Adventure

We decided to have an adventure and drive along streets we had never used. That didn't pan out but we did have an adventure!

We scouted several beaches and found one that was terribly rocky and shallow. And another that was amazing and sandy, also shallow but connected to lovely stepped seating. We then stopped at a cafe that was amazing. It had a wonderful view. And it also had the most delicious Japanese milk cake. Which is basically crepes layered with whipped cream. There were also lovely drinks. I had blueberry soda and Aj had an iced coffee. 

After our delicious desserts we went for BBQ and it was alright. Probably the best we will find here. The Mac and cheese wasn't good but the pulled pork was alright. The potato salad was good and mustard-y just the way we like it and the drinks were free!

On the way home Aj convinced me we had to stop on the road (and not get out of the car) and buy ice cream on the road side. It was amazing. Local ice cream is like cream added to ice rather than ice added to cream.

Lastly and thankfully since all we did on our adventure is eat! I've been running a lot out here but the humidity is killer and turns me into a red faced monster!

But such is life!!

Past few days

It's been a pretty boring few days. But we did see a funny sight. A truck hauling an even smaller truck in its bed!

Also the sheets I ordered finally arrived. So I was able to finish our bedroom.

Butter, grey and a deep turquoise.

Overall I like the functionality of our room but I do wish we could paint. 

They finally picked up our loaner furniture as well. So now we have a functional dining room. 

And now our house is finally done.

All the stuff!!

Well on the Thursday that I wrote about all the awful that happened in getting Jenner to Japan, I was patiently (read: completely spazzing out impatiently) awaiting the arrival of our household goods. And I was in good spirits because Jenner had passed his entry physical the day before, and was officially legal in the country. AJ was on duty so I would have no interruption from the peanut gallery while I set about putting things where I wanted them to be! But the movers didn't get to my house until nearly 6 pm. Well past the 8-5 time frame I was already struggling with. Once they did arrive, in true Brittany fashion, I had a game plan and was ready to go. They unloaded all the stuff and I asked ever so nicely in Japanglish (which is what I call my Japanese, its half Japanese half English)if they would set up the furniture and unpack the boxes. Because I just wanted all the boxes and wrapping paper gone. At first they thought I wanted them to literally unpack and put things away. But I quickly corrected that. And they made swift work of setting all my stuff on the ground. Also in true Brittany fashion, I stayed up until 2 am unpacking boxes only to wake up again at 6 am and unpack some more. All said and done, I was finished unpacking by 2 pm and only had to hang curtains and paintings, and convince AJ to set up his computer. Our bedroom still isn't done because I am waiting on my sheets to arrive that I ordered a month ago. And our dining room isn't quite done because all of the loaner furniture is still piled up in it, waiting to be taken away. But once all of that is done, I will share pictures of our new home!

All the awful, part 6.

Alls well that ends well.

I actually board a flight. And I immediately asked the stewardess to find out if Jenner is on board. She tells me that they cannot contact the loading people until we are in air but never in her experience has an animal been left behind. Which was comforting. After we reach altitude she tells me that the captain said it would be okay and further told me to go to baggage claim and they would bring Jenner to me, imagine that! And I said how will they know me and she said they will, don't worry. And now I'm convinced they are all telepaths or something. 

The 2 hour flight was entirely uneventful and I actually got some sleep. I head down to baggage claim  and I'm waiting for Jenner. I see a lady bringing him out and I make a bee line for her, so that's how they find me. The crazy American running toward you with a look of glee, is the one who owns the cat. She hands Jenner over to me after checking my baggage claim tickets and passport. Tells me he is lovely and fat, I agree. Other people ask about him and want his picture. Because he is so fat and entertaining. He was panting from the heat, but laying on his side, lounging. We get our bags. Make it out of baggage claim and find Aj. We release Jenner from prison into the car and he goes under a seat which was a pain in the ass when we got home.but ultimately he was fine, as the vet said. He is no worse for wear and didn't suffer adversely from the flight. I'm convinced it's because he is a giant.

Clearly Jenner has zero problems adjusting, this is him the night we got home.

It's a lot to deal with for a pet, but when your pet is as amazing as Jenner. It's worth it.

So to sum up, united is shit. ANA and JAL are amazing and I will forever be greatful for the way they treated us, and will endeavor to fly them for the rest of my life if I can. And united has lost a good 60 years worth of business and they have earned my hatred.

United negative 5 bazillion points

ANA and JAL - incalculable.

