Phlippines - YAY

Thursday was pretty uneventful. We woke up late as usual. Reggie fixed some more of the leftover Egg Beaters for breakfast and we basically just hung out. After a couple of calls to the base we're pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that he will be unsuccesful in getting a rental. I called Rose and Rey and thought perhaps they could help out but Naomi however was able to hook one up through her brother Kenji.

Early afternoon Naomi and her parents dropped by to say hi and they brought us some much needed barbecued chicken, some Sake for my father-in-law and a pair of authentic Japanese wooden shoes for me. They're really cool and they looked like those ones worn by Samurai warriors in the movies. A bit later Reggie and I left so he can introduce me to his buddy Francis. He's married to this Japanese lady and they have a little daughter. They live in a condo in one of the tallest buildings in the area. The walk over was horribly cold. Francis and I had a very interesting conversation about 911, conspiracy theories and life in general.

While we were there Reggie got a call from Rey and Rose saying they want to come over to see me. When we got there, they're already parked by the side of the building, they came up and we talked for a bit. Rose told Reggie next time if he gets in a bind with renting a car to let her know so perhaps she can pull some strings and hook him up with her connections.

When they left, Reggie had me watch a very interesting documentary which is even more intense than Fahrenheit 911. Then we watched an English subtitled Japanese movie called Village of Dreams. Naomi was going to pick us up at around 4ish in the morning but by the time we finished the movie it was already around 2. We tried to tell ourselves when we woke up that we were pretty 'rested up' with only a couple of hours of sleep. The drive to the airport was fast with no traffic. We stopped at a rest area then they switched driving. We got to the airport a little after 6 but we had to wait for the storage place to open up so I can pick up my Balikbayan box. At the check in counter, I was given specific instructions to tell Philippine immigration that I only intend to stay 21 days with my open ticket and with no visa. Somehow it shows in their system that US passport holders can only stay in the Philippines for 3 weeks without a visa. I said sure, I got my pass to board at 9:10 pm for my 9:40 flight. After checking in we went to look for a restaurant to have breakfast. I'm pretty relaxed now since I'm checked in and all, took my time at breakfast and Reggie and Naomi did some souvenir shopping. When we looked downstairs, I saw a packed and long line to the gates so I hurried up said goodbye and stood in line. After the x-rays I didn't realize that there's another long line for immigration. It was 9:25 now and there were still 4 people in front of me. I went running and boarded the plane at exactly 9:30. Yes, I thought I was the last one to board. I had to put up my carry on baggage towards the rear of the plane way farther than my seat. Then we heard an announcement saying we'll be a few minutes delayed due to congestion in immigration. Finally we took off, they served lunch (fish of some kind), I watched Must Love Dogs (pretty cute chick film) and we got into Manila on time. Immigration and customs was smooth. When I went out the terminal with my luggage, Kong Naring and Armin were already there waiting. We took my stuff to John's pickup truck waiting in the parking lot. He took us to Kong Ben's house in the bowels of Manila, or so it seems. Traffic was horrendous. He showed me the plans he made, we made some changes and he's supposed to call me to show me the revised plans Monday or Tuesday next week. After that, we took off for Pampanga and had dinner at one of the restaurants in a big rest stop on the highway. While we were having dinner I called Gracelane and made a reservation for the night. We got there last night at around 7:30 pm. That's when I found out I couldn't get any wireless Internet connection for the laptop. That's why I had to post this today at Jack's Internet Cafe here in Guagua.

This morning Kong Naring showed up at Gracelane and we had breakfast at their restaurant. Then Kong Romy showed up with his van. Before we had breakfast, I called and 'contracted' Kong Orling to pick us up. After breakfast Kong Orling came and I had him load my stuff into his truck. I'll probably be spending the rest of my stay here in their upstairs bedroom. Kong Naring and I, with Kong Romy driving, went to the Greenfields office to see Lily and get more information on the construction. When we left it was already almost noon so we proceeded to have lunch at SM's food court. Yumm, cheap and good! Then we headed out to Guagua and now you're caught up...

By the way, someone yelled "Uncle Rey" in SM and this young man whom I didn't recognize approached me. He said he's Marita's son and he recognized me with my long hair. I don't remember whether he's the younger or the older one. He said he goes to school here.

I won't be able to upload any pictures this time because Rey and Rose, and Naomi's parents' pictures are in the built in memory of the camera and I don't have the USB cable. You'll just have to take my word for it that I did see them.

Talk to you again on my next blog.

