I got about five hours of sleep on the ten and a half hour Pacific transit. Nice high-quality sleep, too: I'd catnap for an hour, until I couldn't tolerate the discomfort anymore. I'd shift position and try it again. I need to get rich enough for first-class.

My stress levels got kind of high for a while after we landed. By the time I finshed customs, claimed my bag, and recheck my bag, my flight to San Diego was scheduled to begin boarding. And I didn't even have a boarding pass yet.

Luck was with me though, if not for a planeload of other people; my plane wasn't even here yet, it was late on the way from Denver. There was a giant line at the ticketing counter, but I had a confirmation number on my itinerary, which was good enough to get me a boarding pass from a self-serve machine with no line. I humped my aching self over to the correct terminal, and now I'm just looking out the window, waiting for my plane to arrive, and nursing a whanging headache and a bad attitude. My internal clock says it's almost 5 AM, and is annoyed at the lack of bed and the presence of the Evil One-Eyed Sky Demon.

The airport PA system just announced that the USO has a lounge open for service members. It'd be nice to rest there, but it's in a whole different terminal, and I don't really feel like hiking over there just to hike back in thirty minutes.

Posted by: Boviate at 06:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 259 words, total size 1 kb.

I write this onboard a United Airlines 777. The flight from Naha to Osaka was crowded, but this leg is much more comfortable. I got a free upgrade to "Economy Plus" class, which just means a few more inches of legroom. Hooray for extra legroom! Plus I've got to seatmate, so I can spread out a little, and might even be able to curl up when I want to go to sleep.

We've been flying for exactly two and a half hours according to the little LCD screen in the seatback; we've travelled 1376 miles, with another 4107 until we hit San Fran. Eight more hours and I'll be back on solid ground.

Wow, that's a long time.

LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE

Just kidding! After all, the ride's a lot less, um, "vibratory" than a CH-46, and I am comforted by the thought that when some passenger breaks something, it's not my job to fix it.

Dinner was fried chicken bits with rice and some broccoli that had seen better days. I shan't complain too much, as the rice was actually amazingly good for being reheated via microwave.

Future updates to come! I'm sure you're all breathlessly waiting! Not that you really are, I guess, because I have no way of posting this until I get to San Fran. I was told that they have free Wi-Fi too, just like Kansai did. I hope so!

Posted by: Boviate at 06:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 276 words, total size 1 kb.

First leg down. We left Naha, Okinawa a little behind schedule, and then the flight took longer than expected. So my three hour Osaka layover is just over an hour, instead.

So now I'm at Kansai International Airport in Osaka. It's a bit like O'Hare, if not so grim. Osaka and Tokyo are the two major international hubs in Japan.

Anyway, I cleared Japanese Customs with no problems; the agent seemed surprised that I still had my exit card from when I got here two and a half years ago.

Now I need to get some chow, because it's almost 4 PM, and all I ate today was a slightly stale biscuit I'd had in my camera bag since last night.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 123 words, total size 1 kb.

Wednesday (today) I went to IPAC, the centralized personnel administration site. I got my tickets and my official orders, which have me flying out tomorrow early afternoon. I'm flying commercial, in three legs: a ninety minute leg at each end, with a many-hour long trans-Pacific slog in the middle. I don't remember if it's my first time on a 777 or not.

You might get one more update tomorrow morning, about my last evening's walk. Or you might have to wait. Sorry, life gets crazy!

Posted by: Boviate at 09:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 88 words, total size 1 kb.

Tuesday night was my going-away party, held at Keita Kaizen, a very nice Japanese restraunt that specializes in sushi. (But it's not a pure sushi joint.) The layout was cleverly designed to suit both Western and Japanese dining styles. The tables were fixed in place, and low to the ground, with zabuton cushions to kneel or sit crosslegged, in the Japanese style. But the space underneath the table was a two-foot deep trench, so you could sit on the cushions with your legs down under the table, sitting like you were on a backless bench.

I tried to prove I was hardcore by sitting seiza the whole meal, but I gave up after about a half hour. I've gotten soft.