All the awful, part 5

They take my bags and Jenner, I pay my 50 dollar pet fee. And I was crying again out of sheer happiness. I was making my flight, Jenner and I were going to make it home! An ana agent escorts me personally through security and hands me this:

I get to my gate and the flight is delayed due to mechanical problems. I asked the gate agent if Jenner was being stored in an AC environment and assured me he was. I sighed a huge sigh of relief and and went to use the bathroom. As I'm washing up I hear my name being butchered over a loud speaker and I thought, yup sounds about right. Heaven forbid something go right on the pcs from hell. Literally from hell.

I go to the gate agent and she tells me that Jenner and I are getting kicked off the flight and I give a look of what the eff. And she kind of smiles and thinks for a moment and then explains. The mechanical failure the plane was experiencing was in temperature control. They fixed the part for humans but couldn't fix the part for cargo, everyone's bags would be fine but they wouldn't allow Jenner to go in there. Which I'm thankful for, other airlines might have just loaded him anyway. She further explains that they will put me in a hotel overnight and pay all my expenses, and I can fly out in the morning. I nodded but asked if they could first try to get me on a later flight from a different airline, that Aj had found when we thought I was going to miss this flight.

She said they were already attempting to do so, and I thanked her. She then received confirmation that I had in fact been booked with JAL- japan airlines. For the later flight and boarding would being in 40 minutes in another terminal. I cringed, how would I make that with two bags and Jenner in his big kennel. She kind of laughed and introduced me to the young guy. I can't remember his name so he is now young guy. Young guy took me back to the ticketing counter where they refunded my pet fair and printed my voucher. He retrieved my bags and Jenner, then was handed petty cash. He and a ticketing counter lady ran me out to a taxi, and young guy loaded me Jenner and the bags up, he refused to let me help ever. The taxi took us to the new terminal for this flight. At this point im feeling better. I have Jenner, we are through quarantine and All Nippon is busting their ass on my behalf.

Jenner and I in the taxi.

 Young guy escorts me to the gate for japan airlines. They check me and Jenner in. Not only did All Nippon Airways, make me feel better at check in, when their plane experienced a problem they readily accepted that they would need to provide for me. Something an American airline would never do, they would likely offer some lame ass voucher and say you were SOL. Then they provided me with young guy to interpret and help me the entire time. And refunded my pet fee. They then paid the additional 500 dollars to get me on the JAL flight. And JAL didn't charge me for Jenner.

All Nippon and JAL for the win, for so much win.

All the awful part 4

We Hurry, and I'm not being disrespectful. This is all he ever said to me and I need to call him something. Takes Jenner and loads him in a super beater car. And I fill out paperwork. Thankfully I had yen because there was another 20 dollar fee and they didn't accept credit cards.

We hurry stores my bags in the office and ushers me to the car, and the moment my door shuts the guy takes off like it's the Indy freaking 500 and is swerving around people and objects. I am clutching my armrest like a lifeline and we hurry screeches to a halt infront of animal quarantine. He grabs Jenner runs into the building and shouts at a woman, we hurry. She comes flying around a corner with a bunch of paperwork.

Everything we read said quarantine can take 30 minutes at the fastest to 12 hours if your stuff isn't in order. Thankfully I had everything and I had we hurry. Who mustered up two other ladies to start working with me. I was finished in 4 minutes. They examined Jenner for 30 seconds because his 6 month quarantine period was already over. We hurry grabs my hand and runs me over to customs and again yells at the agent, we hurry. Then the guy starts flying around gathering paperwork. Meanwhile time is ticking by and I've resigned myself to missing my flight and staying over night in the airport. I texted Aj to tell him, it would take a miracle to get me to my flight.

One of my papers was mis stamped, so we hurry takes off like a flash and gets the new paper stamped and I find out later, loads Jenner in the car. I get all my customs forms stamped and he ushers me back to the car, and again drives like a bat out of hell to the united cargo to get my bags.

At this point Jenner, the bags and I are driven to the terminal by another gentleman. We have 45 minutes. The whole process which they said would take 2 hrs took 35 minutes. Thank you to we hurry from the very bottom of my heart. I gave him a giant hug and he laughed.

So the other guy escorts me and Jenner to the terminal and the all Nippon airways gate, my flight leaves in 35 minutes, it's already boarding.

I'm skeptical. But the lady he hands me off to just smiles and says thank you for traveling ANA, you will make your flight. And I started crying.

United cargo did a phenomenal job for me, and I don't think it was united. I think it was the people there. My only complaint is that no one fed Jenner, despite the instructions on the kennel to do so. Thankfully I had hidden treats inside his kennel, even though you aren't supposed to. And he found them all =)

All the awful, part 3.

I land in Tokyo.

Now before I even left okinawa, I made sure to go to customs and get a SOFA re entry stamp. Which is supposed to make traveling through customs easier. So I get off the plane and haul ass to customs, I wanna see my cat. The customs guy who is sorting the line, refuses to accept my re entry stamp. So he makes me stand in the foreigner line....which takes a half an hour. I have a three hour layover in Tokyo during which I have a crap ton to do, and our plane was 45 minutes late so I'm already on the clock.

