Dancing for Daddy

I posted this video especially for Clark. He can't receive video on the ship but he can view them on the blog. ...Clark...Reese and I are enjoying a fun afternoon of dancing and puzzles. She loves spinning around which is fun especially when she falls down afterwards. I hope you enjoy...lots of love, C&R

Saijo-ji Temple

As you may have ascertained from my earlier posts, Japan abounds with shrines and temples. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 official shrines altogether, I'm told; there are probably thousands more 'unofficial' shrines not counted in that number. And after having looked around the southern part of the country quite a bit, I can personally testify to the fact that there seems to be some type of shrine dedicated to almost every object, person, place, thing, body part, etc., that you could ever think of. I'm almost certain that there are shrines dedicated to each individual season of the television show "Friends". I think they also tried to build a series of shrines to follow the "E.R" series, but probably ran out of steam after the umpteenth season. (And realistically, what self respecting Buddhist would visit a shrine that was dedicated after Clooney left the show anyway?).

The temples, on the other hand are little fewer and farther in between. They tend to revolve around significant deities and places in the Buddhist culture. With help of a baby-sitter, Charlotte & I were able to shirk our parenting duties and make a quick Saturday get-away to the neighboring Odawara Valley to visit Dai Yu Zan Saijo-ji Temple. (It wasn't so much that Reese wasn't welcome at the temple, but more the fact that the Asahi Brewery tour that immediately followed the temple would have been a real drag for her). The Saijo-ji temple was completed in 1394 and is the third highest temple of the sotozen sect of Buddhism. It was dedicated to Guatama Buddha ...And that about ends the history lesson. We were mainly just happy to get out and experience some of the local country side. It's rainy season here in Japan, and the fact that it was mildly sunny on Saturday made it all that much better.

There are a number of rituals that a typical Buddhist goes through while praying at a shrine or temple. The first of these involves 'bathing' oneself in the smoke of the incense burning outside the temple. The idea here (if not already obvious) is that you're making yourself smell a little better for the deity. Thanks to the advent of modern personal hygiene, not everyone necessarily does this, so it's become kind of 'optional'. The second step is to wash the face and hands, again, to make oneself more presentable before God. All Buddhist shrines and temples feature a fountain or cistern with fresh, running water and a small copper cup mounted on a wooden dowel for exactly this purpose. It's also permissible to take a bit of water into the mouth and cleanse the tongue before speaking to God, but you're not supposed to drink the water. Saijo-ji temple is the one exception to this rule, in that there are several washing cisterns throughout the complex; one of which supposedly contains a special 'healing water'. Patrons are allowed to drink from this one station and enjoy the healing properties both inside and out.

Our tour guide was happy to point out this particular feature of the Saijo-ji temple to our tour group. ..But of course she identified the wrong fountain of 'healing water' at the beginning of the tour, so the whole ritual of putting some healing water from the first cistern onto my burgeoning bald spot probably went unheeded by the Great One. (Anyway, I got my healing drink on when we finally arrived at the appropriate water station).

The next step in the process is to remove your shoes before entering the temple. (Again, the reason doesn't require explanation. Other than the robes, the practicality of the whole thing is pretty amazing). The next part gets weird... This is where you attempt to get God's attention - either through clapping or ringing a gong - and then make your donation before praying. (This kind of reminds me of the whole 'tip jar' bit from the Seinfeld show, where it was important to be seen putting the money in). In some cases where no bell or gong is conveniently located, the large, rectangular money receptacle is actually designed to make a lot of noise as the money falls in, thereby waking up the deity. After all of these steps are complete, ...you then have the floor.

Now obviously, I've made a very casual overview of typical Buddhist pomp & ceremony. There's a lot more to the tenants and sanctity of the religion than I'm really telling here; all for the purposes of keeping the blog brief and entertaining. As far as the concept of picking out piecemeal bits of spirituality from the fray, there's a lot of things about Buddhism that appeal to me, (e.g. all of the politeness, hand washing & shoe shedding really jives with my anal-retentive/OCD nature). The things that really turn me off about Buddhism are the root forms of ambition that it's adherents normally pray for: luck, money, power, & success.

Not being one to debase another persons religious ideology or inherent right to believe in their own way, I still can't see myself banging on a gong and asking God for money. I simply can't imagine the universe working on that principle. In fact, I find that most of my prayers are more or less focused on asking God to deliver me from bad things, vice granting me materialistic advantages. For example, when I'm flying, a prayer would generally involve something like this: "Dear Lord, don't let that noise be my tail rotor falling off!" Or simply, "God, don't let me crash!" (In the case of prayers made while flying, they are generally preceded directly by the words "HOLY SH#T!" I guess that my Catholic upbringing has given me this alternate method to get God's attention. ...It's what I have instead of gongs and hand-clapping, but it genuinely seems to do the trick). Or maybe another example of the Christian "take away the bad stuff" ethic: "Oh Lord, deliver my child from the temptation of fast food. For we all know that the road to hell is paved with Chicken McNuggets. (...They're random chicken parts fused-together, for God's sake!)"

On the theme of fast food, the visit to Saijo-ji afforded us yet another opportunity to persue a favorite Japanese past-time of Charlotte and mine: finding the wierdest ice cream flavor ever created. Residing in a small roadside souvenir stand adjacent to the parking area we found this week's winning freaky flavor: Wasabi. (...And it was actually good!)

