Follow-Up: Operation Tomodachi

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you may remember that I spent a month and a half on active duty last year.  I was aboard the USS BLUE RIDGE (LCC-19) assigned to the staff of the Commander of Seventh Fleet during Operation Tomodachi, the joint US military relief effort in the wake of the March 11th earthquake and resultant tsunami.

When I was stationed aboard a ship homeported in Japan from 1999 to 2001, it was common to pull into Japanese ports and be met by protesters holding signs telling us to go home.  They were usually fairly small groups and they were always very polite, but the sentiment was always there.

Well the other day USS BLUE RIDGE pulled into port in Tomakomai, Japan and they were met with this scene:

BLUE RIDGE was in Tomakomai for a goodwill port visit that coincided with the nearby Annual Sapporo Snow and Ice Festival. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Mel Orr)

It's nice knowing we made a difference.

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End of Operation Tomodachi. For me anyway...

In the beginning, Operation Tomodachi was huge.  But once the search and rescue missions were called off and there was no need for helicopters to deliver relief supplies to isolated islands and coastal communities, the US Navy's role in Operation Tomodachi had come to an end.

Returning to port, the Navy set the record for the largest number of US ships inport in Japan since the end of WWII or thereabouts.  I have my doubts about that, but the harbor was pretty packed all the same:


I volunteered to stay behind for a few days to help sort out the lessons that were learned in the course of the operation as well as handing off the few remaining chores to the active duty guys on the full-time staff.  This meant shifting to something more like normal office hours and actually getting a couple more days off in Japan.

Wandering around after hours, I snapped a few random Yokosuka Images.  Here's a Japanese Hell's Angel:


Here's a bank of vending machines in a local toy shop:


Many of them don't make much sense to me:



I also took advantage of the opportunity to hang out with my friend Rich and his family.  Rich is still on active duty with the Navy and has been stationed in Japan for a few years now.

At some point they took me to a secondhand store called "Off House."  Apparently it started out at "Book Off," a used bookstore, and then expanded to include much more than just books:

I'm not 100% sure what a "Hard-Off" is, but it sounds like the opposite of Viagra.

Inside the Book-Off there were all sorts of interesting things.  Even in the "Junk" section:


I didn't find anything I needed, but I did find this:



A few days later we headed up to Tokyo's Ginza district:


The plan was to hit up a particular restaurant, but we were pretty early for dinner.  While we waited, we decided to wander around the neighborhood and found a toy store.  Japanese toy stores are a mixed bag of really cool and really lame stuff all under the same roof. 

This is where I spotted LEGO ninjas:


LEGO NINJAS!!!


Maybe I've just been out of the LEGO loop for a while, but it seems like there's a lot more cool stuff available now than there was when I was a kid.  For example, check out some of this year's lineup of Star Wars minifigs:

There's a LEGO Wampa.  A WAMPA for Christ's sake!  My childhood suddenly seems pale by comparison.

I also made the mistake of noticing some very high-end collectible HALO: Reach action figures: 
I contemplated buying one or all of them for costuming references. I'm proud to say that I was able to restrain myself.



After a couple of hours of browsing, we headed over to our goal for the evening, the One Piece Restaurant:


I'm not an anime fan, but apparently "One Piece" is a fairly popular animated series in Japan about a group of pirates who have a flying pirate ship and seem to be predominately dressed in business attire.  I'm sure it makes sense if you speak the language.

Rich's wife and daughter are huge fans, so we made the trek, got tickets, and had a themed dinner based on all sorts of oddities that we didn't understand.  I'd imagine we felt the same way a Martian might feel if his first visit to Earth was a trip to Disneyland.  Here we are looking confused about the whole thing:


We were apparently underdressed too:


Still, Barbara and Jesenia had a good time:


The food was fun:



The souvenir shop was entertaining too:



By the time we'd finished with dinner, it was well past Ricky's bedtime:



A few days later, my role in Operation Tomodachi was completed and it was time to leave.
To underscore the end of my mission with obvious symbolism, here's a sunset in Tokyo:



Once I had my orders in hand and said my goodbyes, it was only a bus trip, a couple of plane trips, and an hour on the road before I was back on board the S/V Heart of Gold. Then I stopped being "LCDR Thorsson" and became "just some dude" again.

Next...


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Visiting Yokosuka and it's Business as Usual

So at long last I've finally had a chance to roll ashore and visit lovely downtown Yokosuka, Japan.

Here's a view of the port from a nearby Starbucks:

Walking around downtown, the locals don't look especially concerned about radiation exposure or fallout:

These girls are absolutely not worried about exposure:

Since I had a bit of time off, I ended up hanging out with my friend Rich and his family:

As long as I was wandering around, I had to check out the latest and greatest high tech toilet seats:

Rich's son Ricky checked them out too:

There was also a Spring sale going on in the pet store section of "Homes" which is something like a Japanese WalMart:

Excuse me, it was a "Spling Sall."

This is why the pets were all so inexpensive. Like this puppy:

The current exchange rate is 85 yen to one US dollar, so this dog costs $1882.32.  He's cute, but damn!

Here's a kitten for $1760 US dollars:

To think there's people in the states who give these things away for free!

