I’ve had some free time over the winter holidays here.  A group of us headed out for a full tour of the local area the other day.  We started by hopping a train to Hiroshima to visit the Peace Park, located at the impact point of the atomic bomb.  It was an interesting and sobering experience.

Many Marines stationed here wind up visiting the site, but I wasn’t sure how Americans (and particularly servicemen) would be welcomed at such a sacred location.  It turns out that the Peace Park and associated museum are a popular tourist spot for all kinds of nationalities.  Everyone was very respectful, and if I had any impression at all it was that the locals were happy to have us there appreciating the exhibits.  We even had a few gentlemen come up to the group and start chatting with us to practice their English.  It was an impressive memorial and very well done museum.

We then jumped back on the train (and a ferry) to visit the island of Miyajima.  I went there back in August, when I flew out here on a cross-country.  It was a little nicer climbing mountains when the weather is cool out though.  It’s a beautiful island and it was a beautiful day to explore it.  There are all kinds of cool spots, that are best described in pictures, which you can see here.

The end to a near-perfect day was grabbing a bite at one of the many kiosks in the town area.  As the sun went down, it started to get cold, and a table full of hot steaming meat buns were just too tempting.

A couple of those, washed down by a Kirin Ichiban were just what the doctor ordered.  It was a perfect end to a perfect day and a great end to a long but enjoyable deployment.  I’ll be getting on a plane early tomorrow morning for my trip home.  Now, a big hug from my girls at the airport will be the perfect end to this deployment, and a perfect start to normal life again.

I’m all settled in on mainland Japan now.  We are working out of the Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni.  Iwakuni is a small town in the south of Japan, not far from Hiroshima.  It’s not as great of a liberty spot as Okinawa, but there are still fun things to do around here after a short car or train ride.

This weekend, we went to a place called “Seven Falls”, which is about an hour and a half away in the mountains.  It’s a large park with some hiking trails that go past, you guessed it, seven waterfalls.  It was a beautiful day and a gorgeous area.  It’s a lot cooler here than Okinawa and it was even colder in the mountains.  All of us in the group scrounged up what little cold weather gear we had and headed out for a hike.  The trail was no joke, so we were shedding that same gear as we huffed and puffed up the trail.  It was well worth it though, as the view from the top was beautiful.

After a day of hiking out in the cold, we had all worked up a serious appetite.  One of the guys we went with had spent some time in Iwakuni years back and had been talking up a certain restaurant for some time.  He calls it “Chicken on a Stick”, but I don’t think that’s the real name (although one of their signature dishes is a giant piece of chicken on a stick).  It turns out this place isn’t just a restaraunt, but a large outdoor village tucked into the woods with all kinds of restaurants that cook their food over open wood-burning pits.  We sat on tree stumps around a large wooden table with individual wood stoves and cooked our dinner at the table.  It was awesome!

I don’t speak much Japanese at all – really just enough to be polite and get around.  One phrase I have mastered is, “I don’t eat pork.”  For those that are wondering, it’s “Watashi, butaniku o tabemassen”.  In Okinawa, it was often a challenge to find a single dish without pork in it on the menu, so I was thrilled when I gave my prepared line to the cashier and she said they don’t serve any pork here.  That meant the menu was wide open!  I chose wisely and ordered a plate of thinly sliced raw beef, marinating in sauce and onions.  The dish was accompanied by my own wood stove so I could cook it to perfection.

The food was fabulous, and you couldn’t beat the atmosphere.  We ate outside in the cold, but were kept warm by the wood stoves and the pots of hot tea.  Altogether, it was the best dining experience I’ve had in Japan.

I’ve only had a couple of adventures here on the mainland, but I can already see there is a significant different between the culture here and that on Okinawa.  It’s hard to describe in words, but there are subtle differences, and the Okinawans definitely have a culture of their own.

My time is getting short here.  I’m in the single digits in my daily countdown.  Japan is great, but I can’t wait to get home to my loved ones.

