New Blog Location

Erin and I have moved our updates on life (now outside of Japan) to a new blog. Follow along at http://adventuresofthejordans.blogspot.com/

Back, Safe, Sound

Erin and I cannot express our thanks to the support of friends and family over these last 72 hours. I think erin and will be trying to figure out our sleep schedule for the next week after all that has happened. Speaking of which... the short of the story is that we are home, in Gig Harbor, Washington, safe and sound.

The long, well from what I can share because some of the reasons for my leaving I can't share all the details, lets start with crazy work schedules. About two days ago now, I was sleeping in the hotel room when I was woken up by a phone call from my boss state-side. Informing me that I needed to be in at work on the base in Yokosuka ASAP. From there things got crazy. I worked 24 hours out of the next 48, finally on Thursday Japan time, heading home close to noon. By then we knew or had indications we were leaving, so we finished packing our bags and set into our room waiting for the planned power outage. It happened and so we commenced with playing copious amounts of cards. Right before the power had gone out, we had talked with another coworker and he encouraged us to leave that same night, by that time we already had tickets for the next day, and a scheduled bus ride, etc. 

For some reason I decided to check again on the ability to have our tickets changed. It ended up being possible by canceling our old flight and then booking a new one  at the same cost one day earlier. I did that, called the friend from work back and in 45 minuets we were north bound on a train heading to the airport. What is crazy is that it was a different one that where we had flown in, but it had flights out and that is all that mattered. 

We flew out of Haneda International Airport, Thursday Japan Time at 11:59 pm (yep midnight) Both totally exhausted we slept, and slept hard. We landed in Honolulu for a layover without any problems. Most of the people we knew were connecting on right away but because of our last minuet ticket change our flight out of Hawaii wasn't until 10:35 pm that night, another late night flight. By the time we made it through customs, rechecked our bags and then got through security we had 8 hours still to kill before our flight. So we looked through every gift shop, buying nothing, ate at three of the restaurants (well depending on how you count a few trips to Starbucks, we ate many times). We finally board our flight, and both erin and I had crashed, when we get woken by the captain of the airplane, turns out one of the generators isn't working and we are going to have to turn around and land again. This is only 45 min after take off!

So we go back, but with fuel the plane is too heavy, and there is a lady hiding in the bathroom who won't come out so we couldn't land right away, instead we circle, and circle, and....

Well eventually the plan lands, we get off, and wait, finally 3 hours after we first took off, we take off again, and surely enough, we are out. We land in Seattle around 10:30 am, almost exactly 3 hours after we were supposed to land. 

All in all it has been a crazy last few days. We have crossed so many time zones, eaten out so much, slept in all the funny and weird positions and places, all to happily be home. I never thought I would be so happy to be doing laundry right now. Our coffee table is a mess, but erin and I are both showered and fed. 

It was strange reflecting now on the trip, as I finish typing this post it is almost exactly 1 week from when I wrote my first blog post for leaving to go to the adventure filled country I have come to know, love and miss, Japan.

Live (or semi live) Video Update

Thanks to all who are following along. To all of our friends and family here is a little video update from erin and I.