The final journey here and welcome were amazing. It took 4 flights spread over the better part of 3 days to make it happen. In many ways it felt like we would never get here, but we did. The only glitch came up on leg 2 of the flights (Houston to Honolulu) where the three of us were initially spread all over the plane. When I asked them to make sure the person next to the Princess (now 5) was fairly warned and had the opportunity to make sure that her snacks and drinks were readily available.
When we finally arrived on Friday we were exhausted. The amazing thing about our arrival was the warm welcome. The family readiness group from my ship brought over what would normally be a goody bag, but I think they brought over a goody shopping cart or cornucopia. There were 3 or 4 large grocery bags of stuff to welcome us and keep us going.
For dinner on our first evening we walked up to Chili's on base – I know it is not the great cultural experience to get us started, but we were hungry and we were tired – we didn't care. The Princess was so tired that no sooner did her dinner arrive than she promptly fell soundly asleep on Madre's chest. We quickly made our way through dinner and walked back to the lodge to put her to bed. And, as would be expected, we awoke relatively early on Saturday in time to watch the activities of the fish market across the river from us – it starts at 3am.
Our cultural experience began in earnest as we headed downtown to the Yonka-Cho Shopping Arcade, a wonderful collection of stores and restaurants in an open air, covered mall about a 15 minute walk from the base. We first found a street vendor selling some form of dumpling that was simply delightful.
We each tried one, then simply had to have about 6 more. We quickly sat down on a bench and made very quick work of them. They were delightful. I will have to figure out later what the appropriate Japanese name of these is.
Shortly after the dumplings we came across a noodle restaurant that will certainly be revisited by us over and over.
We have absolutely no idea what the name of the place is. We have no idea of the names of the foods we tried. We are only moderately certain of the content. We had two different types of noodle dishes.
The first was much more like a very hearty beef stew with a distinct hint of curry – it was YUMMY!! I could easily see devouring gallons of this in the cold of winter as you enjoy a good football game.
The second had noodles and what appeared to be rice, kind of like Rice Krispies, along with a wonderful broth and shaved beef; also, very good. The Princess enjoyed experimenting with being allowed to slurp and eat with chop sticks.
Two other treats we had (sorry no pix) were rice, a pork dumpling, and a shrimp fritter. The rice was sticky-gooey rice with a purple fleck of some kind in it that tasted like blackberries or maybe a floral type of flavor. It was surprisingly good. The pork dumpling came cold, and tasted OK cold, but thank goodness that Madre pointed out the microwave that was sitting right next to me. I shoved it in for about 45 seconds and boy was it good. The Princess even enjoyed tearing into it. The shrimp fritter was the real prize. I was prepared with shreds of onions, carrots, and shrimp with some form of batter binding. The onions tasted much like onion rings, the carrots added a sweetness, and the shrimp simply completed the picture.
The final treat of the entire experience was noticing that we were the only people in the place who were not Japanese. It appeared like we learned how to order our meal, pay for it, find our seat, enjoy our meal, and clean up after ourselves all without having a clue about what we were doing. What a treat.
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