I have a husband who loves to travel. He loves to sneak in as much fun and excitement as he can while we have the opportunity. So naturally, the weekend before we moved across the world, we needed to fit in one last trip. :) We left our kids with the Fryar's and left for mainland Japan with Adam and Hollie. I remember very vividly reflecting on our time in Okinawa and realizing that it was about to come to a close as we looked out of the airplane window at the beautiful sunset over the ocean. Always bittersweet. Little did I know that our last hurrah would be one we would never forget.
We started out at Disney Sea in Tokyo. If you have never made a trip to one of the Disney parks without your children, I highly recommend it. We just ran from ride to ride, acting like goons and enjoying every second of it. It was cloudy that day, which kept the heat down, and it was one of the best times we have had. Pure fun, and great company.
Of course people watching in Japan never disappoints. This mullet with the perm on top was one of our favorites. Not the best picture, but I was trying to be sneaky!
We asked this Japanese couple if they would take a jumping picture with us. Or at least we attempted to since they did not speak English. Their reaction was priceless. I'm sure they wondering what the heck these crazy Americans were doing!
One of our favorite parts of the day was when we started sneaking into people's pictures. Mostly their selfies. Japanese people are so fun, they just rolled along with it! I know...it's like we're 12 years old.
After our Disney fun, we got on a bus and then a taxi, until we got to Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji was definitely Justin's bucket list, and not mine, but I obliged. :) When we woke up the morning of our climb, we were greeted with this amazing view. These pictures just don't do it justice, as usual.
This was the base camp that we started at. We bought our walking sticks and some breakfast, before starting up the trail.
As soon as we started climbing, the fog rolled in and it stayed like that the whole time. The walking sticks that you buy are neat to have. As you climb, there are little stations along the way and at each station, they burn a stamp onto your stick. At the end, you have a different stamp from each station and a fun souvenir from your climb.
Ok, so don't mind Justin's eyes closed, but I just wanted to show how steep parts of it was. This hike is no joke!
These little kids didn't go all the way to the top but they were rock stars and I couldn't believe how far they had hiked.
Now, the bad part of the story...
Shortly after these pictures were taken, I started getting altitude sickness. It was making it hard for me to breath and, having anxiety, it made me panic and I almost passed out. Long story short, Justin and I ran back down the mountain just before reaching the last station at the summit. So not cool. Justin's dream of climbing Mt. Fuji came up a little short. And it was my fault. I tried to get him to leave me and I would go down by myself, but being the good husband that he is, didn't want me going alone. So he sacrificed and came back down with me. So now I owe him a ticket back so he can finally get the last stamp on his walking stick.
Despite ALMOST making it to the very top, it was still another adventure that we will not soon forget. I'm glad that I have a husband who tries to get me out of my comfort zone so we can make memories together.
When we got down the mountain and after getting back to our hotel, we got a phone call from Heather Fryar telling us that there was a typhoon heading straight for Okinawa. Just when we thought our adventures were behind us, our next 48 hours would prove to be a little more adventure that we would have liked.
Instead of going to bed and waiting for our flight the next day, we showered, packed our bags and got straight on a bus at 10:00pm heading for Tokyo. We got on one train after another, traveling all night long until we finally reached the airport. We were exhausted, but had no choice but to try and get back to Oki. Luckily, we were able to switch our flights to an early morning one and we got to Okinawa around 9am. After we got back we rushed around like crazy, taking care of things that we were supposed to have plenty of time to do but because the typhoon was going to shut everything down, we had only a few hours to get everything done. Justin ran around running errands and getting paperwork signed, while I was at the house cleaning and packing. It was madness. We have amazing friends who were so helpful with the kids and helped us get checked out of our house. We could not have finished everything without them. Despite the stress and craziness, we made it into TLF just before the typhoon rolled in. It was a pure miracle.
