Against all Odds, Another Post

Well, it has been a few weeks, so I thought I would go ahead and write another post.
It has been pretty hot here in Japan. The temps have not gotten into the 100 degree range, but you throw some 90% humidity into the mix, and you want to do nothing that involves walking around outside. (Unless it's early in the morning or late at night.)

I know it has been much hotter State-side, so my heart goes out to those that were affected by the heat wave. (Remember that global warming is nothing but a figment of our imagination.)

Work has continued to be a fairly rough endeavor every day. I am learning how to be a Contracting Officer right now, and that entails learning three seperate computer systems. I have made a few mistakes, and then people criticize me and expect me to be all ashamed. The look on their face when I look at them and blink then say, "So?" is priceless. You know the T-shirt that says , "Does it look like I give a damn?" comes to mind. If I could get away with it, I would wear it. Maybe I'll get a white one if I can find it, and wear it under my uniform.

Seriously people, it's not like I don't care, but with everything else going on at work, getting all of my contracting actions exactly right in the system does not jump to the front of the stove so to speak.

That's about all I have on that.

Later peeps.
~jp

Finally a new post

I know it has been along, long, long, and even longer time since I have posted last, but I do have a good reason. Sort of. I have been working. The work has been getting pretty extreme. Not in the sense that I am jumping out of airplanes, or diving to the bottom of the ocean, or patrolling the streets of Baghdad with my trusty M-4, but inthe sense that I have been working 12 - 14 hours day trying to keep from drowning in the quagmire that is work right
now.

That being said, Rebecca and Peter came to visit us this last couple weeks. It has been the longest time that any of our family has been here to visit us. A couple of months ago, my cousin, Will Perry, came to Japan to study his martial art and he spent a aevening with us, and we drove up into the northeastern suburbs of Tokyo to hang out with him. It was interesting.

But while Rebecca and Peter were here, I actually took a couple of weeks off. So we took the opportunity to go up to Gotenba, hang out at Fuji-kyu Highlands Amusement Park, Go to Thomasland for Ronan, and of course sit in the Oonsen and drink beer.

The next week we took the train up to Tokyo, where we stayed at the New Sanno Hotel, which is a very nice military hotel located in central Tokyo.

It was great because hanging out with the Lines crowd is always the best! Of course Kristin, Ronan and I have not had a chance to really explore Tokyo at all, and doing with visiting family is all the better. We ate great food, we saw some pretty cool things, and overall is was fun.

Well, I need to get back to work. Later people.

~jp

Spring has sprung

Well, almost. We thought we were there last week, and then it was hovering around 0 degrees Celsius at night this week. (But for some reason it didn't seeem as cold as it was earlier in the winter.) I suppose that just goes to show, that if you think it's cold, you are going to be cold.

At any rate spring is just around the corner here in the Kanto Plain area. So I changed the color to more accurately show the feeling of the season change.

Another item of note, I have updated the photo album. There are pictures of the trip to Hakuba on the Album site. The link is in the side bar to the right.

~Josh

Ronan, making friends

The main lift from the room

The Happiest Little Boy int he World

March 3rd Yakitori Sale

Quite the month

This Feburary has been quite the month. The Seabee Ball committee had a very successful fund raising event. (Selling Yakitori at the main gate from 3pm on Saturday afternoon until we sold out at 1200 am on Sunday.) It's almost like taking candy from a baby, hitting up all of those drunk kids for munchies on their way back onto base. The one we held on the 3rd was very successful, raking in about $600 after all expenses were paid.

Then on the 19th, Kristin, Ronan, and myself went up to Nagano Prefecture to play in the snow for a couple of days. It was a beautiful trip, from getting on a train in Zushi, riding up to Tokyo for the first time, to getting on the Shinkansen (Bullet Train), and taking that up to the city of Nagano. It was a good trip. Most of the Navfac wardroom came, so there wasn't that much in the way of family time, but we had a good time none the less. The resort we were staying at had Oonsens (Hot springs), and karaoke. So Kristin went to her first Oonsen, which she admitted to being kind of apprehensive about. (We Americans are not used to walking around naked in front of other people.) But it turns out that she loved it. I think in the two days we were there she made three visits to the Oonsens. Of the two I have been to, this one was not that great, but after a day of skiing it felt really nice.
I also tried out karaoke for the first time. It a little different here. You don't go to a bar and get up on a stage, or in front of other people and make a fool of yourself. You get to do it only in front of your own party. So basically you rent out these big booths with the sound system and monitor in them. They typically have a couch in them and a phone to call the waiter for more beer or food. I was there with Mike G. and Wayne L. from work. These guys are pretty avid karaoke goers, so they jumped right in and started singing. I spent a lot of time flipping through the book, thinking to myself, "I am not drunk enough for this." I only sang one song, but by midnight everyone in the room was singing along with whatever song was up there. It was a good time.

A couple weeks after that a tragic even happened. The bases Operations officer passed away in his sleep. He was only 39, and it hit everyone pretty hard. Drew was a great guy. Very friendly and gregarious. He will be missed.

This last weekend, March 3rd, he held another Yakitori sale. This one made even more money then the last. I think we brought in about $1000 after expenses. The weather was warmer, and I was cooking. That had to be the difference. I was cooking.