I get up to the customs agent finally, and he looks at my passport and waves me through....because dun dun dun I have a freaking valid re entry stamp!!! Which means I didn't need to wait in the damn 30 minute line!

So I haul my butt down to the animal quarantine office, give them my name and paperwork.....this is where it gets bad. Jenner isn't there, apparently when an animal arrives cargo they send him to the cargo facility on the other side of the airport....the international airport...in one of the biggest cities in the world and I've got 2 hours until my flight.

Thanks united for telling me to pick up my cat at baggage claim, really effing helpful. The quarantine lady  and I are having communication problems as her english isn't great and my japanese is horrific. But I manage to figure out I need to take my luggage, exit the airport and find a yellow bus. So I grab my bags. Run out of the airport and I see a yellow bus, so I am running with my bags toward this bus. And I get to it and I just call out, does anyone speak english?

Any older guy steps forward, and i asked, is this the bus I take to get to cargo? He looks at me oddly and I show him my map...that is in Japanese and he says yes get off at the next stop, not the terminal, the next stop. Then proceeds to help me load my bags.

As the stop nears, he calls from the other side of the bus, ma'am you get off here. I bow and give him the most appreciative smile I can muster, as I'm getting dropped off on the side of the road. I take my bags and walk and as I'm walking, it dawns on me that I'm walking through Narita, through a warehouse district, in a foreign country alone...thank god it's daytime. And I started to cry. Crying because I'm tired, crying because I'm so nervous Jenner has been injured or killed. 1 in 9 animals doesn't survive their flight. Those aren't comforting numbers. I'm crying because I'm lost, I'm in a foreign country and I know I'm gonna miss my flight. As I'm crying I see a sign that says cargo and I flat out start sprinting. After a mile, of sprinting then realizing I'm badly out of shape so running and eventually dragging my body and bags, I see more cargo signs and a gate guard. So I pull out my I phone ( which is now my life line) and translate how do I get to united cargo. I ask the gentleman in terrible Japanese with tears steaming down my face, sweating my ass off in the heat and humidity after running with 100 lbs of luggage...and smelling after 10 hours on a flight. And he points me down the street.

I had to do this 2 more times until I got to the proper gate. Where unfortunately the guard spoke no english, so I used my translator again to tell him I needed united cargo. He had me fill out a form....in Japanese, of course as I am in japan. I am fairly certain I put my name and telephone number in the right spots because I recognized those characters, but I've no idea what I wrote elsewhere. And I run again, I see a sign for united cargo and started crying again, out of happiness and ran right into a construction area. And a guy is screaming stop. So I stop and a forklift is like 50 ft away. I roll my eyes because I only need to go like 10 ft to get out of its way but the guy made me go around a building.

I finally get to the cargo facility, and I was not trying to be dramatic but I dropped down onto my knees in front of Jenner's kennel, which was thankfully inside an AC room. And started bawling because he was alive, laying on his back, licking his feet. I'm so glad this cat is so freaking fat and hearty.

The lady comes out and sees me crying, asks what's wrong. I explain everything and that my flight leaves in 90 minutes. I've still got to get Jenner through quarantine, customs and checked in. This is where she introduces me to my savior, whose name I never got but I call him We Hurry because that is all he ever said to me.

I can't even tally the points anymore but basically united negative 500 for giving me such shit information.

And 20 for the country of japan because they are so damn helpful to crying, smelly foreigners.

All the awful, part 2.

Did you come back for some more? It gets better and by better I mean worse.

The day arrives for us to set out upon our journey. And we leave at 5 am to get to Los Angeles by 8, so Jenner has the recommended 3 hours before my 11 o clock flight. We arrive at the cargo facility and there are a bunch of other people dropping off pets. All of that goes well enough, the carrier is the right kind, though giant for just Jenner, it gave him room to stretch out. And the counter lady didn't argue with it, she winked and said yeah he is a big cat. Generally they limit how much space an animal can have, minimum and maximum. I say goodbye to fatty and head to the terminal to check myself in. All the while, not praying because I'm not religious, but sending positive vibes that my hearty fat cat makes it through the flight.

I get to the ticket counter and explain the situation, the baggage lady says that she will let me have an extra checked bag because I'm a military dependent, even though the orders are invalid for basically everything else. Cool.

