A little typhoon delay.......stuck in Tokyo

I was notified by my contracting agency while I was home in Arizona that, upon my return to Japan, I was being re-assigned to Yokosuka........(uhhh, where the heck is that????)

As it turns out, Yokosuka is where the "real" US Navy is located in Japan.  It's located just outside Tokyo proper, about 30 miles from Tokyo itself and is located on the north Pacific side of Japan across from the bay of Tokyo.  Of course, the last minute change of plans meant I had to fly from the US to Okinawa to collect all my belongings, then pack up and head back to Japan mainland to get to my new destination.  I should have checked the weather forecast before leaving Arizona because when I arrived at Narita Tokyo airport to change planes for the final flight to Okinawa.....it had been canceled!  Turns out there was a typhoon sitting right outside Okinawa and all flights had been canceled for 2 days.  Let's just say being awake for 26 hours and finding out you're stuck in an airport in a foreign country.....makes a girl a little nervous!  Thank goodness I wasn't the only one stuck - there were at least 100 people and families on my same flight - all trying to get to Okinawa.  I joined forces with a few others and we managed to relocate to Haneda airport by bus.  Haneda is also located in Tokyo but is more of a "local" airport so this location was more likely be able to get us to Okinawa as soon as flights were allowed.  After manhandling my two VERY LARGE suitcases on the bus, off the bus and into Haneda airport....I was were told to find a hotel because there was nothing the airline could do for me on Sunday evening!  The stranded travelers were desperately calling any and all of the hotels nearest to the airport to find rooms....many just opted to spend the night in the airport!  I did find a hotel room, it even included a shuttle bus that picked me up at the airport and delivered me to the hotel!  Let's just make it clear - hotel rooms in Japan are SMALL!!!!  I'm not sure if it's because there isn't much room or because Japanese people are nit very big themselves but this was, what I thought at the time (hahahaha) the smallest hotel room I'd seen.  And......because electricity is so expensive in Japan, the rooms are all set u so that you must insert the room key into a control panel by the door to engage the lights and A/C. 

Bathroom for Tokyo hotel room

I finally collapsed in a heap and tried to sleep........yes, tried......oddly enough, the room was set up so that there was no way to turn the lights off when the power was on.  My choices were to try and sleep with lights and and air conditioning...or sweat in the darkness.  I opted for cold air and lights......and was back up at 3 AM because of it!  I caught the 4:30 AM shuttle back to the airport where I was greeted by the sight of most of my fellow stranded passengers waiting in line for rebooking on flights to Okinawa.  There ended up being so many people traveling to Oki, the airline finally just added an additional flight and, at 1:30 Monday afternoon, I was finally on a plane to Okinawa.

The highlight of the whole ordeal was that the specially charted plane was the Pokemon plane.......I was able to find a picture so everyone can appreciate the  exterior....and the interior of the 747 is completely themed out...down to the flight attendant outfits (they had Pokemon aprons), the cabin curtains...to the headrests!