Bundled up

I've finally made it after an super long flight to Japan. As always, I felt like I was going to go crazy, but as usual I have retained my sanity. :) The plane was cold so I bundled up.

Since today is Sunday, I went to church this morning and saw my friends at Yokosuka Baptist Church. It was sort of nice to speak English with someone even after only 2 days. Now I'm going to go eat a ponderingu at Mister Donuts. :) I`ll take a picture for you.

Flying to St. Augustine

I had another orientation flight about a week and a half ago. This time was much better than the first one. I sort of knew what I was supposed to do. :) Last time I really didn't know what I was doing. (I think it was too much new information at once.) We flew to St. Augustine, ate a little breakfast, then flew back to Ormond Beach.

My concentration face

Photo taken by Lt Col Wisniewski

Here is a photo of those of us who participated in the Ormond Beach Memorial Day Service (I forgot to make a post about that.)

Photo: 1st Lt Giles

My First Glider Flight

This morning we headed over to the Pierson airport. Pretty much all it is is a grass strip in the town of Pierson. We met with some other people from different squadrons and learned how to fly a glider and be a wing runner. Wing running is actually pretty fun. You get to attach the tow line from the tow plane to the glider, then hold the plane level and run with it as it picks up speed. When it was my turn to ride the glider, I was a little nervous, but I think I might like it better that flying powered aircraft. I learned a lot about thermals and how the hot air pushes you up. We got over one thermal and went from 1500 feet to 2700!

The diagonal strip going from the bottom left to the upper right is the runway.

You pull the little yellow handle to release the tow line. As soon as you release the line, the tow plane will go down and to the left and you will bank to the right.

Me and my instructor, Lt McKibben

It was tons of fun. :)

Hokkaido

As I sit right now in our living room, Obaachan (my grandmother) is on the other side of the table writing one of her songs. On the 7th-10th we made a trip to Hokkaido. We rode the train until Haneda Airport and flew to Hakodate where we met the rest of the group (we were on a tour). For the majority of the trip we rode in a bus. Ben got really annoyed by the tour lady. She talked for 3 hours straight without stopping. It was only a little bothersome because we couldn't understand most of what she said. I just slept through it all. We stopped at a lot of places including Hakodate and Sapporo. This is going to be a really long post. I was going to make it into two parts, but I decided not to. :)

This is an ice cream menu in the airport. At the bottom there is a gray ice cream. It's black sesame seed flavor.

One of my favorite books. :)

When we got to Hakodate, we got on our bus and drove to this tower.

We got back on the bus and drove to an observatory on top of a mountain. The roads there are so narrow that I was really nervous. It was raining and we were going up a narrow road with a bunch of "Caution, slippery when wet" signs on the side of a mountain in a bus. Not sure if it was worth it but the view was pretty.

The next morning we went to a fish market.

Here they are selling live squid in individual bags.They were moving around in their little sacks. It was sort of funny.

Then we took a walk around a nice neighborhood. This is some kind of church.

We stopped a kombu museum next. Kombu is a kelp very popular here and it's harvested a lot in Hokkaido. Later, after we went through the museum, we got some kombu flavored ice cream. It really didn't taste that bad. You could definitely tell it was kombu flavored though.

I just wanted to show you guys the squid ink flavor on the bottom right. Mom got it and she said it didn't taste like anything. Hmm.

We went to a delicious cake store. Japanese desserts are very different from American desserts. Compared to Japanese cake, cake in the US is very sweet. The frosting is sweeter and the cake itself is sweeter. If you have never had a Japanese dessert and only lots of sugar, Japanese deserts are... it's really hard to describe... almost bitter and maybe a little tasteless. But I think they're good, although I still think they could add a bit more sugar. Strawberry shortcake is very popular in Japan. This is a chocolate banana something or other. :)

This is what a Japanese post office looks like.

We had a really nice hotel that night. It was lakefront. The next morning we took a little walk before breakfast.

We left there and drove up a mountain. That day we had to change routes because it snowed and the first way was too dangerous. We got to see snow though, and Ben was very happy.

We then drove to this place where you can get fresh spring water.

This is the cutest little road block I have ever seen!

We went to a sushi restaurant. It was the kind where the sushi goes around in circles and you pick what you want. I had to order everything because I don't like wasabi. This is what they put on those orders. Isn't it cute?

This is a guy who pulls people around in a cart. Ben and I were saying how funny it would be if you were riding and he was running and you said, "Faster! Go faster!" I wonder what he would do.

We took a short train ride just so we could get off at this particular station called Zenibako (I think). There's a saying that if you put the ticket into your wallet, you get lots of money. Not that I believe all that stuff but  the train ride was cool. Because it gets so cold in Hokkaido, the doors on the train don't open unless you press a button.

For some reason, the Sapporo clock tower is significant. I don't know why. Find out yourself.

At every hotel you stop at they give you these outfits you can wear around the hotel...

On the last day, we went to a place called Northern Horse Park. We watched the Happy Pony Show with Meme-chan the Shetland pony.

Now that all the pictures are over with, I have a little story to tell. The first time we all got on the tour bus, we sat across the aisle from two Taiwanese ladies. They knew Japanese because they both went to college in Japan and one of them married a Japanese man. They were really nice. When Ben spilled soda on himself they gave him a wet wipe. Anyway, the very first day at the tower, there was a stand where they were selling ice cream. When the ladies came back on the bus, they both had ice cream, so I nicknamed them "the ice cream ladies". I didn't know how accurate that was going to be. They had ice cream every single day at least once, a lot of times more. They must really like ice cream.

Now I have to go get ready to go to a friend of my aunt's house. I'm looking forward to it. He makes good sushi. :D           Leigha

Waiting...

Day after tomorrow! I am looking forward to seeing my grandparents, but I am not looking forward to the flight. 3 hour flight from Orlando to Toronto and another 13 hour flight to Tokyo. Every time I get on that long flight, I feel as if I am going to explode before we get off. I can't sit still for 13 hours straight! I suppose I will just sleep and read and sleep and play solitaire and sleep and... you get the idea. My awesome friends gave us sort of a bon voyage party (it was Mr. Buchite's birthday party too). Now I just have to wait for a couple days...

Plane

Ben has just recently gotten into flying remote control planes. For a few days he was dying for me to come out and watch him. I said I would if he would let me take pictures so here they are!