The Longest Day...Seattle to Japan

June 23rd-24th
I call this the longest day because it was. We had to be checked in at the airport terminal by 5:30am so we were up around 4:00am to take the hotel shuttle to the airport. Our flight wasn't scheduled til around 8:30am so we had lots of time to eat breakfast and sit around and make final phone calls before it was time to get on the plane. Once we did take off, the flight was somewhere between 9 and 10 hours. When we were waiting to take off I thought for sure it was going to be terrible. There were kids all around us and most of them were crying. It smelled like all the guys on the flight hadn't showered in days...but it ended up not so terrible. The kids quieted down and once they got the air circulating the smell got better (or I got used to it). I was able to catch a couple of naps, Keenan did not. The food we were served (a second breakfast for us, and a lunch) was decent, tasted ok, not sure about the nutritional value though. It was a military chartered flight so we didn't have the option of choosing what movies to watch or to purchase in flight wifi access. They played a few movies but I didn't really pay attention.

Breakfast of French toast, ham, bagel, fruit and yogurt.

Lunch of chicken breast, mashed potatoes, mixed veggies, 
bean salad, roll, cheese and crackers and a granola brownie.

First glimpse of Japan.

View of the mountains and fields.

We landed at Misawa Air Base Monday, June 24th at about 9:00am Japan time. Here's why it was the longest day...took off at 8:30am Pacific time on Sunday, flew for 10 hours, all in daylight, and landed at 9:00am (the next day). We still had 10 more hours of daylight in Japan. We saw about 23 straight hours of daylight. After getting through customs and meeting Keenan's co-workers that picked us up we got checked into the hotel we'd be staying at until they assigned us a house/apartment.

So where is Misawa Air Base?? Here's a map for reference, it's way north, approximately 400 miles north of Tokyo. I'll get into more detail about the location, climate, etc. in another post.

We had about an hour to relax then we got picked up to go to lunch (our second lunch since we'd been awake). We went to a Japanese café on the Japanese section of the base (Jasmine's I believe it's called). We had traditional Japanese food. I had a garlic fried pork that came with rice, a cabbage salad, potato salad, miso soup, a piece of pickled fish and a pickled plum. I didn't try the fish and the plum made my lips tingle from the sourness even before I took a tiny bite. It was sooo sour!

After lunch we went to the Housing Office to see what type of housing would be available for us. The only option available to us was an H-style townhouse, which is a 4 plex building with 2 units on the ground floor and 2 on the upper level. We said we would prefer the ground level so we'd have a backyard and a patio. We were given one unit as an option so we went to go look at it. It was on the North Area of the base which is about a 10 minute drive from the Main Base. We decided to accept the one option we were given (haha) and were told we could move in on Thursday. Yay! Only 3 more nights of being homeless!

We got dropped off back at the hotel and attempted to stay up as late as possible. Japan time is 14 hours ahead of Central time, so we were expecting some pretty good jet lag. I fought the tiredness until about 6:00pm when I finally gave in and fell asleep.

Up next...learning to drive and getting settled into our new house!