Tokyo and Typhoons

It's been a while, I know.  Sorry I haven't been updating the blog like usual.

But now THIS is happening:

And I have ample time to sit down and post.  (Well, until the electricity goes out, at least.)  Typhoon Jelawat has put the kibosh on any weekend plans.  Right now, we have wind gusts up to 120 miles per hour.  Kite-flying, anyone?

In a way, I'm actually glad that I'm stuck inside today.  I finally have time to write about this week's trip to Tokyo!

The Red Cross sent several of the Okinawa staff up to Camp Zama for training.  (Have I mentioned that I love my job?)  I'd never been to Tokyo, and I was absolutely awed at the sheer SIZE of the city.  Picture the density of downtown Chicago, except it spreads out in every direction for miles and miles.

During our final night on the main island, several other staff members and I took the train to downtown Tokyo.  It was about an hour-long ride, and it was packed to the brim with people the entire way.  Schoolchildren in their cute little uniforms, businessmen in suits, old women in kimonos.

I love her Madeline outfit

Once we arrived at the station, the doors swooshed open and everyone poured out of the train.  It took us about 20 minutes to find our way aboveground, but the view was pretty spectacular once we finally got out of the subway.

We walked around for a bit and had dinner at a random restaurant.  The menu was entirely in Japanese, so I'm still not sure what we ate.  But it was delicious and relatively cheap.

I'll take one of everything, please.

We ordered a big pot of boiling broth and then added meat, tofu and veggies.  It was almost like fondue.  Delicious.

Tuna.  And yes, I think that's a pot leaf ... 

Then we wandered a bit more.  We wanted to find ice cream, so I chatted with a pair of young men.  Their English was a little spotty, and my Japanese is even worse, so we never did find an ice creamery that evening.  I did, however, receive a marriage proposal from one of them.

It was still this busy at 11 pm.

Apparently these exist?  Sexy robot ladies that you can drive?

We were on our way back to the train station when we ran across two Japanese businessmen.  They invited us to a shady-looking alley for beers.  (Being three relatively defenseless young women in a foreign country, of course we accepted!)

My new best friend and me

We crowded into a tiny bar about 5ft x 10 ft.  Both of the gentlemen were executives at Casio, and they were eager to try their English on us.  We chatted about American and Japanese cultures for a while.

The proprietor of the establishment, a short older woman, was an absolute hoot.  I'm pretty sure that she was making fun of us the entire time, but I don't care.

I love Japan -- everyone we met in Tokyo went out of their ways to ensure that we were having a great time.  How many Americans would do that for random foreign visitors?  Tokyo was big and loud and (at times) slightly scary, but the city just pulsed with life.

Well, the eye of Typhoon Jelawat has passed over us here in Okinawa.  (I just saw a bit of sunshine peaking through the clouds.)  The wind is starting to pick back up again, and someone isn't a happy camper right now.

"Mommm, make the scary storm go away"

I promise I'll update this blog on a more regular basis now.  (Unless I get blown away by Typhoon Jelawat, of course ...)

I hate goodbyes

I dropped Loren off at the Naha airport this morning for his trip to the Middle East.  We're officially into day one of our first deployment.

Lucky puts on a brave face as he waits by Loren's luggage

It really won't be that bad -- my husband will only be gone for three months.  But it's never fun to part with your other half.  The house seems so quiet right now.

On the bright side, Loren and I had a beautiful final morning together.  We drove to a beach near the airport and enjoyed the view.  Living on-base, sometimes you forget that the island is a tropical paradise.

 

He only looks surly, I swear

After we walked along the beach, Loren and I headed to the Naha airport.

That's a lot of luggage for three measly months ...

The parking garage from hell.  I swear that Loren and I found the last parking spot within a 10 mile radius of the airport.

Inside the airport.  We got to hang out for a while, because the Japanese do security screenings right before you board your plane.

One last photo together!

One of my coworkers, Mac, likened deployments to a cross-country car ride.  He said that you start off the trip feeling really excited.  You get about three hours into the drive, and you're like, "Okay, I'm sick of this already, and I still have 600 miles to go."  Then you start breaking it off into chunks and thinking, "Alright, if I just make it to this next town, then I can pull over at a rest stop."  He said that deployments are like that -- you just have to mentally break it into smaller pieces.

We'll see if thats how I feel by the end of Loren's deployment.  Let's hope these next three months pass quickly!  (And that Lo's encounter in the desert is pretty damn uneventful.)