Hello readers! I am having trouble posting in the comments section of my own blog. When I try to comment it tells me I do not exist.
I am reading your comments! Keep them coming! And I would love to have coffee sometime with the other new Yoko arrival!
I'm still in the US right now, but will head off to Japan next week. Jet lag is absolutely gnarly and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I either sleep until noon or wake up on time and feel like I could sleep all day.
It's been good to see my family, but I can't wait to get back to my house and life.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
AMC/MAC Flight Follow up - from Yokota
Since I know some military people read my blog, I thought I'd jot down some helpful AMC/MAC flight trips for flying out of Yokota....this is for Yokota only since it's all I have experience with:
- Prepare to be there for a long time. We spent anywhere from six to twelve hours at the air terminal each day. They have a terrible wifi, two Internet computers, a small lounge and a small playroom. They have an eatery that is open until 3pm and closed on Sundays and Mondays
- Come up with a back up plan. Decide how long you are willing to wait for a military flight. Some people have waited for 20 days. Maybe your back up plan is just to go back home.
- Don't listen to the rumors. You will hear A LOT of rumors about where a flight is going and how many seats are available. Don't listen to any of them. Get your official information from the check-in counter. Put in earphones to block out rumors.
- Only trust the information that comes from the front computers. The airmen working there can't give you anymore information than they can see in the computer, but they certainly try to act like they know more. Take anything they say with a grain of salt. I found that most try to draw from past experience to predict the flights. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
- Everyone is trying to get back to the US. Most of the people flying Space Available from Yokota are trying to get back to the US. Competition is strong even in the off season. If you're not Category II, expect to wait a week or more. If you're flying with a large group, expect to wait a week or more. The family of six ahead of us in Category two waited 9 days before giving up.
- Weather plays a big factor. These planes aren't the newest and the best. Some of them have been flying since the 1970's. Any bad weather can ground them and cut flights from the schedule.
- Plan for the Kanto Air Force Lodge to be full. Almost everyone I talked to said they did not have a problem getting reservations at the Kanto Lodge when they just showed up at their doorstep. The Lodge has 3,000 rooms. However, we DID have trouble getting a reservation. They were full the entire time we were there due to air crew coming up from other parts of Japan to avoid a typhoon. Even if they had empty rooms they were not allowed to give them out. Staying out in town costs twice as much as the lodge.
- Don't expect to get on the Seattle flight. Even in the off season every Space A person wants on the Seattle flight. I mean, why not, it goes directly to the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. However, this plane and route was designed specifically to take people on orders back to the US. The military fills this flight FULL of people with orders, even in the off season, simply because it's cheaper than flying these people with a commercial aircraft. The most seats that were available on this flight while we were there was 4.
- Prepare to be there for a long time. We spent anywhere from six to twelve hours at the air terminal each day. They have a terrible wifi, two Internet computers, a small lounge and a small playroom. They have an eatery that is open until 3pm and closed on Sundays and Mondays
- Come up with a back up plan. Decide how long you are willing to wait for a military flight. Some people have waited for 20 days. Maybe your back up plan is just to go back home.
- Don't listen to the rumors. You will hear A LOT of rumors about where a flight is going and how many seats are available. Don't listen to any of them. Get your official information from the check-in counter. Put in earphones to block out rumors.
- Only trust the information that comes from the front computers. The airmen working there can't give you anymore information than they can see in the computer, but they certainly try to act like they know more. Take anything they say with a grain of salt. I found that most try to draw from past experience to predict the flights. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
- Everyone is trying to get back to the US. Most of the people flying Space Available from Yokota are trying to get back to the US. Competition is strong even in the off season. If you're not Category II, expect to wait a week or more. If you're flying with a large group, expect to wait a week or more. The family of six ahead of us in Category two waited 9 days before giving up.
- Weather plays a big factor. These planes aren't the newest and the best. Some of them have been flying since the 1970's. Any bad weather can ground them and cut flights from the schedule.
- Plan for the Kanto Air Force Lodge to be full. Almost everyone I talked to said they did not have a problem getting reservations at the Kanto Lodge when they just showed up at their doorstep. The Lodge has 3,000 rooms. However, we DID have trouble getting a reservation. They were full the entire time we were there due to air crew coming up from other parts of Japan to avoid a typhoon. Even if they had empty rooms they were not allowed to give them out. Staying out in town costs twice as much as the lodge.
