hairspray and effeminate men

SO it is New Years Eve. We have 45 minutes to go in 2007 for you westerners here it is Heisei 19 and about to be Heisei 20, Heisei is the current emperor and he is in his 19th year of reign.

I was sick all weekend but I am feeling better, just congested so we went out, hey I have tomorrow to recover. Yeah it is freakin cold out there, the wind is like ICE and I have no voice, it has been dropping off more and more all day.

So what did I learn today? Young men here no about teasing, bleach and hairspray than even your most trapped in the 80s Southern hairstylist. Alot of them also look like chicks. We saw a band play at a festival down on the waterfront. They were good (well as far as we know) and the lead singer was a riot. He was a total ham and well I want his hair. Ok if I could have spikey funky hair with no work. These guys were everywhere they had bleached hair, teased hair and basically more style in their hair than any of the women.

Well we wandered around and had some yummy ball things, I forget what they are called but it is basically fried dough with a little piece of squid in the middle coated in a ginger sauce and fish flakes.

Unfortunately it was very cold and we got bored and my voice is now completely gone so we came back befoe midnight but hey that means it was easier to get a cab back to the hotel.

Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu!!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Japanese Santa at More City Mall in Yokosuka

I have been meaning to update but things have just been hella crazy. Let's see what has happened in the last 10 days. Our house fell through, Tuesday afternoon. The owners pulled out after a week of us wasting time because we HAD a house. So on Tuesday we find out but the agencies are all closed on Wed. Thursday we saw some places, we honestly did not like any of them. We were however going to take one because dammit we need a home. Well I was walking out the door to check out the area around the house on Friday and I got a call from one of our agents, Tsuda-san who was the agent on the house we lost and we really like him. He had a place for us it is brand new, meets our quaifications and the owners are ready for us and the dogs to move in. They sound like they have none of the hangups the previous owners did. Now I just have to like the house, well hubbs has duty so off I go. Love it, it is perfect, sign hubbs name on the dotted line and now I wait again. That was Thursday, the housing office is closed until Wednesday morning so I still have the contract and hope it all works out. I feel better about it this time.

Saturday we went out to the house to check out more of the area and so hubbs could at least see that. It is great, there is a grocery and lots of shops, a produce store in the house across the street. The train is less than a mile away and the bus is just down the street. We need to figure out the bus. The trains are easy though so we think the bus will be too and the housing agent thinks it is a straight shot.

So today is Christmas and hubbs has duty so yesterday we went to Tokyo to celebrate Christmas eve. In all honesty we are both beyond Christmas at this point and it just keeps getting in the way. The base is shut down for 4 days (where we cant do anything) and the country will shut down between the 26th and 29th and remain that way until the 3rd (so if we can et the house nothing can be delivered). So yeah that sucks. On top of the fact that the lack of people to process paperwork means the Navy currently owes us ALOT of money, we think we are pushing $2k at the moment if not more, that does not include all of the housing money we need to round up. Thankfully we are doing well so when the money comes in and the hotel is paid, we should have a nice chunk of change.

Ok now for Tokyo. We went to Tokyo via the train. We saw Akihabara, Ginza and Roppongi Hills. It was all packed and not my style at all, just too many people but it was cool at the same time. Personally I think I need me one of the $5000 massage chairs, Sharper Image aint got nothing on these babies.

First we hit Akihabara, Fry's aint got nothing on this place. It is the Geeks heaven. There was lots of anime stuff and enough electronics to make your head spin. It was pretty cool but with no money to spend and everything being so expensive, nothing totally peaked my interest. I do have to say the household appliances are pretty crazy cool though.

This is Akihabara see the sea of people down the street, by the bridge? The road was closed and it was wall to wall people.

We also saw this awesome BumbleBee from Transformers.

After awhile we wandered off to Ginza which is the fancy part of Tokyo. We hit the Sony Gallery and saw lots of top name stores. My favorite was Coach because it reminded me of my cousins :) Christmas is very big here but more like Valentine's day, or so I have been told. There were decorations everywhere. Here are some pics hubbs took. Even the Japanese were picture crazy.





oh yeah and if you want a moosehead to hang on your wall but dont want the dirty job of obtaining a real one, just buy this realistic plush one.