The weather in Okinawa has just been incredible lately.  It is a cool and breezy 70 degrees with nothing but sunshine.  After a half-day at work on Saturday, I was dying to get off base and do something outside.  A short search on the web led me to the Fukushu-en Chinese Gardens, some beautiful and historic gardens in the heart of Naha, the capitol city of Okinawa.  It’s kind of neat to go right from large city streets and tall buildings to a completely quiet and serene location.

It turned out to be just what I needed.  The weather could not have been more perfect and the gardens were not crowded at all – and the few people there were all locals.  The main idea for going there was to take some nice pictures, but I couldn’t help but get caught up in the peacefulness and beauty of the gardens.  By the time I left I felt well rested and so relaxed.

My only regret is that I didn’t have my family there with me.  It’s a great place to take a stroll with a significant other and there are all kinds of bridges, pathways, and caves for kids to climb all over and explore.  Faye would have had a ball there.

There are plenty of photos in the gallery of my trip.  They can do a far better job of describing the experience than my writing can.  Enjoy!

I wound up on a pretty interesting adventure today.  I flew most of the weekend and was looking for something to do that would get me off base for a while.  Thanks to the generosity of my friend Joe, I have a vehicle for a couple weeks so I thought I would take advantage of the freedom and do something on my own.  I’m usually rushed through sites here since my peers don’t always appreciate the beauty of certain spots and don’t have the patience for my obsessive photography.

After some searching on the web I found the perfect place.  Evidently there is an old abandoned hotel that is rumored to be haunted.  The story goes that a rich businessman had this real fancy hotel complex built on some sacred sites, which led to the project falling through before it was ever opened.  Soon into the construction, several accidents claimed the lives of those working on the hotel. Workers began to fear going to the site, and soon everything was abandoned. The businessman went bankrupt not long after the hotel idea failed, and now resides in an insane asylum.

Sounds cool, huh?  I don’t believe in all the “haunted” stuff, so it didn’t bother me too much to make the trek on my own.  It was actually a really cool place.  You can clearly see that the place was very close to being completed.  There are carpets, appliances, plumbing fixtures, and all.  After years of abandonment most everything is broken, trashed, destroyed, and covered in graffiti, which only adds to the eerie feeling.  If I ever wanted to film a post-apocalypse thriller, this would be my set.  It’s not just a single building either.  This place was intended to be a giant resort complex.  You can spend hours walking around the grounds.  You can see all of my pictures here.

It’s not intended to be a tourist spot either.  In fact it’s quite possible that people aren’t supposed to be in there at all.  I didn’t see a single soul there.  However, there weren’t any signs forbidding entrance.  To get there, I had to buy a ticket to see nearby castle ruins (which were actually pretty nice too).  Those pictures are also in the gallery.

My stay aboard the USS ESSEX is finally done.  It was a valuable experience for me, but I am very happy to be off the ship.  I’m back in Okinawa, in my comfortable spacious room.  It’s funny how comfort is so relative.  Being back in my old barracks with my old stuff feels a little bit like home.  Not home home, but still familiar and nice.

So now that I have real internet access and time to write, I can share some of my experiences on the boat.  I just uploaded a ton of pictures from the float and our stops along the way.  You can see them in the gallery.

I drew the short straw and wound up walking on the ship when we pulled out of port.  As a pilot, it’s always nice to fly onto the ship, but the advantage of walking on is you don’t have to worry about jamming your gear under your ejection seat to get it on the ship.  We started off the float sailing around Okinawa working on initial qualifications.  Every pilot (jet and helicopter) has to qualify on the ship and the MEU as a whole has to prove that we can conduct amphibious operations.  An amphibious ship doesn’t bring nearly as much air power as a big-deck aircraft carrier, but it is an impressive weapon considering you can launch an entire amphibious assault (including air support) from one ship.  For those interested in how landing craft launch and recover from a giant ship, see these pictures.