- Don't expect to get on the Seattle flight. Even in the off season every Space A person wants on the Seattle flight. I mean, why not, it goes directly to the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. However, this plane and route was designed specifically to take people on orders back to the US. The military fills this flight FULL of people with orders, even in the off season, simply because it's cheaper than flying these people with a commercial aircraft. The most seats that were available on this flight while we were there was 4.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Our AMC/MAC Flight Experience
So the AMC (or MAC) flight is a free military flight from where you are to almost any Air Force base in the world if they fly in that direction. When the Air Force has extra seats on a plane, they take military members, their families and retirees and give them them extra seats. It's a cost effective way to travel if you have the patience for it.
Day 1 - Arrive in Yokota after a 2 1/2 hour bus ride. Find out there is one flight leaving for Seattle-Tacoma Airport....it's called the Patriot Express and it goes there from Yokota every week. Sign up to be on the flight if there's seats. At about 15 minutes before we can check in for the flight they post a roster. The roster shows us where our names are on the waiting and priority list. Our hearts sink. We're close to the bottom. A family of six is clogging up the top, meaning one singular family may get all the seats. Five minutes before the flight we stand in line to hear who actually made it on the flight. One person did. That's all the seats they had for Space A travellers.
We try to get a room for $50 a night at the Air Force Lodge, but they're all booked and refuse to let us even get on the standby list in case there's a cancellation. We're told to go out in town to a Japanese hotel. The cost is $97/night.
Day 2 - Arrive at the airport terminal early in the morning. We are told there is a flight directly to Travis Air Force Base, near John's hometown. The roster is posted again and we're near the bottom, again. The family of six is still competing at the top for seats. We are asked to line up again and four people make it onto this flight. The rest of us are told to go home. Still no rooms at the Air Force Lodge so we spend $97 again to spend the night in the Japanese hotel.
Day 3 - We arrive at the airport again and are told they have one flight to Seattle. We doubt we'll get on it since we have discovered these Seattle flights are for military members travelling on orders and they do pack the flight. We get our name on the roster. The family of six has given up (after 9 days of trying, they said) and we're closer to the top. After about six hours of waiting we're all asked to line up to see if we made it. Four people are allowed on the flight. The rest of us are told to go home. John and I go to our regular hotel to try to get a room. They're all booked. We're out in the rain with no umbrellas. A Japanese lady sees us from inside her business and comes out and hands us two umbrellas. We call a hotel one city over and they have a room. We spend $160 a night for this room.
Day 4 - This day looks promising. They have a flight going to Alaska and continuing to Travis Air Force Base. It is reported to have 54 seats available. We once again sign up to be on the list. When they post the roster, our hearts soar. We're close to the top. With 54 seats we're guaranteed to get on! When they ask us to all line up, they break our hearts. The flight has been cancelled. It has never left Singapore. There will be no other flights to the US that day. They let us wait for nearly four hours knowing the plane had never arrived and never bothered to tell anyone until the last minute. In anger, we rush to our computers and pay nearly $2300 to get back to the US.
The main thing is knowing when to give up. John is on vacation and burning leave days as we wait in purgatory. We wasted nearly $500 on hotels while trying to get a flight. We know next time we have to be Category II, because each flight that left with people always left with Category II people. No Category III people ever left. I don't know if we'll be doing a Space A flight again.
Day 1 - Arrive in Yokota after a 2 1/2 hour bus ride. Find out there is one flight leaving for Seattle-Tacoma Airport....it's called the Patriot Express and it goes there from Yokota every week. Sign up to be on the flight if there's seats. At about 15 minutes before we can check in for the flight they post a roster. The roster shows us where our names are on the waiting and priority list. Our hearts sink. We're close to the bottom. A family of six is clogging up the top, meaning one singular family may get all the seats. Five minutes before the flight we stand in line to hear who actually made it on the flight. One person did. That's all the seats they had for Space A travellers.
We try to get a room for $50 a night at the Air Force Lodge, but they're all booked and refuse to let us even get on the standby list in case there's a cancellation. We're told to go out in town to a Japanese hotel. The cost is $97/night.
Day 2 - Arrive at the airport terminal early in the morning. We are told there is a flight directly to Travis Air Force Base, near John's hometown. The roster is posted again and we're near the bottom, again. The family of six is still competing at the top for seats. We are asked to line up again and four people make it onto this flight. The rest of us are told to go home. Still no rooms at the Air Force Lodge so we spend $97 again to spend the night in the Japanese hotel.