We spent a day and a half in TLF, trying to keep the kids entertained and organize our suitcases since we had basically just shoved everything in them in our desperate efforts to get everything done. It wasn't our favorite typhoon experience. We were so nervous that our flight out of Okinawa would be cancelled and we had a vacation planned in Hawaii that we had already paid for. Not to mention the fact that we were anxious to get back to the states.
Justin and Anderson were going on an earlier flight to try and get things situated with Winston. Whoever Justin talked to, told him that it would take a long time to get all the paperwork and everything done to get Winston on the plane. But their flight was cancelled. We weren't too surprised but still disappointed. My flight was still scheduled to fly out, but we were assuming it would eventually get cancelled as well. Not know what to do, we decided to get to the airport and try and work it our from there. We stopped at Adam and Hollie's house to drop some stuff off and while we were there, Justin called the airline to see if maybe he could switch him and Anderson over to my flight. While he was on the phone with them, they told him there was only one seat available, so that wasn't an option. But while he was still on the phone, a second seat opened up. Another miracle. They said it would probably cost us an extra $500, but at this point we didn't care what it cost. So we got in the car to try and get to the airport. We technically weren't even supposed to be outside yet because the Air Force had not given the "all clear", but we went anyways. We drove by flooding, and lots of tree damage.We had heard that they weren't letting anyone out of the gates to get off base. We were so nervous that we would be stuck, but when we got to the gate, no one was standing there and we just drove through as fast as we could without making eye contact with anyone! Another miracle.
Traffic was so bad on the way there. Time was going by and it was getting closer and closer to our flight time. The stress levels were at an all time high at this point. It was not how we anticipated saying goodbye to Okinawa. As we were driving, I just kept thinking that this is probably the last time I would see all of this stuff. We had a full range of emotion going on.
We got to the airport about ten minutes before our scheduled flight, feeling like there was no way we were getting on. Justin dropped me off with the luggage and the kids to try and get in some sort of line and start figuring out what our options were. There was mass confusion with lots of long lines and people who speak hardly any english. I got in a line and someone came up to me asking if I had an international connection. I told them yes and the directed me to a line with only a couple of people in it. I showed the man my flight itinerary and he started taking all of our luggage and running it through the x-ray machine. The person behind the desk looked at our passports and started typing at full speed. Pretty soon, other people came and were helping him. No one had said anything to me, they just kept working at full speed, and I started wondering if we really were getting onto a flight. I tried to call Justin because he had the dog and I was afraid he wasn't going to get there in time. He didn't answer the first time. So I called again and he was trying to find a parking spot. I told him to hurry as fast as he could because I wasn't sure what was going on, but it looked like we might be getting on. After going to the wrong floor, he finally found us. Relief! Right after Justin got there, one of the airline workers asked us to follow her. We still had not been told if we were really getting on our flight. We followed her through security and straight to our gate. As we were rushing through the airport, tears came flowing down my face. After the last few days of nothing but chaos, we were actually making it onto our flight and leaving Japan. Anderson was crying the whole way to the plane as well. "Goodbye forever Japan!" He was so sad. It was an extremely emotional time for our family. We walked on the plane that they had held for us and everyone started clapping, grateful that we had made it and that they could now take off to Tokyo. We sat down in the back of the plane and it was Justin's turn for the tears to come. We were overwhelmed with emotion. Sad to be leaving Okinawa, stressed from all that had happened, tired from not sleeping for days, and most of all grateful to the wonderful Japanese people who were so kind and willing to help us when we showed up ten minutes before our flight. They really are a gem of a people. So kind. Also grateful to the many friends who helped us as we were trying to leave. There were countless acts of service done for our family that we will never be able to fully repay.
This was the last picture taken of our family in Japan, right before leaving for Hawaii.
We love Japan. We love Okinawa. It will forever be in our hearts. It's another adventure out of my comfort zone that Justin encouraged me to take on and an experience we will always be grateful for.
Our time in Japan: August 2012-July 2014