Karaoke Night 01-18-06

Naomi picked us up with her parents' car in the afternoon and we went to a restaurant called Hamakura which is pretty close from where Reggie lives, to have dinner. And guess what I had? If you guessed sashimi, you're absolutely right!! But this time Naomi also ordered some fish soup for me and that was good too. Afterwards, we went to our usual Karaoke hangout but since their friends aren't there yet, Reggie and Naomi played pool with me watching on the sideline. Naomi is actually pretty good at it. About 45 minutes or so, Yama and Ayako came and a little later, the couple from the night before Ryo and Minako showed up. We went up to a different booth this time. The system doesn't give out score. It shows how much calories is burned while singing the song and I thought that was pretty weird. They liked our performance from the night before so Ryo and I did Nowhere Man again and I think we did a better job at it this time! Reggie had me sing One In A Million also. I was surprised Reggie can do Journey's Open Arms and sitting down at that. We had to leave a little earlier this time because Naomi had to go home.

She dropped us off by the video store and Reggie rented Zatoichi, a remake of the old Blind Swordsman movie. We got home and we watched it till the wee hours and we woke up this morning at around 11ish.

Reggie called Lita's number in Tokyo and she answered this time. It turned out she was in Nagoya yesterday that's why we couldn't get a hold of her.

The car rental doesn't look good and it's looking like we may need to take the train early in the morning tomorrow to the airport to make my 9:30 am flight if something else doesn't come up. We're going to have to make a point next time not to book such an early flight from Narita to Manila.

Karaoke Night Tuesday 01-17-06

This basically is a continuation of yesterday's blog....

As planned Naomi's brother picked us up from the apartment and we went on base to do some shopping at the exchange. He parked right outside and we walked on to the gate so Reggie can get passes for us. Then we went to the O' Club to have some lunch. After that we went to the exchange and got a case for the lap top, a smaller case for the digital camera and a couple of other things. While we were in the exhange I got a chance to talk to Donna and she told me my toothbrush was in the pocket of the toiletry bag. And I looked everywhere but there!

All the time we were on base, Reggie kept meeting and introducing me and Kenji to people he knows and there's a lot of them. He even took us up to Mary's old office to see Nette.

We left the base to drop off our stuff at the apartment, picked up Eri from her work and proceeded to Megumi's place to give them the goodies. We got there and Megumi and Naomi were there. A little later Yuuri showed up from a friend's house. Everyone was thrilled from all the 'presento' they got. After spending a little more time in there, we left to have dinner in a restaurant in Kanazawa Bunko. I was thinking on the way, "This place had better be good" because I thought it was a bit far. On the drive to the restaurant, jet lag is catching up on me and I had to take a little nap in between Reggie's snoring next to me. I woke up when we got there. It was one of them places where everyone had to take his/her shoes off and deposit them in these little lockers with huge wooden keys by the entrance of the restaurant. I've told them beforehand how I just love Japanese food especially sashimi not as much as sushi since the latter has rice. I had sashimi (5 pcs of tuna) for appetizer, sashimi salad and sashimi for main dish. As you can see, by the time dinner's over, I was all sashimi'd out!! Everyone's in agreement however that Kenji and Reggie can really put it away. Each of them were getting dirty looks from Eri and Naomi respectively the way they eat so much. Since no one left room for dessert, we headed on out to burn some calories doing KARAOKE!!!!

We went back to Yokosuka and checked out this place which has an arcade on the ground floor, a pool hall on the 2nd floor and a number of Karaoke booths on the third floor. We hooked up booth #7 for 2 hours and I started the ball rolling with Desperado. Reggie's married couple friends Ryo and Minako showed up after a few minutes.

The highlights of the evening:

1. Ryo and Reggie's duet of John Lennon's Woman, impressive harmonies.
2. Reggie and Naomi's duet of Madonna's Like a Virgin garnering them the highest score of the night - 96, with Reggie's performance as funny or maybe even more amusing than Daniel's Ngayon at Kailanman.
3. Minako's cute and some fast Japanese songs
4. Kenji's and Ryo's nice Japanese songs
5. Reggie and Naomi's duet of a Japanese song called First Love by Utada Hikaru.
6. My duet with Ryo on Nowhere Man. This was actually Reggie's idea for Ryo to provide the harmony and it came out really good if I have to say so myself.

For me the most surprising thing of the night is finding out that Reggie can do Karaoke at all!!

We're pretty much all spent after 2 and half hours of non stop singing. After dropping off Naomi, Kenji dropped me and Reggie off. I was so tired that I put off entering my blog till today after we woke up at 11:00 a.m.!

Today Reggie fixed up some Egg Beaters scrambled eggs, wheat toast and turkey bacon. We figured we'll splurge at dinner. But I had Reggie convinced that Egg Beaters taste tolerable enough to have for breakfast regularly. He's going to call Naomi so we can devise a plan for tonight.

