlando came part two of the trip: spending the rest of the week in the Bahamas. This part of the trip consisted of just Joe, Nicole, Dave, Cheryl, and me and had only one goal: laziness. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans. Most of the trip was spent dealing with planes flying overhead and construction on a new set of condos right next door. However, we all made the best of it and some relaxing was had. Since this trip coincided with my week off of school, I was able to finally do a little reading for fun as well as swim a little in the ocean, eat a ton of food (both Bahamian and stuff we cooked at the condo), and finally recharge a little from all the stress of the previous Month.
The first night of the trip it became clear very quickly that we might need to rent a car. We walked down the road to the nearest restaurant (an overpriced tourist trap), but walking turned out to be quite treacherous due to the completely lack of sidewalks or even shoulders on the road. There are also very few lights on the road and since it was after dark by the time we finished eating the walk home was going to be quite dangerous. In a failed effort to get a bottle of rum for the condo, after dinner the guys walked off in one direction to search for a liquor store while Nicole, Cheryl, and I set off for the condo. Luckily, a nice older couple saw us and offered us a ride back so we didn’t have to walk back in the dark. This made us realize we were in definite need of a rental car to drive, which was an interesting experience as they drive on the left in the Bahamas.
With a car, we were able to explore the island a little. This led to a couple trips into Nassau for exploring, shopping, and eating. We were also able to hit up the grocer for food for the house (at a ridiculous markup, I might add), and even a trip to Arawak Cay, where a strip of various buildings offer some of the freshest fish fry around. Throughout our wanderings around the island, we discovered a daiquiri stand on the side of the road and in an impulsive move we decided to stop and have a drink. Since someone had to stay sober, I opted for a virgin daiquiri while the others went for the rum. It was only after we were drinking that we noticed some interesting caves behind the stand and decided to explore a little. Because I’m a bit claustrophobic, I stayed towards the entrance and outside, but this turned out to be not so bad as at one point I got to see Joe looking like a human whack-a-mole.
I have to admit my favorite part of the trip was just how relaxed The Bahamas are. I can see why people opt to retire to this little cluster of islands. The constant sound of waves lapping on the beach and birds flying just makes it impossible to feel any sense of urgency about anything. Even drivers are relaxed, something that is a very stark contrast to the States. I rarely saw speed limits posted because many roads were so thin and curvy that it was impossible to reach any real speed. Even in the straighter parts people didn’t really drive that fast. If someone was trying to pull into traffic and it wasn’t going so well, other drivers would just stop and hold up traffic to let that person in. The same went for people crossing the street. It was really amazing to both see and experience. Especially as someone adjusting to driving on the left. Even with some unfortunate issues with our condo, it was still very very difficult to leave when the trip was over. But the real world always has to rear its ugly head and before we knew it we were back in the States to get back to work, school, job hunting, and all the other trials of regular life.
Flicker sets from this post: Orlando/Bahamas March 2010.