From Ginza we went on to Roppongi hills in search of food since a 1200 yen bowl of ramen is a little out of our league. It was like a super mall on crack and the lights were gorgeous. My favorite was the Banana Republic Christmas trees, it had BR ornaments all over it, oh yeah commercialism at its best.

Here are some more pictures :D Unfortunately none of the ones of Tokyo Tower came out.

Things I have noticed

Even the basic cheap, prepaid cellphones has more bells and whistles than I can shake a stick at or ever comprehend the point of. Some are cool, like besides voicemail the phone itself can record as voicemail. Some are weird like a diary or spending log, but the log is in japanese

Cars are not as small as people in the States think. Yeah you will not see a Surburban or an Excursion but you will see vans, Station wagons and SUVs, no pickups. We have seen cars as big as Chargers, Jeep Commanders and a HUGE SUV called a Harrier, yes like the jet. We still do not want a car but may need to get one. If we do we want a small SUV or hatchback, something one dog crate can fit in. Most likely a Nissan Cube or something else that resembles our Element, there are lots of versions here. If we get the house we want, it is on a narrow road and I will become a superstar at parallel parking.

Shopping malls here kick the malls in the States buttocks. We visited 3 today. 1 was connected to 2 other buildings with bridges over the city streets below. Each mall was geared toward a diferent group of people. We found the wealthy one with its Coach Store and other big names and then the other two were more up our alley. I got a small wallet/pouch today for Yen, so I can keep the money straight because it is a bit crazy with all the coins.

I have no idea how far we walked today but it was quite a bit. Just going to get the dogs at the kennel, walking them and going back to the hotel is about 2 miles. I do that every day and then a ton more because I get bored at the hotel. Tomorrow after walkies we are hopping on the train to check out the neighborhood we are hoping to move to. The Housing people have to deem it suitable for us, so we are waiting.

Before I leave tonight I will leave you with some pictures, these are things we found in a vending machine.

Dr Pepper bottle


Yummy corn

Things that take getting used to

Ok first off everything has instructions and they are in Japanese. Well duh we are in Japan right? But we are also on an American military base in an American hotel. That being said the toilet and the bath have instructions. I have to take a pic of the faucet in the toilet, I cannot even begin to describe it, it has 3 dials.

To turn on the water the faucets go down not up. All the faucets in our room are like a typical kitchen faucet with a single arm yo would push up to turn on the water and turn left or right for hot and cold. Ours are identical except it is down.

The driving on the left thing. Yeah I keep looking the wrong way to cross the street. Hubbs has stopped himself from getting in behind the wheel when we get picked up and it is just a bit unnerving. It makes us REALLY not want to drive.

Japanese, yes the language. We know some we know the polite phrases, you know Thank you, excuse me and I'm sorry. We use them all the time with Spanish speaking people with no issues. I speak broken spanish when I need too and do not feel at all stupid, yet here I have yet to utter a Japanese phrase for fear of being laughed at, looked at like an idiot or being refferred to as a stupid gaijin. Even though it is DAMN obvious I am a gaijin.

Japanese commercials are hilarious. I mean where else would you see a giant beaver hocking laxatives, well we think it was a laxative.

ok that is all for now, hopefully today we will venture beyond the gates

We made it to Japan!

so at 6:20 am Japan time I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed even to my surprise. Oh the joy of better living through pharmeceuticals well actually it was herbs but yeah. I figured it was time to get up as I had popped the melatonin and something else I cannot pronounce around 10pm and was out in minutes. So now that I have slept let me tell you about the ordeal that kept me up for the 45 hours prior.

So I wake up Weds morning at 8am. Do the thing get on the plane in the afternoon and get to Seattle, that is where the fun begins. We were loaded with stuff so we hae the lil cart thingy, the crates dont fit so we cram Elsa in with Gaven and stack them. Not 5 minutes later Elas's crate falls and cracks, a good crack too, a no way in hell my baby is flying to Japan in this crate crack and it is 8pm and we are still at the airport. The directions I had to the station for the shuttle to the hotel were wrong so we went up 2 floors, across a bridge and back down 2 floors when we could have just crossed the street. Oh yeah and ELsa is pissed at us the whole time and Gaven was just dazed.

