A Long Journey to an Unlikely Dream
After a three-hour drive, and five flights over the course of four days, my family and I have finally arrived in Okinawa, Japan! It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this journey to Japan was the longest and most stressful trip I’ve ever taken. We’ve finally made it, but it’s hard to really determine when this journey started for us. We’ve been dreaming about coming to Japan for years, but we thought it was an unlikely possibility. Fortunately for us, the fates aligned and we found out we were coming to Okinawa for certain in February. We’ve been biding our time in excited agony these last five months while we waited for our travel days to finally come.
Packing Up and Moving-out
Through July, we had three separate moving companies come and pick up our household goods. The first was for storage, the second was for a smaller number of things that would be shipped in a plane to arrive within a month of us getting to the island, and the last was for the rest of household items that would arrive with a maximum delivery time of late-October.
After all of our stuff was packed and shipped, we had to say goodbye to our old house, and check-in to a temporary living facility for almost two weeks. In those two weeks, we finalized our flights and my wife finished up some out-processing with her work on base. We sold our car and picked up a rental. After so much waiting and so much prep work, the day had finally come for us to leave Laughlin AFB in Texas and head to our new home in Okinawa, Japan.
Goodbye U.S. and Hello Japan
We had to drive three hours from the border of Texas to San Antonio, in Central Texas, for our first flight. Our flight was scheduled for 6 a.m., so we decided to leave the night before to ensure we wouldn’t be rushed in the middle of the night. We returned our rental and settled in for the night. The next day was an early one, but the flight went fine and consisted of a one-hour flight to Dallas, Texas directly followed by a 4-hour flight to Seattle, Washington.
After landing in Seattle at 11 a.m., we essentially had two days to explore before our journey to Japan resumed. We used the time to just relax and prepare ourselves for the lingering “dark cloud” that was a VERY long flight to Japan. We were able to walk around the local community right next to the SEATAC airport, and found a beautiful park and lake where we were able to let our son run around and burn off some energy. I think without a two-year-old tagging along with us, the journey to Japan would have been more exciting rather than stressful. But to make things less pleasant, the obvious threat of catching Covid-19 while traveling from different airports didn’t make things any more fun.
A Very Long “Day”
Once our purposefully uneventful stay in Seattle came to a close, we awoke at 2 a.m. the morning of our flight. We had to make sure to check-in with the military through the AMC (Air Mobility Command) terminal by 5:30 a.m. or risk not being seated together, or in the worst-case forfeiting our reserved seats altogether. Since this was our first time doing something like this, we certainly didn’t want to risk messing up and got to the airport by 3:30 a.m.
Check-in and security went smoothly and we had about 3 hours to waste until our departure time. But then our flight got delayed until 11a.m. and we had to find some way to waste another few hours. This resulted in taking turns walking laps around the terminal with our 2-year-old for the next 4 to 5 hours. Luckily, we finally boarded the plane and got situated. We had purposely kept our son up, hoping he’d fall asleep as soon as we snuggled him into his car seat and the plane started moving.
Everything was going to plan. Our very tired toddler started to nod off right as the plane started to taxi. My wife and I even high-fived and very smugly said something along the lines of, “I wonder if he’ll sleep the entire 9 hours??” Everything was perfect.
That was until we started to take off and his head started to tilt uncomfortably forward. I thought to myself, “Not a problem! I’ll just hold his head up until we level out.” After about 10 minutes we were almost at cruising altitude and he was still asleep.
Cue the guy in the seat in front of us. He flings his seat back, trying to recline, which then caused the backwards facing car seat (that was already touching the back of his seat) to slide upwards and be propped up even more. The sudden jolt combined with how inclined his seat now was, caused our toddler to wake and start crying…. Not perfect.
Stopping at Yokota and Iwakuni
Long story short, the 9+ flight to Yokota Air Base in Tokyo was not all pleasant, but we made it through. Once we landed at Yokota, we had a 2-hour break to sit in a very small passenger terminal and “rest”. We charged up our phones and got some drinks while we waited. After dropping some people off and refueling, the plane was ready to head to our next destination, Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station.
Heading south for about an hour or so, we reached Iwakuni quickly only to be met by a long deboarding process for the people getting off and then another refueling for whatever reason. Regardless, we sat on the plane for over hour until we finally got in the air again. Finally, the last stop was our stop, Kadena Air Base in Okinawa!
From the time we woke up in Seattle to the time we landed at Kadena, was roughly 25 hours. We took off on 5 Aug at 11 a.m., but landed at 6 Aug 7:30 p.m. due how we crossed the international date line in the central Pacific. During that entire time, I hadn’t slept and was extremely tired. Internally excited, but externally very tiredly we got off the plane for the final part of our trip. We got our passports and my wife’s orders to check in, got our bags and were picked up by our sponsor to be put in quarantine for two weeks.
Quarantine First; Explore Later
So, now it’s been 4 days since we got into our quarantine and I’ve had time to recover from our journey to Japan. We haven’t been able to see any of Okinawa as we aren’t allowed to go anywhere or talk/be near anyone else until our quarantine is over. Although, we have been allowed to walk around the less populated areas on base. We just make sure to wear masks and cross the road before we pass someone on the sidewalk.
We are taking the quarantine and coronavirus in general very seriously. That now just means we get to watch the world go by from our window as we stare out at how beautiful Okinawa looks. Coming from the border of Texas and Mexico to here is a world of difference in so many ways.
After we finish our quarantine, we’ll get our own house and take a driver’s test, so we can buy a car. Then it’s time to explore Okinawa and the rest of Japan. For now, we’ll try to stick to less busy areas until the coronavirus goes away, but with so much to discover, I’m sure we won’t have trouble finding lots to do and lots more to share with you guys!
