Japan or Bust!

We are safe in sound in Japan and really enjoying things! It was a long trip and we are so excited that its finally over. I outlined our general travel plan in my last post “Moving Out” but I figured I’d write about how things went. Sorry it’s taken so long to update! Its been a very busy couple of days here at Yokota and I just haven’t found the time to sit down, upload pictures, and get everything together. But hopefully I’ll catch up over the next few nights! And as I mentioned, it was a long trip, so it’s gonna be a long blog.  Sorry but there is no way to make it short and adequately describe our trip. So… anyways, here it is, the travel blog!

Travel Day 1: Corpus Christi to Seattle
Dereck and I, along with his parents, were up bright and early to get everything loaded up and the apartment cleaned out. We made two trips to the airport in order to fit all our stuff in the car, then a second trip for the dog and to load the folks’ stuff in for their roadtrip back home. The kink came when we were waiting by the American Airlines check-in counter and they said that the dog would have to be moved onto a different flight. I immediately was upset because we had confirmed a few days prior that the dog had a reservation on the flight. But apparently two cats were dropped off to fly cargo (meaning their owners were NOT on the plane with them) and they arrived before us, therefore bumping Marty off the flight due to their 2 pet rule on the small planes. I was fuming! Dereck managed to get our flights changed to match the flights the dog would be on, but that meant another 4 hours waiting in the airport. I was pretty upset, but happy at least we could be on the same flights as the dog. Below is a picture of all our luggage waiting in Corpus to be checked in:

We said goodbye to Dereck’s parents and sent them on their way. Finally it was time to head to the security… and to put the dog into his crate for the flight. I was doing okay until we walked away towards security and Marty started yelping and barking so loudly the whole airport could here him. It broke my heart and I broke down crying. I was a bit embarrassed but I couldn’t help it! Every bark sounded like “please don’t leave me!” and “why don’t you love me?”. I calmed down after we no longer heard him, and felt a lot better once I saw his crate get loaded onto our plane. Then I knew he was coming with. Yes, I even took pictures of this! His kennel is on the ground (you can see the tan top of it) and that's our suitcase going up the belt:

We got to Dallas with no issues, ate some food on our layover, and I stressed about Marty’s crate getting lost in the abyss of the airport. Again, the stress level went down after I saw his crate loaded onto the plane, so then it was smooth sailing to Seattle. Marty was so excited to see us and in a very happy mood when we took him out of his crate. I loved how seeing us made him so happy, it made me feel good. I didn’t completely traumatize him by making this trip, and that was a relief.
My friend Geatano picked us up and we went to his place to stay the night. Marty met his dog Jasper and they had fun running around and playing together. We grabbed a late dinner at a great micro-brewery in Mukilteo and called it a night.

Travel Day 2: Seattle

Since our flight to Japan did not require us to be at the airport until Saturday night, we were able to spend a very fun day in the city with my friend Gaetano. He brought us to Pike Place Market that morning and we spent most of the morning and early afternoon exploring downtown.

We headed to his favorite micro-brewery for a late lunch and were joined by our friends Matt and Orly who recently moved to the area as well. It was fun to see them and to introduce my friends to each other as well.

After that we headed back up to Gaetano’s place to exercise the dog before the long flight. We took Marty (and Gaetaon brought his dog Jasper as well) to a beach park on the sound that was very beautiful. The dogs had a lot of fun running around and playing and we were surprised how we had to keep Marty out of the water!

We checked in at Sea-Tac around 7:30pm that night  (the chartered Military flight requires very early check-in) and they allowed us to  let the dog hang out for a few more hours. It was boring but I’m happy we didn’t have to get him into the crate til 9:30pm. He started barking again, same as in Corpus Christi, but stopped after just a few minutes. I was confident he would get on this flight (due to the small amount of people at the airport at this late hour, and that every person at the terminal was on the same flight).

Travel Day 3: Seattle to Japan 
Our flight left around 1am Pacific time so it was actually Sunday morning. The first leg brought us to Anchorage, Alaska, Our seats were in the last section of the plane, which was a 757, and we had a window seat and a middle seat, which we switched off and on during the trip to Japan. The flight to Alaska was about 2.5 hours and we got to watch The Blindside and eat a dinner, so we didn’t sleep at all.  Once we got there where we had a 2 hour layover, but we decided to stay on the plane and sleep. The plane was refueled and re-catered during this time and soon we were back in the air and headed to Japan.

The next leg of our trip was from Anchorage to Misawa AB in northern Japan.  It was about a 7.5 hour flight, and we traded off eating (they fed us twice…), watching movies, and sleeping.  It was dark most of the way until the last 1.5 hours of the trip, so sleeping was a lot easier. Plus since it was about 4am pacific time when we took off, all the kids were exhausted and passed out. Dereck watched the movie State of Play while I slept, then he woke me up when G-Force came on the screen. It was actually quite funny because I have wanted to see this movie about guinea pigs FBI agents for months and Dereck, obviously, will not watch it with me. He shook me awake and was like “Jane, you have to get up now…“ and scared me half to death. I thought something bad was happening. It was funny. I watched that movie (all the kids were still asleep, so I think I was the only person watching this movie…) while Dereck slept. Then after that was Harry Potter, which we both slept through most of.  It started becoming daylight and soon we started to descend into Japan. I think it was about 3pm pacific time but it was around 6:30 am in Misawa. It was cool to see the ocean moving and land approaching. Perhaps the coolest thing was that I noticed a dark shadow in the water, then suddenly there was a white splash, and then the shadow was there again. It was a whale!! I saw a whale out of the plane! I knew I wasn’t seeing things to because the guy in front of me saw it too.  It was amazing.

We all had to deboard the plane and hang out in the passenger terminal at Misawa for over 3 hours while they serviced the plane. For some passengers this was their final stop, and then we were going to be taking some new passengers on. The great surprise on this stop was that they unloaded the pets and brought them into the terminal (it might have had something to do with it being about 25 degrees outside!)  and they allowed the owners to take them out for a while. I went to go see Marty and was surprised to see that all the other pets were cats. Poor guy didn’t even have one of his own to hang out with on the flight! I was also surprised, and this time pleasantly surprised, to see that after approximately 16 hours in his crate, Marty’s bedding was dry and clean. What a good dog! I took him out and ran him around in the snowy area outside the terminal. He was so happy to be out of his kennel and playing with me. I didn’t want to put him back in, but I knew he only had about 5 more hours until he was out for good. Plus this time he didn’t bark when I left so that was a relief.

After what seemed like forever, we finally boarded the plane again to head to Yokota. The flight was only about an hour and we were flying over mountains almost the whole time. Once the mountains stopped we passed about 20 golf courses which I found so strange, since they were all so close together! Who needs that many golf courses?

We landed at Yokota and it took about an hour to get our passports checked in (I have my 1st stamp!) and to get the dog registered with the vet. Finally we wheeled our luggage out of the restricted area and into the terminal. Waiting for us was our sponsor, Rob, and our new friend Chelsea, who we will be staying with until we get into our house. Also there were our friends Beth and Tyler who had arrived a few months before us, so it was good to see them. We got all our stuff loaded into cars and headed across base to Chelsea’s to get all settled in.

I’ll put the rest into another post, since this one is long enough already! Sayonara!