04

On the flight to Japan it was dark and quiet in the cabin. Most everyone around me looked unhappy in some way—families, sailors, and marines, most of them tired, exhausted, lost, and heading into the unknown. I was exactly the opposite. I was buzzing in anticipation. When we were close, and beginning the descent, I remember looking out the window down at all the lights. That’s when it hit me hard, the reality of my situation.

The feeling really was astonishing; unlike anything I’ve felt before. The plane was still quite high, and even though it was probably 2 or 3 a.m. in Japan, the lights I could see were just endless, in all directions, like I was glancing down at a futuristic world, like I was about to land on Coruscant, or, at least, the closest thing we have to such a place. Staring at those lights, transfixed, I could feel there was so much going on down there, so many new and different things, so much to learn and explore, so much fun to be had, and I could not wait to jump into it, to jump into absolutely everything. I really was trembling in anticipation. If someone had asked me a question then, at that moment, I may not have been able to answer them. It was a pleasant struggle, sitting there, trying to contain myself, while sitting in a dark, quiet cabin.

We landed. It was early morning and I was somehow disoriented, tired, and excited all at the same time. My new shipmates, and soon-to-be good friends, picked me up at the airport in Narita, and we drove back toward the base in Yokosuka. I stared out the window, fascinated by everything I saw, wanting to start asking a million questions. I had to remind myself I had two years here. Two years to learn. Two years to marinate. I could pace myself. What a great feeling that was.

Eventually, we stopped at a Denny’s. I realized quite suddenly how hungry I was, and I proclaimed to everyone how I was going to annihilate a Grand Slam. This is laughable, because while Japan has plenty of Denny’s restaurants, that doesn’t mean they have any clue what a Grand Slam is. Note, this was the first time, out of about 10 million (and counting), that I’d be wrong about Japan. But this is good, see? I love the learning process. To this day, as I’m typing, I am still in the learning process. It’s a lifelong undertaking.

I arrived to the base in Yokosuka and would stay there for a few weeks as I was beginning work and looking for a place to live off-base. It’s a surreal experience, returning so many years later to the very same place that was your stomping ground as a young kid—how it’s still vaguely the same yet so, so much different.

I started work. As the new guy in Japan, that begins with an orientation, held in a big auditorium, where they tell you and all the other incoming sailors about Japan, provide some basic survival skills, and even distribute cards that each sailor can carry in their pocket, a card that reads in perfect Japanese: Help, I am lost. Please help me return to Yokosuka Navy base. These were genuinely hilarious, but nevertheless, I have no doubt that most everyone had been desperate enough to use their card at some point. If you didn’t get wildly lost in Japan at least once during those first couple months, then you weren’t doing it right.

After the orientation, what generally happens is that you show up to your command, and, if you’re a single guy, immediately a lot of the officers and chiefs start making jokes and wisecracks about how you’ll soon be dating and then getting married with a Japanese girl in no time at all, such that it actually starts making you feel pressure that that should be happening, and then when you do go out into town, you start feeling inadequate when there’s not immediately Japanese girls crawling all over you. I watched this effect turn a few people into headcases, so…ease off the new guy, huh?

Spoiler alert—the fact that I did eventually get married to a Japanese girl is beside the point.

So, after just a few days in Japan, all you’ve done is grapple with the jet lag, and it all still feels vaguely like a dream. However, you’ve most certainly grown quite affectionate for the hot cans of Georgia coffee and Royal Milk Tea that come straight out of the vending machines that you find absolutely everywhere, either on or off-base. Also, you’re slowly getting accustomed to having your pockets full of change, but in Japan the change is actually meaningful. When you hear your pockets are full of jingling coins, you once used to fish out the quarters and then dump the rest somewhere; but in Japan, you happily go through and pluck out all the 100¥ and 500¥ pieces that are much more substantial, more along the lines of $1 or $5 bucks depending on the exchange rate, knowing it will be excellent train fodder.

Weekends start rolling around, and by that time you’ve become fully adjusted to the time difference, you’re feeling good, and so you start making legitimate forays out beyond the front gate of the base.

Sadly, there were some people that didn’t even make it this far—some sailors were sent to Japan and spent their entire tour on base, playing games online in their spare time in the dark corners of libraries and rec centers where there was free Wi-Fi. This killed me. The opportunity to live and work in a place like Japan is the greatest one there is, in my personal opinion. But, fortunately, these folks were in the extreme minority, and most people did go out and seek the adventure that was so tantalizingly close and attainable.

