Thursday, September 16: At 3:00 in the morning, I made my last American phone call home and we got ready to move down closer to our gate. There were tons of people standing and sitting around the gate and I found myself wondering how in the world all these people would fit onto one plane?! When it was our turn to board the plane, I found out how everyone would fit onto the plane. This was a monster of a plane! There were 2 seats on each side of the plane and then 3 seats in the middle, and about 40 rows total like this.
Once everyone was seated and ready for take-off, the pilot made an announcement that we would have to wait about 45 minutes before we took off because there were some winds that would make us go faster and we could only get to our first stop so early. During this waiting period, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until we began driving down the runway, and then I fell asleep again for about 4 more hours. I was very glad that I found sleep easily, which I guess is no surprise after the crazy day I had. When I woke up, “The Proposal” was playing on the TV’s so I watched that and fell in and out of sleep again. When there was only an hour and a half left of our nine and a half hour flight, we were served lunch. I got beef tips, mashed potatoes and gravy, carrots, salad and chocolate cake. I could say it was pretty good for airplane food!
Friday September 17: When I knew we were very close to landing, I kept checking out the window to see if there was anything down below besides water. I was very excited to catch my first glimpse of Japan when I opened my window one time, and luckily I was able to take a picture before the scene left my view. Our first stop was in Yokota, Japan on a military base. When we arrived here, the local time was about 6 in the morning. We had a 3 hour layover which was filled with crazy kids running around and people trying to stretch out their legs. When we were able to board again, we only had an hour flight before our next stop. I fell asleep during this flight and woke up to the plane descending. Apparently I was so out of it that Brian had to lift my seat up when we were descending. I had terrible ear aches when I did wake up, probably because I wasn’t able to pop my ears when we started going down towards the land.
At this stop in Iwakuni, Japan, we did not get off the plane because it was such a short layover. Therefore, in about an hour and a half we were off again to our final destination! This was just slightly over an hour long flight, and when we were landing there were some rain storms in the area. This made for a quite shaky landing which was very unsettling for me. I think it is safe to say that I had white knuckles until we were safely on the ground! Getting off the plane took a little time because we all had to get on shuttles which took us to the building where our baggage was. Once we got to the building, we had to go through a check-in where they checked Brian’s orders and stamped my passport.
We walked downstairs to wait for our luggage to come around and once that was done, we went to the line of people walking out of the building. A man was standing in the doorway with a microphone. He asked for Brian’s name and rank and announced it so that our sponsor would know we were there and ready to be picked up. Our sponsor came forward and then we took off for his car. Our first line of duty was to check in at our hotel. On the ride to the hotel, I was very quiet as I was taking in all of the scenery.
There are many differences, but at the same time many similarities between Okinawa and America. One of the most obvious differences would be the driving on the opposite side of the road and sitting on the opposite side of the car to drive. There are many of the same trees here on the island as well as bushes and flowers. There are many high rise buildings since there isn’t much space on the island for growth. As I said to Brian, it is weird being able to see the actual buildings and apartments that I have been looking at pictures of for months now.
A random and interesting fact that the sponsor told us while he was driving is that they make their cement from crushed coral and some other materials. Because of this, when it rains, the cement can get mushy causing the tires to spend when you try to take off on the road.
After we checked in at the hotel and dropped our luggage in our room, Brian had to go and check in to let people know he made it to Okinawa. Once this was done, we tried to go and purchase cell phones so his work could reach him if need be and so we would have a way to communicate when we were not with each other. We were unsuccessful on Friday night, so we went to grab some groceries instead. I was dead tired at this point, so our sponsor dropped us off at our hotel at this point. I was in bed by 7 that night and slept for about 12 hours straight!
Saturday September 18: By the time I woke up on Saturday morning, Brian had gone and bought a couple calling cards from a vending machine in the hotel. Apparently he had been trying to figure out how to get them to work for an hour already. Once he did get them working, I was able to call home for the first time! I found this to be challenging right away as no one answered the phone the first three times I called home. I did eventually find a good time to call home though when everyone is there to talk to! I already had it in my head that it would be a challenge to communicate with family and friends back home because of the time change, but I think I can say that it isn’t as challenging as I had imagined it to be. There are still plenty of hours where we are all awake at the same time on different sides of the world.
Later on Saturday, before we went off on our adventures, we stopped by the Macaroni Grill to eat lunch. This restaurant is located right beside our hotel. It was only my second time eating there, Brian’s first and we both were quite pleased with the food and especially the service. We had a local lady as our waitress and she tended to our every need like it was no problem, this was nothing like the service you get in the states! Once we finished eating and took our leftovers back to our hotel room, it was time for us to try and get our cell phones again. The hotel we are staying at, Westpac Lodging, has a shuttle that takes its customers around to destinations on base. The shuttle took us to the mini mall that the cell phone store was at and much to our surprise; our cell phones were ready to be picked up.
There was an auction going on a couple stores down, so we sat in on that. There were some interesting pieces that we saw, some vases, pictures, jewelry, and Brian’s personal favorite was the elephant tusks that were engraved for decoration. He wasn’t able to buy one though because they weren’t auctioned off during the time we were there. After sitting in the auction room for a bit, we walked around to see what the other stores had to offer. There was a wine and liquor store in the area, so we looked in there. In Okinawa, they have Habu Sake which is a dark liquor that has a rattlesnake at the bottom of the bottle, yes, a rattlesnake! The lady working in the store told us that the poison from the rattlesnake is good for your body. They let these bottles sit for 15-20 years before they are sold so the venom can come out of the snake into the liquor. Brian thought this was the coolest thing ever, but I was definitely ready to take off running as far as I could from that snake in a bottle!! When we were done looking around at all the shops, we grabbed a taxi to drive us back to the hotel. Since this was only the second day being in Okinawa, I was still really tired from the time change, so I went to bed pretty early again.
Sunday September 19: Sunday was a pretty lazy day for both me and Brian. We spent time calling our families and watching episodes of “The Office” for a large portion of the day. Brian has to get his hair cut every week, so in the afternoon we called a taxi and tried communicating to him that we needed to get to a barber shop off base. In Jacksonville around Camp Lejeune, there are tons of barber shops off base, so we just assumed it would be the same here. The first barber shop the taxi driver tried taking us to was closed, but the second one was open. We walked in and Brian tried telling the guy that he needed to get his hair cut. The guy just held his hands up making an “x” because he didn’t know enough English to tell us that he could not cut Brian’s hair. Luckily the taxi was still outside the barber shop, so we hopped back in and he drove us to a barber shop on base. Though there was a forty minute wait, things went much smoother.
After Brian’s hair cut was done, we got in a taxi again and got dropped off at the Macaroni Grill for dinner; it was just so good we wanted it again!! We had a really nice dinner and then it was time to walk back over to the hotel. Like the nights before, we were tired pretty early and Brian had to get up for his first day of work the next morning, so we went on to bed.
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