At any rate that's it for now. I'll post a couple pictures of the Nagano trip and getting set up for Yakitori.

~jp

Noodle Junction in Yokohama

This is a Google Earth shot of the rest area in the middle of the interchange. What you can't see is the fact that there are about 3 layers of highway spiralling down from the top level. Very interesting.

~jp

Crazy Rest Area

During the trip to drop LCDR Velasco's bike off at the shop we ended up on the wrong side of the Yokohama Bay Bridge and decided to get off of the freeway to eat something and get going in the right direction.

This Rest stop is in the middle of this rats nest of interchanges and elevated highways. I'll post a Google Maps shot of the area. It was very interesting.
~jp

Kid in a Candy Store

This is my supervisor, LCDR Velasco doing one of the things that he loves best, dreaming about his next bike. We recently drove up to Yokohama after loading his 1200cc BMW into his minivan to drop it off at the BMW shop. (It was not running at the time.)

While we were there we purused the sales shop and he fell in love with this little lady. He said he pretty much had his min made up about the bike when he left there.

~jp

Another Photo Update

Please look to the right of the main body of the site, and you will note the link to my photo album. I'll change the date when ever I add photos. Please feel free to leave comments under the photos as well as on the blog itself.

~jp

Gotenba '07!

Hello everyone! This weekend we went up to Gotenba. It was a great time. The food and drink were splendid, and company was fun, and I think for the most part everyone had a good time. All of that for under $200 for the three of us.

Something new for me was the onsen, which is a hot spring system. In this case it's not natural, but there are plenty of natural Onsens in Japan. It was a new experience to say the least, and it was very relaxing.

It was something like 8:30 or 9:00 the night we got to Gotenba, we had already gone to the Outlet Mall and we had just come back from our eating, drinking and other revelry.
We paid a mere ¥1000 per ticket and then we went up to the hotel that is part of the resort area we were staying on.
We checked in at the door and went up several flights of stairs to a locker room where there were lots of naked Japanese men wandering around with modesty towels on. (These are basically hand towels that you can drape over your groin region as you walk around.) After being shown an empty locker by the old lady who worked in the locker room (That was pretty weird, but you shrug and carry on.), we got undressed, locked our stuff up and went into the next room. This next room was basically covered in stone and marble tile with sit down shower stalls lining the walls. There were a couple of small pools on one side of the room and one large pool next to the outside wall, which was all glass looking out onto another pool which was outside on the roof of the hotel building.
So sitting on our little stools, we showered and made ourselves clean. Then we walked through another door outside. It was just a little chilly to say the least. But we made our way to another pool of hotwater and sighed as we sunk into the water. How nice it was. The pools themselves were pretty large, with enough perimeter length to accomodate about 15-20 people. Everything was steaming and with the sides lined with rocks, there was the sound of gently flowing water as the recirrculated and reheated hot water flowed over the rock facade as you would see in a natural setting. The perimeter of the pools were also lined with the rocks.

There was also a cold pool you could dip into once you were good and hot, and there was a sauna you could sit in to further your relaxation. We did everything. I sat in the hot tub for about 45 minutes, sat in the cold tub for 5 minutes, then jumped back into the hot tub, then went into the sauna for a while and then into the cold tub for another 5 minutes, and finally back into the hot tub for 30 minutes before calling it a night. It was very relaxing.

So if you are ever in Japan, I recommend visiting an Onsen.

~jp

Penguin Love

This is Ronan enjoying some quality time with some fake penguins in Hawaii. He certainly looks like he is enjoying the weather and the company.

~jp

New Year, New Blog layout

I know it's been awhile since I have posted. I figured, if Kristin can pull it together enough to post so can I.

Winter has come to Japan. We are in a chilly part of the country in which the tempuratures typically dip into the 30's at night and up into the 40's during the day. Of course this varies depending on the cloud cover.

So to defray the costs of heating our luxurious 1250 square feet, we have borrowed 2 kerosene heaters from the housing self help office. Given the fact that we haven't run the HVAC units as heaters I don't if we are actually saving that much money because the cost of kerosene is pretty obscene. ($2.98/gallon I think)

Since posting last I have had the chance to goto Hawaii for a couple of weeks. This was not a vacation, but travel for a school (class) that I had to take to be qualified to perform my job. Nevermind that I have been doing my job for the last 6 months without any major mishap.
During that trip Kristin and Ronan both had the opportunity to join me for about 10 days. That was o0ur holiday travel. Kristin and Ronan got to visit with the McCann's and I was able to goto class all day. But on both Friday's I did go and play golf. My first time ever picking up a club. It was pretty interesting. Mike Gabiga, one of my co-workers who was in the same class guided me and his enthusiasim for the game became contagious.

Christmas and the New Year were pretty slow, which was good. President Ford graciously gave us a day off in conjunction with our New Year's Day liberty, so we all had a five day weekend.
I went golfing with Mike again up at Atsugi NAF. That was the first time playing 18 holes. I am now a little sore.. My shoulder doesn't like to move like a golf swing very much, so I have to do some training. Of course my score was hilariously high. I think it was a 144. That's twice par which is on the edge of politely not playing anymore for the sake of the people playing with you.

That's about it for right now. I'll make a more concerted effort to update this thing on a more regular basis.

~jp