Day 3 - We arrive at the airport again and are told they have one flight to Seattle. We doubt we'll get on it since we have discovered these Seattle flights are for military members travelling on orders and they do pack the flight. We get our name on the roster. The family of six has given up (after 9 days of trying, they said) and we're closer to the top. After about six hours of waiting we're all asked to line up to see if we made it. Four people are allowed on the flight. The rest of us are told to go home. John and I go to our regular hotel to try to get a room. They're all booked. We're out in the rain with no umbrellas. A Japanese lady sees us from inside her business and comes out and hands us two umbrellas. We call a hotel one city over and they have a room. We spend $160 a night for this room.
Day 4 - This day looks promising. They have a flight going to Alaska and continuing to Travis Air Force Base. It is reported to have 54 seats available. We once again sign up to be on the list. When they post the roster, our hearts soar. We're close to the top. With 54 seats we're guaranteed to get on! When they ask us to all line up, they break our hearts. The flight has been cancelled. It has never left Singapore. There will be no other flights to the US that day. They let us wait for nearly four hours knowing the plane had never arrived and never bothered to tell anyone until the last minute. In anger, we rush to our computers and pay nearly $2300 to get back to the US.
The main thing is knowing when to give up. John is on vacation and burning leave days as we wait in purgatory. We wasted nearly $500 on hotels while trying to get a flight. We know next time we have to be Category II, because each flight that left with people always left with Category II people. No Category III people ever left. I don't know if we'll be doing a Space A flight again.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Travel Photo Dump!
Just got back to the US after six days of nothing going our way. At least we got to explore more of Japan and stay in Japanese hotels. Japanese hotels are much smaller than American hotels and they serve a breakfast which includes rice balls, potato salad and baked fish...definitely not what I'm used to..
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Thursday, September 15, 2011
The funny thing..
The thing about the Japanese culture is it is extremely rule oriented. There's rules for everything and everything is expected to run according to plan. In the US we're cowboys. Rules are made to be broken, bent, ignored or just side-stepped.
So here we are in Yokota waiting to check into our Japanese hotel room. Check in is at 4pm. It's 3:30 and we were told to sit down and wait until four. Let me stress that the cleaning crew just walked across the street to McDonalds...so they're done for the day. No more rooms will be cleaned....and here we sit to wait the 30 minutes until official check in time.
Sigh. There's just somethings I can never wrap my American brain around.
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So here we are in Yokota waiting to check into our Japanese hotel room. Check in is at 4pm. It's 3:30 and we were told to sit down and wait until four. Let me stress that the cleaning crew just walked across the street to McDonalds...so they're done for the day. No more rooms will be cleaned....and here we sit to wait the 30 minutes until official check in time.
Sigh. There's just somethings I can never wrap my American brain around.
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Friday, September 9, 2011
The Dinosaur Bug
Don't watch if large bugs give you the heebie jeebies. At least you don't live with them in your backyard. Count your blessings, okay?
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
How Expensive Is Japan?
Yesterday Toyota announced it would stop importing the Camry from Japan because it was becoming too expensive. The yen is strengthening and the dollar is falling causing Japan to become very expensive. I think some people have a hard time wrapping their head around just how expensive Japan can be.....here's an example.
I could buy this jacket:
for 6,155.09 yen. Today's bank yen rate (You HAVE to go by the bank rate and not the actual rate as the bank rate will always be lower than the actual rate. All retailers use the bank rate.) is 75 yen to every dollar. So, to find out the price in US dollars we divide 6144.09 by 75. So this jacket would be $82.06 before taxes. Taxes in Japan are about 10%. So you'd pay about $90 USD for this jacket if you were to purchase it in Japan. Also keep in mind that US retailers like American Eagle make their coupons unusable in the international market.
So, this same jacket here:
Can be purchased for $79.50 before taxes. Taxes on goods purchased in Alabama are about 4%....so the total cost of this jacket would be $82.68 after taxes if I bought it in Alabama.....but wait...coupons work here in the US and I happen to have a 20% off coupon to American Eagle....which means I could get this jacket for about $66....so I save about $23 if I buy this jacket in the US instead of Japan.
This is just one example. I think I've said it before, but there's no such thing as open rods in Japan. Most highways are tolled at several locations. So you can easily spend $100 getting to your destination and $100 getting back.
I love Japan, but I wish it wasn't so expensive here. All efforts of the Japanese government to step in and control the strong yen price have failed. Hopefully they can bring it back to 80 yen per dollar because then it would make living here a little easier!
