September Travels and Furlough Adventures

It’s been an unusual month and a half. I was away for most of September, and October has been full of government shutdown. Not business as usual.

Hamamatsu

My first trip in September was an overnight work trip to Hamamatsu, during which I learned all about eels and gerbera daisies. For some reason, people haven’t figured out how to breed eels in captivity to any great extent, so baby eels have to be caught out in the ocean and then raised. For various reasons, the eel population has been declining, so it’s a big issue of concern. Is it necessary to say that I was much more interested in the pretty gerbera daisies than the squirmy eels?

That was followed by a brief but fun trip back to the States, including my first trip to historical Williamsburg and Jamestown. We went on the archeological tour at Jamestown. It’s fascinating all of the things they have just started discovering in the last 20 years and are still discovering now! Also fun was taking advantage of the opportunity to get some shopping done in a place where it is accepted that not everybody has a long torso. 

The month ended with a quick trip up to Hokkaido, where I saw some dairy operations and went to a Holstein show. (I know you are all jealous!) And not to be forgotten during all of these travels – I saw both the Hello Kitty plane AND the Pokemon plane!

I was back in the office for a day and a half when I got furloughed due to the government shutdown. I wouldn’t normally say anything, but since I’m not currently getting paid by the federal government, I’ll just note that: a) I’m pretty much irritated with everybody involved in this mess, b) this shutdown is costing us millions of dollars in fees/penalties for delayed payments, and c) I thought this Washington Post editorial was pretty good.

So while I’ve been furloughed, I’ve made it a point to do something every day that gets me out of the apartment. My furlough adventures have included some lunches and shopping excursions with friends (to Akasaka, Azabu-juban, and a neighborhood whose name I can’t remember), a trip to the commissary at Yokota (so much more sane when it's not Saturday!), daytime karaoke (it’s really cheap during a weekday!), two days as an excepted employee (when we learned that we could rotate the excepted employee status of the Head of Post among the Americans) and a daytrip to Yokohama.

Yokohama, which is only about an hour out of Tokyo, has been on my list of places to see for a long time. Yokohama is the second largest city in Japan and was one of the first ports to be opened when Japan reopened to foreign trade in 1859. I need to go back some time to see the garden and the waterfront. On this trip, I went to Motomachi, which is a cute little shopping area. 

But the primary purpose of the trip was to see Chinatown and eat some yummy Chinese food. Yokohama’s Chinatown is the largest in Japan and one of the largest in the world. There are nine gates in and around Chinatown, plus the temple Kanteibyo. 

In addition, what really stood out to me were the huge number of pandas and restaurants. There were pandas and restaurants everywhere!

Tomorrow's furlough adventure will be going to the 100-yen store in Harajuku. Wednesday is my day in the rotation to be in the office. And then we'll see. At least I've got a lot of options to choose from!