Now, some people don’t make it very far past the gates—they ended up in that part of town directly adjacent to the base, which, just like the immediate area around most military bases, in any country, is a somewhat shady place full of bars, cheap souvenirs, fake hip-hop shops, questionable massage parlors, you know, all establishments that would beckon young sailors. This place was much maligned, but at the same time strangely revered. For example, if I just mention the Honch, the nickname affectionately given to this part of town by Navy personnel, just about everyone reading this who spent any time in Yokosuka at all is cracking a smile.

Let’s look at the entire spectrum here. A lot of sailors frequented the Honch probably way too much, since it was the clear and dominant CPA (Closest Point of Alcohol), within easy stumbling distance to the front gates of the base. Other folks may have avoided the Honch like the plague, thinking themselves too high and mighty to spend any time there at all. The correct answer is, as always, to have all things in moderation, and appreciate the Honch for what it was. For example, where else would you find such an intense blend of American and Japanese culture such that the signs marking the streets of the Honch held a drawing of a traditional Japanese woman, decked out in a red, white, and blue kimono? Where hip-hop culture had taken such a hold on everyone, not just so many sailors during this time, but also all the Japanese youth, guys and girls alike, such that basically everyone walking down the street was homogenous, regardless of their ethnicity? If you spent any significant time in Yokosuka, you know you got caught up in a few happy hours that occurred out in the Honch, happy hours that went much longer than anticipated, much longer than you had planned, and you know it had been fun.

What else was there in the Honch? How about the famous, dreaded chu-hai stand? It wasn’t really a bar, per se; it was very much a shop, with bright fluorescent lights overhead, where you ordered a drink or two, and then just hung around in the shop, or out on the street, and drank them. I’m not sure what exactly was in those drinks, because the alcohol seemed to be unnaturally potent, and the next thing you knew, whatever other folks in the shop at that time, whether they’re other sailors, or Japanese businessman loosening their ties after work, were suddenly your best friends, and you were laughing and talking and throwing high-fives and handshakes to anyone and everyone. If you had another drink after that, the sights and sounds of your night suddenly took on some kind of wild montage of trippy bright lights and shrill laughter, and when you woke up the next morning, it is not unlike the movie The Hangover, as you try to piece together everything that happened, with an utterly confused look on your face.

Many folks probably recall one notable Honch landmark—the large building directly across the street from base with the likeness of the Statue of Liberty on top. This was a love hotel, and they are often marked as such by the Statue of Liberty (which tickles me to no end). For the uninitiated, love hotels are pretty much exactly what they sound like. They rent rooms by the hour, and they range from classy getaways to sleazy hideaways (the ones in the Honch veered towards the latter). These hotels are necessary in Japan because space is at much more of a premium, and it is not uncommon for adult children to still be living in their parent’s domiciles, which in general are small, the walls paper-thin, so…you do the math.

What else is there to say about the Honch? It has spawned plenty of incidents over the years, some of them bad—sadly, some of them tragic and even horrific, and as an American would make me ashamed to even show my face around town. But not everyone heard about the good stories though, that of the camaraderie between American and Japanese in that part of town. Sure, this camaraderie was fueled mostly by alcohol, but it was good camaraderie nonetheless. For example, one night there was a group of sailors at a bar in the Honch, drinking and boisterous, exchanging some words with some of Japanese drinking alongside. One of them happened to mention that it was his birthday. Instantly, those sailors began doing what any beer-drinking Americans would do in that situation—they slapped him on the back, bought him a shot or two, and they even sang happy birthday for him in a loud, exuberant chorus. By the end of it, that dude was literally in tears, shocked at the kindness and openness of a group of guys that were essentially strangers. That’s good stuff, right?

I became intimately familiar with the Honch during shore patrol. This was a watch that all Navy personnel had to do every couple months or so. You wore your uniform and walked the streets of the Honch, from dusk until whatever time it was the streets were clear—this was usually sometime between 2-5 a.m. You woke up drunken people, sent them home, you watched for trouble, you broke it up if you could, or you called it in on a radio to the military police. One can only imagine the ridiculous things seen during the course of a watch like this. From a dead-sober, observational point of view, it was fascinating to see the night build-up to the peak party hours, reach a crescendo of sorts, and then slowly die down as sailors stumbled back to the base. Then the streets would be cold and empty, with just a few late night wanderers here and there. From boom town to ghost town, from sheer madness to a peaceful, almost eerie calm. It was an interesting progression, and I won’t soon forget those long nights, patrolling the seedy streets of the Honch until the early morning hours.