I could buy this jacket:
So, this same jacket here:
This is just one example. I think I've said it before, but there's no such thing as open rods in Japan. Most highways are tolled at several locations. So you can easily spend $100 getting to your destination and $100 getting back.
I love Japan, but I wish it wasn't so expensive here. All efforts of the Japanese government to step in and control the strong yen price have failed. Hopefully they can bring it back to 80 yen per dollar because then it would make living here a little easier!
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
A Trip Home!
Everyone says the first year in Japan is the most overwhelming. You're not a tourist who can happily and care-free like see everything in a week and then return home happy as a clam. No. You're living in Japan. You can't go sight see everyday or eat out everyday (you'd be broke). You have to learn the nuances of the language, people, traffic rules, facial expressions and much more. Everyday is a challenge in some way. After awhile, your brain just goes on fatigue. You can't remember if you should bow to the person who got out of your way, give a polite "Konichiwa!" or smile politely. I think John and I have hit that fatigue. We're ready to go back to the US for a little bit and charge out batteries.
A round trip ticket from Tokyo to San Fransisco or San Jose, California is about $2600 per person. So you can see going back to the US is a costly venture. The Air Force is constantly flying planes between Japan and the US. They bring cargo back and forth between the Air Force bases. If these Air Force planes are not full, they allow passengers on the flights. They call these flights MAC flights or Space Available Flights.
Here's how it works. You call the MAC flight desk of the place you want to fly out of (in our case Yokota, which is three hours away). A recording will give you a schedule of all flights with Space Available in the next three days. All passengers are assigned a priority category. Since we'll be traveling on vacation, we're a priority three. Once John goes on leave, he can submit all his paperwork for the MAC flight. The office will call him and let him know when the next available flight is for his chosen destination. We show up on that day and cross our fingers there's room for us to board. If not, we try again the next day....and the next....and the next....
So as you can see, MAC flights may not be ideal for people who have to plan or who are returning for a specific event. The reason people take these flights is because they're free. If you're going to be traveling on a commercially chartered flight, then the cost is only $30/person.
The plane may look like a commercial airline (in which case you pay $30) or it looks like this:
Yup. These planes are free. But as you can see it looks like you're bound for some Star Trek mission and you have to sit like that for 13 hours.
Some MAC flights land in various places. For example if we wanted to go to Travis Air Force Base, which is really near John's hometown, we would probably have a layover in either Hawaii or Alaska. At any layover you run the risk of being bumped off the flight for someone in a higher priority category than you.
Once we land in either California or Seattle (the two places we've chosen as our destination) we will buy commercial tickets for me to go home to Alabama and John to get to San Jose.
After our vacation we will be returning to Japan on a commercial flight. On the way back we don't have as much time flexibility as we will on the way there.
A round trip ticket from Tokyo to San Fransisco or San Jose, California is about $2600 per person. So you can see going back to the US is a costly venture. The Air Force is constantly flying planes between Japan and the US. They bring cargo back and forth between the Air Force bases. If these Air Force planes are not full, they allow passengers on the flights. They call these flights MAC flights or Space Available Flights.
Here's how it works. You call the MAC flight desk of the place you want to fly out of (in our case Yokota, which is three hours away). A recording will give you a schedule of all flights with Space Available in the next three days. All passengers are assigned a priority category. Since we'll be traveling on vacation, we're a priority three. Once John goes on leave, he can submit all his paperwork for the MAC flight. The office will call him and let him know when the next available flight is for his chosen destination. We show up on that day and cross our fingers there's room for us to board. If not, we try again the next day....and the next....and the next....
So as you can see, MAC flights may not be ideal for people who have to plan or who are returning for a specific event. The reason people take these flights is because they're free. If you're going to be traveling on a commercially chartered flight, then the cost is only $30/person.
The plane may look like a commercial airline (in which case you pay $30) or it looks like this:
Some MAC flights land in various places. For example if we wanted to go to Travis Air Force Base, which is really near John's hometown, we would probably have a layover in either Hawaii or Alaska. At any layover you run the risk of being bumped off the flight for someone in a higher priority category than you.
Once we land in either California or Seattle (the two places we've chosen as our destination) we will buy commercial tickets for me to go home to Alabama and John to get to San Jose.
After our vacation we will be returning to Japan on a commercial flight. On the way back we don't have as much time flexibility as we will on the way there.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Flood Warning
This is how weather information is given to the city. The US Navy made a plea a few years ago to put all warnings in Japanese and English.
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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