Flight time was actually few and far between while we were underway.  Harriers are the minority when it comes to aviation on the ship.  There are far more helicopters aboard and we have to compete for flight time with all of them as well.  Flight deck operations are planned to the minute and there are no gaps in use.  When you have a planned land time of 1430, you need to be landing exactly at 1430, not 1431 or 1429, because there is probably another flight preparing to arrive or leave.  It’s a very different environment than flying at an airfield and an impressive feat for the people who plan it all out.  We need to hire these guys to work at civilian airports!

Everyday life on the ship was OK.  The accommodations weren’t wonderful, but they are far better for officers than enlisted.  Here are pictures of what the rooms look like.

There are 4 officers to a room and it doubles as our office as we need it.  The food was a bit better than I expected, but it all starts to taste the same after a while.  Every once and a while we would get a nice treat though, like some fresh kiwi fruit or some fresh baked pie.  It’s easy to get fat on the boat, since you can have as much as you want at any one sitting.  Fresh fruit and vegetables were always more plentiful right after a replenishment.  I’d like to take a second to explain a replenishment at sea, as it’s an interesting thing to watch.  A supply ship pulls up right next to ours and they shoot these lines from one ship to the other (using shotguns).  Then they run giant fuel hoses across the water and fill our tanks.  All the while we are steaming at a pretty decent clip.  Then helicopters go back and forth ferrying crates filled with supplies and parts.  There are plenty of pictures from one of these evolutions here.

After our initial qualifications for the MEU, we headed to the Philippines to participate in an exercise known as Talon Vision and/or PHIBLEX.  You can read my previous post about what went on there.  It was a nice break from the ship life and I did a lot of flying there.  The pilots flew onto the ship from where we were working and spent a couple days at sea until we pulled into port in Subic Bay to meet the rest of our guys and load all of our equipment back on board.  We then cut loose for a few days of liberty in Subic.

Subic Bay used to be a giant U.S. Naval Base, but we pulled out of all of our bases in the Philippines over a decade ago.  Now it’s kind of a tourist destination.  Subic is what you would picture an Asian port visit to be like in a movie.  Vendors of everything from cigarettes and t-shirts to fake Rolexes and Viagra line the port and nearly attack you to get you to buy something.  When you walk a little further into town, you realize that there are about 4 prostitutes for every person, and they are equally as aggressive in their sales technique.  With a little effort, several of us managed to have a good time while keeping our wallets and marriages intact.  There was plenty of good food and drink and we found a great little “local” bar with live music, including an incredible Bob Marley cover band.  Perhaps the most memorable sight in the Philippines (and especially Subic Bay) was the transportation.  The ride of choice is called a Jeepney.

They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, but they are mostly heavily modified jeeps that serve as buses.  Some owners get pretty creative with their designs and paint jobs.  In Subic, the next most popular form of transport were these motorbikes with covered sidecars.  Like I said, it’s something right out of a movie.

You can see all of my photos from Subic Bay here.

We left hot and humid Subic Bay and steamed north to waters off the coast of Korea for a short exercise up there.  It was a great feeling to go to sleep in 90-degree weather and wake up to cool breezes and weather in the 60s and 70s.  We had been sweating everyday since the deployment began, while we all received emails from home about leaves changing and sweater weather, so my first taste of cool weather was a real treat.  We never set foot in Korea, but the squadron did some flying in the exercise.

From Korea, the ship headed back to Okinawa to offload our squadron and give those staying on the ship a chance to see their loved ones.  I again drew the short straw and missed the fly-off, so I joined a couple other pilots in riding the ship into port and walking off with everyone else.  Again, not a big deal, but I’ll always take a few extra days ashore than on the ship.  The MEU is continuing to operate at sea, but the Harriers have other obligations that we can better support in Okinawa.  The MEU CO was wise (and kind) enough to let us stay off the ship and support them from land for the remainder of the float.  We will miss out on some good port visits, but a comfortable bed and long showers are worth the trade.

I enjoyed my time on the ship, but I’m glad it’s over.  There is still plenty of work to be done on the deployment, but the end is in sight and I continue to count down the days until I can come home to the people I love the most.