Got the shuttle and head to the hotel. They now want to charge us more for the dogs and act like they are doing us a favor because they dont take dogs over 20 lbs, that girl got the riot act and yeah I paid the price I was told whn I called to confirm. It is 8:45pm, the pet stores close in 15 minutes I was not having any of that from er AND I hate to fly, oh yeah and I was damn hungry. So she draws me a map to the 2 big pet stores and Target. I tell hubbs to feed and water and hang out and I will get the crate. Go back and have them call me a cab. The directions were wrong (OF COURSE!!!) thankfully the cabbie, while not knowing where it was thought the directions were wrong and headed down a different, similiarly named street, on the way to where we thought we should go. I spotted PEtsmart, he waited and I got the crate. Get it back to the hotel all on only $20 cab fare with tip, go to put it together AND THERE ARE NO BOLTS IN THE PACKAGE!!!!! Thankfully we had a crate with bolts to take apart. We go to the hotel restraut get dinner to go and head back to the room, it is now after 10. We decide to be up at 2:30am, to guarantee we are at the AMC desk at 4am, ummmm yay?

Well needless to say my insomniac self could not sleep, hubbs had wanted to stay awake but that did not last, I may have dozed over the last 2 hours before the alarm went off. So off we go, no wait for the shuttle and he wisks us off. While unloading the shuttle (oh yeah we have 1 big upright suitcase, a seabag, a good sized duffle, a small duffle, laptop case, backpack,2 dogs, carryon suitcase of paperwork and a partridge in a pear tree, so yeah 7 bags and 2 dogs) I go to get carts and see a skycap he looks at me and goes"AMC?" I said yes and he loaded us up and got us where we needed to be. Which is good because we would have never found the place. So we get through the massive line (we were last at 4am) and get setup, the girl didnt tag the dogs and didnt know what to do with them other than demand $206 CASH to fly them. Thankfully hubbs knows his ATM pin, I couldnt use mine in GA so I have no idea. There were no other dogs around and they said to have them back by 6:30 so I ignored the fact that there were no tags. We took them out, Elsa would not potty to save her life and had not since San Diego. Gaven on the other hand is all about claiming and roc, tree and bush he sees. At about 6am we head up and there are more dogs AND they have tags, so I told a different worker, and she got them tagged. We left them at 6:30am as we were hearing we were one hour delayed. There were 14 animals on the flight, they do this every week so I took a leap of faith since they do not inform us when they are on the plane. The same woman who tagged them guaranteed me that she insures they all stay together and all get on the plane and she was very nice about it and not cocky like I am sure my neurotic questions could have warranted a cocky answer. SO I went with that. When we got to the terminal it was pretty full, more floor space was taken than seats and EVERYONE was asleep, so we plopped down and hubbs conked out and I crochetted until it was a decent hour and I started texting some people. Talked to my friend Amanda for awhile and then WE WERE DELAYED FURTHER! So now our 9:40am flight that we were told to be there at 4am for will not be in until closer to noon and hopefully gone by 1300. ummm yay? Oh yeah and kids are arriving so it is getting noisy which is undersandable but so are inconsiderate people who did not notice the entire gate full of sleeping people so it got loud. They did give us food vouchers, but when Burger King is the only place around they will run out of food, at least they ran out of breakfast, thankfully I wanted lunch.

11am a flight crew shows up, but we had not seen a plane we are all hoping they just know something we don't. Then the plane arrived at some point and no one deplanes, we are debating if they are empty and were just stuck in Dallas due to weather, then we see 3 pilot types leave and hope that is the case. People start lining up, we start to laugh, what is the point. So at some point they start boarding so away we go, good news, we got the exit row and it is only 2 seats across. Bad news no seats in front of us and no room in overhead bins. We stow te entertainment bags and check the ever precious paperwork, never leave our site bag, then AFTER it is gone they tell us it will be unloaded with the normal baggage. Well fuck! but it is too late now. While we had leg room and could stand up without hitting our heads we did not have working overhead lights and the headphone jacks were hella staticy, unbearble staticy. I had my new Ipod and hubbs had his gameboy so away we went.

