Sasebo and Marty

I spend the day after my herculean travel feat resting. I wake up late at the hotel, check my bag for the night and wander around Sasebo, getting a feel for the place. Sasebo is largely based around the U.S. Naval Base and the Japanese shipbuilding company that dominate the harbor area. The town itself sits in a protected cove, making it an ideal seaport and shipyard. I'm later told that more than 70 percent of the local populace is employed at the shipyard or doing some kind of support for the base.

A few hours after my wander, I'm sitting outside an ice cream shop near the train station reading on my Kindle. It's been a relaxing day, and I'm looking forward to meeting one of my best friends in an hour or so.

A few minutes later, an hour ahead of schedule, a man of medium build and height with brown eyes and black hair sits down across from me – Marty.

I had worried that things might be awkward between us. We hadn't seen each other or spoken at length for months. Would my friend of four years be the same? Would our interaction be the same?

Literally seconds after his arrival I knew my worries had been totally and utterly unfounded. It was as if we had never parted. Ensign Martin E. Brantner was still Marty, one of my best friends in the whole world.

We caught up at a ramen shack a little bit north of the ginza, a covered market lined with shops. Marty had been working hard towards getting his Surface Warfare Qualification, which is essentially a pin you wear on your uniform that says you're a competent naval officer. He likes his job, and for the most part the people he works with. I found myself jealous that I was not in a similar position with the Marines. As glad and as lucky as I am to be traveling right now, I really can't wait to start my actual job: leading Marines.

The next couple days were relatively uneventful. While Marty worked, I spent some time catching up on emails, doing laundry, and in general maintenencing my travel gear. One of the least glamorous parts of traveling is how your kit seems to fall apart with every use. You start off with a really well packed backpack, every item in the right spot, with easy access and certain knowledge of where everything is and how it fits together. All your clothes smell good, and you're confident in what you're doing.

A week later it's all gone to pot. Your pack has nothing resembling competent organization, and has turned into some kind of singularity that swallows the most important gear and keeps vomiting out the same pair of socks and useless sets of extra batteries. Your clothes stink, you stink, and you haven't brushed your teeth in three days because the water isn't safe and you forgot to buy bottled water for the third time. Incidentally the water in Japan is safe. But the water in China, where I'm writing this, isn't – just a heads up. The only solution is to literally rip apart your pack, lay everything out, and then slowly and methodically pack everything again and wait in futile agony for the travel Gods to mess it all up again. Oh, and do your laundry, which not every place has the capability to do.

As you have probably surmised, my kit needed a little maintenance. I also spent a day at a seaside village (Shimabara?) about two hours east of Sasebo. The name escapes me, but it was on a peninsula that has the same name as the town. There was a castle there, and an old samurai village. The town and castle had apparently been the focus of a local rebellion against the government back in the 1600s. The rebellion was led and influenced by recent Christian converts, who were dissatisfied with high taxes and oppressive leadership. It ended poorly for the Christians, who were slaughtered wholesale by government forces. Nearly 80 percent of the local population was killed, and immigrants from other prefectures had to be brought in to repopulate it. Not long after, Christianity was banned in Japan.

Exploration of the castle led to me trying on some mock samurai body armor, urged by some locals in Geisha, Samurai and Ninja costume. I managed to get pictures of everyone but the Ninja.

That night, Marty, a friend of ours and I all went out to a sushi place where everything was 105 yen. This was by far the least expensive sushi I’d had in Japan, and while it wasn't the best I'd had, quantity has a certain quality and even the cheapest sushi in Japan is still miles head of most sushi stateside. I ate until my stomach hurt.

The next day Marty and I had a trip to Nagasaki planned. It would, like Hiroshima, be deeply emotional and rewarding.

-Doug