January 17, 2006

It's my 2nd day here in Japan. Reggie and I woke up early. His car pool buddy called wondering where he was. We didn't go to sleep until almost 4 in the morning last night. I don't really feel tired probably due to jet lag. I just read my last entry and I sounded like I was rambling I imagine due to lack of sleep and all. We had to go to a late night convenience store before that to get a towel (for a whopping $20!). I just had to take a shower to get rid of my 'flight gunk' before going to bed.

On the way from the airport last night the subject of the time when we used to live here came up. Reggie asked what apartment we lived in. I told him it's Moriya Mansion at Hinode-cho. He said, "You're joking right?" And I said no because I remembered living here in that apartment on the 2nd floor (can't recall the unit number - but Donna probably remembers) and it's near the place where there's a big ship nearby loading hundreds of cars. To my surprise he said that's where he lives now!! The only difference is that he lives on the 4th floor. Since that conversation last night, it feels so weird everytime I think about it.

We'll probably go to the base exchange today and get a couple of essentials (like toothbrush which may have been inadvertently forgotten to be packed - I can't find it anywhere in my luggage) and then Reggie and I will distribute Naomi's family's goodies and give Naomi her big birthday card which we all signed in California before I left.

We just got back right now from the Seven Eleven and got myself a toothbrush and a couple of bento boxes for brunch. The wind was blowing hard and it was FREEZING cold!!

Check out some of my first shots here in Yokosuka. I'm not too adept at this blogging thing yet so I'm not able to put up captions on the pictures. Perhaps Eph can tell me how later. Anyway, the first one is a shot of Reggie's entertainment center, the 2nd is a view from Reggie's apartment and the 3rd is me blogging.

Jan 15 thru 17, 2006

Sunday morning was the big day. Tried to wake up early to make it on time for my 11:30 am flight to Japan to see Reggie. Donna's getting upset with Dan dragging his feet burning CD's for Reg. Anyway, we finally leave at around 8:30 about half an hour later than I'd want but we still make it in good time at the 105 with everyone zipping at 80 mph. The baggage x-ray line was pretty long but there was this lady who told some of us to go to another 'empty' baggage x-ray station. It turned out the line I was on was quicker than the one we were told to go to. After my baggages got x-rayed I proceeded to the check in counter. Of course, there was a huge line and by now I'm a little over an hour to flight time so the stress level is rising up. Lo and behold once I got to the counter, I saw this sign saying the flight from Narita got delayed for 2 hours! The 11:30 flight is now scheduled for 1:30. All this worrying for being late was all in vain! The lady at the counter said next time, baggages should weigh no more than 70 lbs but she'll let it slide this time because the flight was delayed and she gave me a $10.00 food coupon to sweeten the deal. It turned out everyone in flight 61 is getting a coupon. We went up to the food court to have lunch since I figured they probably won't be serving lunch till way after lunch time. The Japanese food Donna got wasn't too bad. After lunch I went to the bathroom and when I came out Donna said she seems to have heard it on the PA system saying our flight was boarding. We quickly wrapped everything up and I went to x-ray station for the gates. They were rushing everyone through the lines. I had to take my laptop out of my carry on luggage and a guy was yelling at me why I went out of line because people will be passing me. All this time on another x-ray a lady security was yelling at this elderly oriental guy, "You'll have to step back, Sir!!" who's trying to explain his situation in some foreign language. I finally went through the x-ray with the bell buzzing, went back took out a bunch of quarters from my pocket, did it again, another buzz, went back and took off my belt and finally I cleared. Whew!!!

Rushed to gate 104, there was no one there so I figured Donna must have misheard the announcement. I sat down and tried to go on line and heard the gate changed to 105, I moved and after several games of Spider Solitaire, fell asleep and then it's time to board. My 2 ton carry on luggage was a bear to lift up and cram into the overhead compartment!

The flight was pretty uneventful except for a little turbulence. The first meal was a choice between beef or shrimp and of course I chose the latter which consists of a bento box 2/3 full of rice and 1/3 of vegetables, gravy and 4 shrimps. The 2nd meal was pasta with about 6 or so of small scallops. Suffice it to say I got hungry and the 2 empanadas Donna had me take were a lifesaver. I watched Madagascar, most of Four Brothers, the ending of Gladiator and a portion of Skeleton Key which sucked cause I didn't get to see the end.

I got through immigration and customs without any glitches and Reggie and Naomi were already waiting when I got out. We put the Balikbayan box in storage and left for Yokosuka. When we got here, we dropped off the luggage at Reggie's place and picked up the kerosene containers for his heater, filled them up then had dinner, took a shower and now I'm ready to go to sleep since it's 3:48 am here. I'll give Naomi her birthday card tomorrow sometime along with her family's goodies.