First week

Man it's hard to eat rice with chopsticks!
I have no idea where to start writing about what an amazing experience I'm having right now. I know a lot of people are curious about some specific details so I'll just kind of list them out right now.
-I'm in Yokosuka, Japan. It's a (surprise!) navy town about 65km south of Tokyo. The population is somewhere around 400,000 people, which is living in the sticks as far as the Japanese are concerned. The train takes about an hour to Tokyo or 30mins to Yokohama. I was disappointed to find out that the trains don't run very late, so if I'm going to spend any time in either of those places it's going to be during the day on the weekends or I'll have to get a hotel.
-The plane ride wasn't bad at all. I watched in-flight movies the whole time. I only spent maybe an hour at the most listening to my ipod or reading. Which is kind of too bad because I spent a lot time putting good stuff on my ipod and had intended on reading enough to be an expert on Japan before I got there. C'est la vie.
-Customs sucked. I didn't get the paperwork on the plane (was I sleeping??) and so every step of the way was a bit stressful. In retrospect it was totally fine though.
-Since the DoD hooked up a daily bus service, getting to the base was a piece of cake. But man was I tired when I got here. At that point I had been traveling for 13 hours. Ruben (the guy I took over for) was awesome and picked me up from the bus stop, showed me to my hotel, and took me out to dinner.
-Everyone here is great. The people I work with, other people on the base, the Japanese people are amazingly friendly and helpful. Being here is just such a great feeling.
-The hotel room is not as small as people made them out to be. Perhaps there are other ones and I'm just lucky, but it's totally fine. With the hotel room I get internet, laundry service, pay-per-view, breakfast, and 3 drink tickets every day for the bar downstairs. Probably the best part of the hotel room is the bidet. I never used one before, but after hearing people talk about how much they like it I went ahead and gave it a shot. Literally. There is a knob you can use to adjust the "intensity" to get just the result you're looking for. And the water is warm!

So I've been going out to eat every night as my hotel room only has a fridge and a microwave. Not too bad though because you can get really light food here. Lots of fish, rice, noodles, etc.

Of course I've already had pizza twice now in an effort to make friends with other people on the base. It's cool and so is everyone here.

You can find me in this picture by looking for the hair.

I really enjoy the restaurant experience here. Excellent personalized service, great food, and if you're lucky there will be a group of Japanese people singing karaoke! Man they love it. I didnt realize how much, but you can find karaoke at any time of the day or night. One night we got persuaded to join in with a group.

We didn't commingle too much, but it would be very easy to just jump in and make some friends. Do you think this guy really went to "MICHGAN COLLEGE"?







Last night I went out with a co-worker and buddy from Seattle, Paul. I got sick of "The Honch" or Navy Row real quick, so we ventured out deeper into the city. We ended up in a totally random residential neighborhood and after a couple tries found a restaurant where some kids were hanging out. The place is run by a husband/wife team and they are the nicest people ever. We hung out there for a good couple hours and got invited back for dinner tonight. If I understood correctly, one of the guys was going fishing today and will bring back some fish that the owners will cook for everyone. Zoinks Scoob!









On the way home Paul and I stopped at a Ramen stand for a midnight snack. The proprietor was funny and the Noodles were good, but a little pricey.













Apparently we also met the town drunk.

Today i spent the day wandering around the city. I've traveled quite a bit and one of my favorite things to do in a new place is spend a day walking around it. I'm amazed at how many little restaurants there are here! I stopped at a gourmet coffee shop and I'm absolutely no connoiseur, but it was fantastic coffee. I made the extra special effort of busting out my phrasebook to tell the owner how much I liked it.

Here's your random image for the day: