The Journey To Japan

What ended up being a 30ish hour trip, started in Seattle on July 27th with a 6 hour delay. Zach, Olive and I made a makeshift bed on the ground at the airport to await our boarding call. Olive was the first to go about an hour and a half before boarding time... she was not too happy about that! Once we were finally on the plane, we had a 10 hour flight over to Japan. The plane stopped in Yokota first and we were able to see Olive and take her out of the crate for a little bit. It was such a relief to see that even though she was scared, she fared the trip well and even jumped back in the crate for the last leg of the journey. Unfortunately we had yet another delay in our take off to Iwakuni and did not end up landing until 11:00pm, over 7 hours after our original arrival time. At this point, we had been awake for well over 24 hours and were feeling pretty delirious! Luckily, we had friends waiting for us with plenty of vehicles to take us and all of our luggage to our rest point for the night. It was so comforting to see so many familiar faces! Zach and I were so happy to have friends to stay with, especially because Olive is buddies with their dogs! I knew she would love seeing people and four legged friends that she remembered from Beaufort, SC.

Waking up the next day with the hardest part of the move behind us felt so refreshing! The worst was finally over! We headed over to "Mountain" for breakfast with Trish, Taylor and Sydney and Evan. They each have been here for a little while and were explaining that us Americans name restaurants and locations by any way that makes sense, because most of the time we have no idea what it is actually called in Japanese. The currency here, Yen, reminds me a lot of Euros: big bills and lots of coins that are actually worth something!

100 Yen is roughly $1 so it is pretty easy to remember. The coins are especially useful for all the amazing vending machines. Not only can you get hot and cold beverages from them such as coffee, you can also get beer and delicious yogurt drinks. Pictures are definitely worth a thousands words here because majority of the time that is all you can go off of when getting a drink. Zach already experienced getting the wrong item, what he thought was plain water was really flavored water! But hey, it could have been worse ;)

I really love the coffee from the vending machines because it is sweetened just the right amount. Unlike in America, it is refreshing to not have everything loaded with ridiculous amounts of sugar!

The following Monday after our arrival, we had a "Welcome Aboard" brief that lasted all day. It was really informative on the local surroundings, customs and the history of Iwakuni. Besides giant hornets, aggressive centipedes and giant spiders that are too fast to kill, the insects aren't that bad... which really means as long as I don't see any in my house, I'm good!

Next on the agenda is to get some wheels so we can explore!