Trip to Japan

So i went to japan recently…. twas very nice indeed. I went with my mother to Yokosuka Japan to visit my brother and his wife. It was kind of a surprise that i was coming, but his wife slipped a bit, and he knew someone was accompanying my mom.

So i flew out to San Francisco and my mom and i played phone tag for about an hour…”where are you?” , “im over here at gate 79″ , “uhhhhhhh”… yeah, thats how it went pretty much the entire hour. So i think we got out of there at 11am, and got to Narita Airport near Tokyo at like 2pm the next day?…. in any case it was just about a 10 hour flight…

Surprised my brother..somewhat… he knew someone was coming with my mom, but didnt quite know it was going to be me… he was like “hahaaaaaaaaa”

When we got out side… “bleeeghhhhhhhhh”… man it was humid… and sticky… have’nt felt that since the Persian Gulf in 1999..After that, we took a 1 1/2 hour bus ride to the Yokosuka Naval Base… very nice base..all of the cities were very clean.. no garbage on the streets anywhere…

Visited all kinds of stuff… the first attraction was the Daibutsu or “Buddah” statue… in a city called Kamakura i believe. I took this picture just before you come around the bend to the statue. Its like you walk around this corner, and “POW” this huge statue is right there all of a sudden.

There were a handful of these stone monuments that were scattered around the park in cool little spots.

Got to eat some real “Ra-men”… when I say real, this was about as real as you can get… went into this little hole in the wall restaurant, that could seat about 7 people around a bar. 1 older Japanese gentleman ran the place, and he whipped up some Ra-men for my brother and I, which was the best Ra-men i have ever had… period.

My brother took us for a cruise around the harbor in one of his patrol boats. Got to see all of the other Japanese ships, and saw my old ship the USS Stethem (DDG 63) that I was stationed on when i was in. The harbor was loaded with jelly fish …glad i didn’t fall of the back of the boat.

Later in the trip I got to catch a Japanese baseball game. The Yokohama Bay Stars -vs- Tokyo Giants…. these freaking games are so much more entertaining that American games. I think if the American fans took some tips from these games, baseball in America wouldn’t be labeled as a “boring” game… these people had drums, trumpets, giant flags, and they sang little chants during the entire game….