The flight was smooth and uneventful. Hot towels, 2 hot meals, the first of which was VERY good at least mine was and hubbs ate his so it must have been better than SOS. The movies were ok, and the one I wanted to watch (Evan Almighty) was bearbable even with the static and the crappy projection. Why is it I always sit where the projector is crap, it was out of focus but I could see the one in the next section up. I occupied myself with dozing while listening to The Golden Compass on the IPOD as I was conserving the battery for movies when I REALLY needed them later, could not read because we had no light. I got maybe 30 min sleep. The lady next to me was sleeping like a champ almost the whole way.

Now the fun begins. Getting off the plane they do it based on pets/family/rank and final destinations. So once our group came up we were already gathered so we got off quick. Then we hear it, "have your travel orders ready". Thankfully this is not common but not uncommon either so they kept my passport and our IDs to find the bag. No bag. I see a lady who works there looking at tags, I pull ours out and look at the bag next to me "SHIT!!!! it has our number and it is not our bag" When the guy gave us the tag, he gave us one and then said oh wait, Yokota and switched it, too bad he had tagged them wrong. I tell the employee she tells the Air Force guy,I tell him how important the bag is, he mutters something about :Seattle strikes again and that would be what the lose" and tells me to hang tight. So we wait and wait and of course besides the only bag we care about and the fact that we have not seen the dogs, I have not seen another bag yet. Yay I see one, and it is destroyed, can this get any better? SO slowly and quite far apart I gather 2 of our 4 checked bags. AF guy comes back and asks about the carryon and I tell him no dice, tell him what the guy who took it did with the ticket swap and the other bag going to Okinawa, describe it and show him a similar one, yes everyone there had one like it. So he heads off. While he is gone, the vet explains quarantine to me (12 hours) WOOHOO!!! And I see another bag. Then AF guy arrives with my bag, I shout "hallelujah!" thank him and rush off to get hubbs who is trying to describe our transpo and paperwork issue with someone, the guy with our IDs comes running through yelling our name, I catch him hand him the orders, grab hubbs so he can straighten that out and go talk to transpo guy. Who gets an oh shit look because he did not know of an animal transport, even though we had a reservation. HE starts making calls, hubbs comes back so I go back to the dogs, yeah they arrived at some point before I got the magic suitcase. Hubbs finds the final bag and tells me the van is here YAY!!!! We load up and off we go for the 2 hour drive toYOkosuka with our barely English speaking driver but we are together and intact.

BUT WAIT THERES MORE!!!

SO driving from Yokota to YOkosuka was cool. We had go through Tokyo. First thing, mind you I was pushing 48 hours and pretty much no sleep at this point, when the van driver hopped in on the right side I freaked a little. Then I remembered "oh wait that is where the steering wheel is" and then driving on the left was a trip. The signs were confusing, not jst because I could not read them but because they were very different, they had maps on them with roads going every which way. We were in it for a couple of hours and, there was too much going on and I am even more committed to not driving. The architecture was beautiful. There were alot of ferris wheels and to see so many Christmas lights was trippy. It was night time so we did get to see the city with the lights on, it was beautiful. I cannot even describe it, I have never seen anything like it and sometimes we were stories above the street with highways crisscrossing every which way. There were alot of ferris wheels all lit up in a very seizure inducing way.

Ok so we get to the base, I cannot find my ID. The gate guard was laughing at me, in a friendly way, I am sure he knew we were fresh meat and I had to have it to get off the plane. The guy at the airport had put it in my passport so I had not seen it and did not remember giving it to him. Hubbs told me and pulled it out and the guard smiled, and waved us through. Get to the kennel it is 9pm and of course it is closed. Go to the Lodge, they call security and they basically say we are SOL but will call the ship to get an answer. Well long, blurry story short, no answer hubbs' Chief shows up, takes the dogs and hubbs. I go to sleep. He got the dogs settled at his house in their crates and the hubbs checked in at the ship. The Kennel opens in an hour so here we go again, they better have our reservation.

That is all for now

jete ne!