...The loser, by the way, was the beer flavored ice cream at the Asahi Beer Brewery. (Nice try guys! Don't bother quittin' your day jobs to become the next 'Ben & Jerry').

TWO!

Reese celebrated her second birthday yesterday... Blew out the candles, ate a muffin, then went tear-assing through the neighborhood on her new scooter! ...Now that's the way you do it!

MALABAR '09

An older post from Late April / early May. It's just been sitting in que, never having had the finishing touches put onto it. (Sorry for the delay!)

One of the many interesting (and often forgotten) aspects of being on a naval helicopter crew is that we are very probably the only people in the Navy who get to visit every type and class of ship in the inventory with regular occasion.


Take a typical F-18 pilot for example; he gets to spend plenty of time on the carrier, but never gets any closer to any of the other ships except for when he's zooming over them at mach 3 with his hair on fire. An even better example would be the land based E6-B and P-3 aircrews, many of whom have served full careers in the Navy without ever having once stepped foot onto a ship...



On a daily basis helicopters visit destroyers, frigates, cruisers, carriers, amphibs, et cetera-ad nauseum and never really think twice about it. Now the interesting part of this equation is that we also make landings on foreign ships with regualr occasion, making us the only part of the US Military who regularly land on the sovereign territory of other nations. On top of having landed on almost every type and class of ship in the US Navy, I've made landings on ships of the Japanese, German (which I guess is already a given quality), French, Belgian, and United Arab Emerites navies. Our recent participation in MALABAR '09 provided the opportunity to add India to that list as well. (What can I say? I'm trying to collect them all).

...Not that I really "geek-out" on ships or anything -- I could personally care less, (which is why I point out that it's often forgotten). The "varsity factor" here is that most of these countries have very different landing procedures and practices which require the pilots to not only posess a good working knowledge of the basic operational differences, but moreover require them to frenquently press the "I believe" button, and excercise some critical judgement while operating the US taxpayer's multi-million dollar helicopter in an environment that might not exactly meet the typical OSHA safety standards you're accustomed to. ...Which is very polite way of saying "relaxing your sense of self-preservation and 'going with the flow' while simultaneously not letting the crazy bastards cause you to crash the helicopter or get someone killed".

...So without further adieu, a few airborne pics from Exercise MALABAR'09, including contingents from the US, Japanese and Indian navies. I think that the submarine pictured below was the only vessel in the exercise that we didn't actually land on!

...Down Time

After the last few weeks of squadron and base events that usurped all of our down time together at home, we got an 11th hour pardon: the ship decided that they didn't need their helo until next week. Finally! A weekend to ourselves!

The Last 2 Weeks: Cherry Blossoms, Airshows, Sports, Tuxedos and Kids

Just photos from the last two weeks of "down time" back at home guard. They've filled-up my two weeks at home so completely that I don't have any time left over to type anything. ...So I'll let the photos do the talking instead

Snow Falling On Cherry Blossoms

With our requirements for this underway period completed, Loren and I launched 702 from the ship early on Tuesday morning for the 30 minute hop back to Atsugi. Even though this was only a short 5 week deployment, there's a been lot of transitional acvtivity on the homefront that I've missed. I left for deployment from the front door of our hotel-room abode at the Navy Lodge and returned to the on-base house that we'd been assigned in mid-March. Charlotte was stuck (for the umpteenth time) with the task of 'catching' all of our wordly possessions in my absence as they arrived on our doorstep a few days later. More importantly, little Reese has already grown what must be at least another foot taller than she was back in February ...and is babbling like a little creek! Other older and more experienced parents are always warning me that kids "grow up fast". I can verify that there is probably no better way to gain a fuller appreciation for this sentiment than by the painful process of getting to sit in the 'parenting penalty box' for odd months at a time out at sea and then observing how she's changed in the interim. As much I dislike this aspect of the job, it does make the time that I have at home with Charlotte and Reese a lot more precious.


It'll only be a short pause before we're back underway in a few weeks, but for what it's worth, I've never actually been in Japan during the Cherry Blossom season. (I've always been out on deployment). Cherry blossom season is a finite period in late March/early April when the cherry trees suddenly bloom, then fall away just as fast as they appeared. The Japanese tradition is to sit underneath a cherry tree with your closest friends, drink a lot of saki and just take in the view. (No, I'm not making up the saki part. ...This is the only other culturally endorsed form of public drunkeness that I've ever heard of besides Oktoberfest).


Over the next 2 weeks we've got a new pilot arriving, the Cherry Blossom Fest here on base, (featuring the Base Air Show this Saturday), BADMAN Week (an annual, week-long intra-squadron sports competetion -- what we like to refer to in the military as "Mandatory Fun": you WILL show up and you WILL be happy about participating, OR your fitness report will reflect your piss-poor attitude about it). In addition to those, we have a detachment NATOPS evaluation and the looming spector of the fact that we've got a lot of work to do on our aircraft in the remaining time in-between. ...It's going to be an action-packed "operational hiatous" to say the least of it. I'm convinced that this is all a scam put on by the Navy -- we're always inundated with work when we're at homeguard, so everyone is continually eager to get back out to sea where they can actually get some rest!

But none of that matters right now. I'm just enjoying the great feeling of finally being back home. I woke up this morning in my own bed listening to the sound of a light snow falling on the cherry tree behind our house that's just starting to blossom. ...And the pitter-patter of tiny feet in Korean-made slippers...