I get up to my flight and ask the gate agent how I am notified that Jenner was placed on the flight and he says, oh they don't do that anymore. And I said whoa, hold the effing phone there buddy boy. I am not taking off on a ten hour flight without some confirmation that my cat....my reason for returning to the states....is safely on the plane. He makes some calls, tells me I can stand and watch for the van until 15 minutes until the departure. I never see the van. He calls again and says that they are on their way and to get on the plane. He will get a message to me. I eyed him, he was a kindly looking older guy...so I said okay.

I got on the plane. The last person on the plane. And I don't hear anything. So I ring my stewardess, a nice lady, tell her my situation. And said I don't want to be that person but I have to know my cat is on this plane. So she asks the captain. He says Jenner is on the manifest, and if he is on the manifest then he is loaded. I don't know crap about FAA rules, but I've watched enough of the news to know that they update manifests right before departures, so that seems plausible.

I sit back and enjoy my ten hour flight and by enjoy I mean watch some movies, worry about Jenner, don't get any sleep, eat some terrible united airline food, watch more movies and worry about Jenner.

1/4 point to united for the cargo lady not giving me shit about the kennel size

1/4 point for the baggage lady giving me a free checked bag

1/4 point for the agent guy making some calls

1/2 point for the stewardess asking the captain about Jenner.

Minus a point for the gate agent being a dirty liar despite his kindly old man look. He never got a message to me.

United 1/4 point

All Nippon 1 point

All the awful, part 1

I literally had to wait a few days to write this blog post because I was still so angry and to be honest still recovering from it all.

I will preface this with, I will never fly United ever again, and I will try my damnedest to prevent other people from doing so. They are a wretched company. On the flip side, if ever the oppurtunity presents itself for you to fly All Nippon Airways, take it with glee. Customer service is something Americans are horrendous at, we seem to lack basic human decency. The Japanese on the other hand, are full of kindness and compassion while still managing to be professional and get the job done.

So, the saga begins, grab a snack and a drink, it's a long one.

Part 1.

It started with our booking the flight for me to go home and get Jenner. There was a lot of run around with getting the fat cat to Japan, but after finally figuring out all the paperwork we were set. I had a flight out to California and a flight home. So we call united to book Jenner on the flights and united tells us that we can't fly out of San diego because they need a 3 hour layover to transfer an animal to a new flight and my layover was only about 90 minutes. And given that we had already had to cancel a flight and pay the 300 dollar fee, Aj opted to argue. So he asked for a supervisor around 5 times before he got to someone with some power. Who was able to switch my departure location to Los Angeles, without charging us, meaning we would be leaving from an international port so Jenner would be on that flight through to Tokyo, great!

He is transferred to the pet booking department and explains the situation, we moved here on military orders and are trying to bring our cat to japan. We would like to book him in cabin (as we had done on the previous flight, the one we had to cancel for 300 bucks, with no problems). But this person says that it is illegal to travel into japan with a pet in the cabin. Aj and I still call bullshit on this because we have yet to find any information to support this. However we just wanted to get Jenner home, so we agree to fly him underneath because united supposedly has a bunch of safety measures in place for your pet.

However, they tell us we can't check Jenner at the baggage counter because I am already in japan, and they can see that I am there because of my flight to California. So they won't accept AJs orders as official. So we have to fly Jenner as cargo, and drop him off at a seperate facility.....and pay 625 dollars for him to get to Tokyo.

After agreeing to it, because what is our option? Nothing. We call All Nippon and cringe over how much that one will cost. All Nippon books Jenner underneath the plane (they do not allow any animals in cabin) for.......drumroll.....50 bucks.

Point 1. All Nippon

Trip back to California

Well the time finally came for me to head back to California to get Jenner and the few things I left at Ruth's. That day Aj had to go to a pistol Qual, but the beautiful thing about okinawa is that I wasn't stranded, nor did I have to get an expensive shuttle to the airport. Because Alison was able to take me.

The Naha airport is very small, I believe only 4 airlines fly out of it. Even more wonderful is that when you fly out of Naha, you generally end up on a domestic flight, so the airport is much easier to navigate. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Tokyo.

My flight from Narita was wholly uneventful, except that every American on the flight, and there a lot, was pregnant or had a very small baby. Except one older lady who was with her young daughter/in law who was pregnant AND had a young baby. Though most of the baby's did fine on the flight.

The layover in Tokyo was supposed to be 2 hours but customs took so long I only had a half an hour to kill, let's hope that isn't the same on the other flight because I need all of my customs time for Jenner.

I didn't sleep well on that flight but I did have a chance to watch several movies. When I landed in San Diego, Ruth picked me up and took me to her house where I finally was able to see my fatty. Though he shunned me.

I spent my time with Ruth and her roommate sam, as well as my mom, Mario and Taylor. Also some of the lovely 361 ladies. 

Overall it was a wonderful visit to the states. Now just to get my Jenner home and get back to life, and get our stuff on the third!