Everything's shipshape!
Do you want to hear about my boat ride? Here's the story of my first time on a Navy ship:
In Japan, they have National Disaster Day twice a year where they practice what they would do in a disaster. So last Friday, they pretended that they had had a major earthquake. Our job was to help “evacuate” Tokyo along with several ships from other countries. As the Medical Officer for the group of ships that included the one "evacuating" Tokyo, at first I was told just to show up to demonstrate our medical readiness for an evacuation, then I was told to have a medical display, then to give a 30-45 minute presentation on Non-combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO). Finally it turned out that I had to talk for about an hour and talk about NEO and teach the 31 Japanese “evacuees” how to eat an MRE (that part was fun - MRE's are the meal packages for use in kitchen-free environments and include a built in heater). Apparently I was in the Stars & Stripes (the military newspaper) with a picture of me teaching how to eat an MRE, but I haven’t seen it yet. Nobody burned themselves on the MRE which was good. Anyway, I was only out for a day, so I still got to have a 3 day weekend, which Rebecca has told you all about. That's all for now - while I'm supposed to be working! Sorry that there are no pictures, we'll post some as soon as our camera comes! - Josh
In Japan, they have National Disaster Day twice a year where they practice what they would do in a disaster. So last Friday, they pretended that they had had a major earthquake. Our job was to help “evacuate” Tokyo along with several ships from other countries. As the Medical Officer for the group of ships that included the one "evacuating" Tokyo, at first I was told just to show up to demonstrate our medical readiness for an evacuation, then I was told to have a medical display, then to give a 30-45 minute presentation on Non-combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO). Finally it turned out that I had to talk for about an hour and talk about NEO and teach the 31 Japanese “evacuees” how to eat an MRE (that part was fun - MRE's are the meal packages for use in kitchen-free environments and include a built in heater). Apparently I was in the Stars & Stripes (the military newspaper) with a picture of me teaching how to eat an MRE, but I haven’t seen it yet. Nobody burned themselves on the MRE which was good. Anyway, I was only out for a day, so I still got to have a 3 day weekend, which Rebecca has told you all about. That's all for now - while I'm supposed to be working! Sorry that there are no pictures, we'll post some as soon as our camera comes! - Josh
posted by Josh and Rebecca Arthur at Tuesday, September 05, 2006
1 Comments:
Just stumbled on your blog. I lived in Japan while in the military for 8 years and then returned several times as site supervisor for an engineering firm for a total of 11 additional years. We loved our time there & hope you do as well. We lived near Atsugi NAF, Yokohama, Nagai Heights, Tokyo, Osaka, and Saitama. Have fun folks. Sounds as if you're off to a great start. See & do as much as possible and meet as many Nihon-gin as possible. It'll be rewarding. Old and retired to Maine now, but I still follow Sumo and the news there.
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