Everyone from the shop was there, as was my OIC, and Gunny and Cpl McG brought their families. McG's wife detests sushi, so she had dumplings, while the two toddlers had fried rice. The rest of us just ordered sushi platters and shared alike. I consumed the following sushis: tuna, omelette, yellowtail, salmon, fried pork, California, freshwater eel, saltwater eel, spicy tuna, rainbow, and a fish that none of us could identify. Most were quite delicious. I also decided that as it was my party, I'd go all out; plus I was sitting next to the OIC, who is also a fan of exotic foods, so the two of us ordered a bunch of sashimi, which is slices of raw fish (and by modern extension, raw meat.) (Sushi, for those who don't know, actually refers to the rice with vinegar, which then has a variety of ingredients added. While raw fish is the American expectation of sushi, there are lots of other kinds.)

So anyway, I also had straight-up slabs of raw tuna, raw salmon, raw yellowtail, and raw horse. Yes, horse. It was good. Gunny was horrified, and not much happier when I said "Hey, they called him 'Sea Biscuit' for a reason, right?"

Near the end they busted out my plaque, which was a lovely shadowbox. All present wrote me notes on the back in Sharpie. It was very kind. Orion beer and the local awamori were consumed. [Passive voice to avoid responsibility, eh? -ed.]

Then we went home, and the next morning at work we learned to our mutual amusment that four of us had some, shall I say, "digestive upset" later that night. Apparently one of those dishes was bad, but as we were all sharing all over the place, heaven knows what the culprit was. And for that matter, it could have been one of us contaminating the food. The OIC and I were doing the proper Japanese thing when taking food from a communal plate, which is to use the "back end" of the chopsticks. Everyone else was having enough trouble with the pointy end of the chopsticks, that they didn't even try. So basically it was a perfect recepie for cross-contamination.

It was a wonderful time anyway. Marines are all brothers and sisters, but of course some siblings you like more than others. Every one of the Marines at the party was a person I've been glad to serve with, so I was happy to celebrate with them.

Posted by: Boviate at 04:36 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 527 words, total size 3 kb.

We had a lovely long weekend, with Friday being a half-day, then Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off. The Japanese don't celebrate Labor Day, so the moving crew was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday to pack up all my stuff and ship it to New York.

Their arrival window is "0730 to 1730, which is rather a long time. So I was up and ready for them nice and early, then had to wait in my room. And wait. And wait. I live in the barracks furthest from the gate, so they got to me last, at about 1520.

The movers were four Japanese surfer dudes. Their company's primary business is TMOing American military types like me, so there was no confusion. They swept into the room, asked me to point out what was going, and then proceded to wrap everything in newsprint and throw it into boxes at warp speed. It was less than a half hour between them knocking on my door, and the truck pulling out of the parking lot. All my stuff went into cardboard boxes, which went into two big wooden pallet-sized crates.

My maximum weight was 2500 lbs, and I originally estimated I'd only need 500 of those. I kind of forgot how many books I had stashed away. So it probably ended up as 1000 lbs or so.

Also I'd been briefed that foodstuffs were not permitted. I keep most of my food in a plastic footlocker, and I'd intended to just leave it behind. But I failed to tell them that, so it got swept up with everything else, and labelled "kitched supplies" on the manifest. I hope that the Japanese and US Customs let that stuff through.

Posted by: Boviate at 02:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 289 words, total size 2 kb.

The movers arrive tomorrow, "Between 0730 and 1730". Which is kind of a big window. So today I packed the suitcase I'll be living out of for the next couple of weeks. I didn't spend much time organizing my stuff, because you're not supposed to have things boxed up already. The movers do that for you.

Of course, as I'm writing this, I realized that I hadn't picked out what books and DVDs I'm going to take with me. My roommate's already in bed, so I don't want to turn the lights back on to sort that stuff out. I hope I'm not the mover's first stop, so I can take care of that at leisure in the morning.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.

I heard a rumor that there's a new Muppet movie in the works, and if it does well, the TV show will restart too.

The rumor is convincing in part because "someone" has been making some new Muppet skits, and putting them on Youtube:

Posted by: Boviate at 04:42 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 46 words, total size 1 kb.