Monthly Archive for July, 2006

It never rains but it pours

Published on July 21, 2006 in Uncategorized. 9 Comments

Just when Sharron and I think that everything is going well for us, life throws us another curveball.  Yesterday morning the vice wing commander (read: big muckity muck) came in to my office and told me that starting in September I’d be deploying to Kuwait for 122 days.  Not only that, but I won’t even be doing communications but I’ll be back to doing executive officer work like I did for most of the last year!  :-\

The real kicker is that they want me there in early September, mere days after our scheduled wedding reception.  I told the vice commander this and he said it’d be ok for me to be late to Kuwait to go to my reception.  Thank goodness for small favors.

2 Weekends

Published on July 6, 2006 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

The weekend before last, Sharron and I headed in to Tokyo for our friend Ryan’s going away dinner.  We decided that we wanted to stay in Tokyo instead of braving the trains home after drinking, so we tried to get reservations at the Naval hotel called The New Sanno.  They’re usually booked solid, but will also usually have cancellations at the last minute.  We tried after lunch on Friday and were able to get a king suite.  Those run about $71 a night which is a steal compared to similar Japanese hotels in the area which can run from $150 and up.  When you factor in all the benefits the hotel has, the service and the quality of the rooms, it really does seem like your average 4-star hotel.  :-)  

When we checked in and were informed that we’d been upgraded to a DV suite.  Sweet!  The DV suites are reserved for DV’s, but they’ll book them with the highest price possible if they are not used by DV’s.  What we didn’t realize was that we’d been booked into the nicest room in the hotel.  The room was huge.  It had a living room, dining room, separate bedroom and private terrace (the only one that has one that we know of).  Not only was the room large, but it was really just elegantly decorated.  It really was spectacular.  All for $71.  :-)

Dinner was at a restaurant called Barbacoa’s.  They serve mostly meat products, but with an interesting twist.  You can pay 4,000 yen for all you can eat in 2 hours.  For an addition 2,000 yen, you can also have all you can drink for 2 hours.  Not a bad deal at all.  The food comes out individually.  This is a bit confusing, but a single waiter brings a large piece of skewered meat and will slice you off a piece if you want that type of meat.  The chicken was VERY good.  So was the grilled pineapple.  The steak wasn’t bad, but it made up for it by the sheer quantity we were able to eat.  Overall, not a bad dinner for 12,000 yen.  The current exchange rate is 115 yen to $1.  You do the math.  ;-)

Over the 4th of July weekend, we again headed in to Tokyo for dinner at the New Sanno.  This time for the Tepanyaki place.  A little more expensive than Barbacoa’s, but we had to send off Ryan with style.  We took the free bus back to Yokota to help drive the cost down.  After seeing Ryan off at the Yokota Air Terminal, we headed back almost into Tokyo to the Tama Hills Recreation Area.  During World War II, it housed bomb factories and a bomb storage depot.  The US used it for the same for awhile before turning it into a nice recreations facility along with a very nice golf course.

We had a much cheaper dinner at the Tama lodge that night, but it was still quite good.  I had prime rib so that made the trip worth it.  We played a few games of pool before heading to bed to rest up for golf on Sunday.  Before heading out the next morning, we had brunch again at the Tama lodge restaurant.  Pretty good, but a little too expensive.  Golf turned out to be priced just right.  We spent about $35 total for green fees, cart rental, club rental and new golf balls.  Of course, as soon as we paid, the weather turned bad and it began to rain like crazy.  We waited a little while, but decided to give it a try in the rain.  Since it had been almost a year and a half since either of us had played, we weren’t very good.  We both had some excellent shots, but there was only a shadow of our former abilities.  Oh well, perhaps we’ll get back in to it.  After the 12th hole we were pretty tired so we decided to drive the rest of the course, change clothes and then head home.

This month both my annual car insurance and biennial Japanese Compulsory Insurance came due.  To sway the $830 price tag, I decided to list some of my more valuble toys on Ebay.  Since I’ve been working on selling almost all of them since Christmas anyway, this was no big deal.  I wasn’t as familiar with which were valuble as I should have been, but I did stumble across one that seemed golden.  When the auction ended, the final price was $164.49.  For a single action figure.  Wow.  I had listed 10 other auctions and 8 of those sold as well.  The total came out to be $336.16.  That’s my best take yet.  :-)