Finally,. here's a $5500 bulldog:

Given the ridiculous high prices for cats and dogs, I had to check out the smaller, cuddly animal section:

On the left were pet chipmunks or the like:

In the cage on the right was a pet bat for sale.  He was preening himself:

I wasn't quite sure he was male until he paused long enough to look at me:

The longer he looked the longer he got, so I left before he tried to molest me in some way:

At some point while we were out, I also snapped this picture of a plurple heffalump escaping from a nearby building:

So yeah. It's pretty much business as usual here in Yokosuka.

Stay tuned. I've got ten more days here and with the daily aftershocks you never know what's next...

Operation Tomodachi Update: Group Photo of 7th Fleet Staff Augmentees

Here's a winning photo of most of the extra folks who came out to help out the COMSEVENTHFLT staff for the operation:

Vice Admiral Van Buskirk, Commander of Seventh Fleet, is the exceptionally tall man front and center in the flight suit.  I'm one of the guys in snazzy blue digital Smurfy-flage on his right.

Operation Tomodachi Update: More Personalized Pics

The journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step, but the journey of 5,000 miles begins with a car, a couple of airplanes, and a bus. 

Flying into Tokyo's Narita airport was pretty simple.  In fact, the usually bustling Tokyo airport was eerily empty when I got there for my layover before connecting to Okinawa.  Judging by all the short-haired foreigners waiting around in the terminal, the flight was almost entirely filled with US military personnel. 

This made sorting out luggage at the airport a bit of a chore before we all got on the bus to the first base:



They put us up in transient quarters at Kadena Air Base for the night while we waited for the ship to arrive.  The next morning we all piled back into the bus and headed to White Beach Naval Station which still looked pretty much the same way it did the last time I was there (somewhere around the year 2000):


It's a small base, so in no time at all we got our first glimpse of the ship:


When I was a midshipman, I actually spent a month on board the USS BLUE RIDGE (LCC-19) and now, almost fifteen years later, I'm amazed at how clean the ship is.  I could show you all sorts of things to demonstrate the showroom quality of the ship, but here's a random passageway, complete with polished brass sounding plates in the deck:


After I'd received my stateroom assignment, key cards, passwords, and electrical safety checks for my personal electronics, I dropped my bags on my rack and headed out to walk around for a bit.  I haven't taken any pictures of my stateroom because there's no good angle from which you can photograph a space the size of a small walk-in closet when it's designed to sleep six adults and store their gear.

Up on the main deck, I took a few minutes to check out one of the helicopters.  Suffice it to say, the admiral rides in style:


Then I took it upon myself to leave the ship and walk around ashore for a bit.  It was there on the pier that I finally found LCDR Servance, my closest classmate from the SUNY Maritime College, looking ever the professional naval officer:

We went out and had dinner and spent a few hours catching up.  Then it was time to head back to the ship and crash out.  The next morning we were underway bright and early and I started standing watch in the Fleet Command Center, tucked away in the deep, dark recesses of the ship. 

So deep and so dark in fact that I never ended up getting any pictures (that, and pretty much everything in the room is classified to some level*).  In fact, it wasn't until I'd been on board for a week that I finally found my way topside when there was still some sunlight outside.  A bit anyway:

Somewhere along the way things began to stabilize ashore and our operational tempo began to trail off.  We were headed to Yokosuka, Japan and someone decided it would be a good idea for all of the folks like me who were augmenting the staff temporarily to pose for a big group photo with Vice Admiral Van Buskirk, the three-star admiral in command of Seventh Fleet.


I'll post that picture whenever I actually see a copy of it.


Meanwhile, I managed to get a picture with some of the guys I've been standing my watches with:

I'm the guy on the right not wearing a flight suit.

The next morning I got my first view of Japan's big island from the sea (for this year):

If you squint really close in the picture you can see a little dark sliver on the horizon.  That's the land of the rising sun.

As we got closer, I was again amazed at how uncharacteristically quiet it was.  Tokyo Bay is usually bustling with ships and boats going every which way.  This day it was almost serene:



As the ship made it's turn toward Naval Station Yokosuka, the crew began manning the rails:



Since I was off watch, all I had to do was stay out of the way while the ship moored.  Then everyone was dismissed and I got to hang out on deck while the shore gang rigged the gangways:



While I was waiting, I noticed a couple of things I hadn't seen before in my previous visits to Yokosuka.  The first was these tiny little tugboats:

I can't imagine what they're good for, but they're adorable.

The second new thing I noticed was a handful of guys on deck taking their Geiger counters for a walk:

From what I've heard, they didn't count very many Geigers.


Once the gangway was set up, Rich Servance and I wandered around the base for a bit and headed out into town for dinner.  Japan still looks much like I remember it looking.  As a bonus, the cherry blossoms are in season:


Now that we're in Yokosuka and things are slowly returning to normal for the fleet, the bulk of the augmentees are being sent home.  But not me.

Being one of the few people staying behind for a bit means there's finally enough room in the "Flag Mess" where the admiral and his staff eat to fit me as well:
Unfortunately, I've been standing watches at night and they don't serve mid-rats** in port.  Jerks.

I'll be getting a bit of time to actually go out and about before I'm done here in Japan, so stay tuned for more pictures and whatnot...

*Which might sound cool, but I still don't get to know if there are aliens.

**"Mid-rats" is short for "midnight rations" a fourth meal served aboard ship to accomodate the folks who are getting off work or about to start in the middle of the night.


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