Lovers in Japan

Well, not quite yet...after I left Korea, I did get that facebook friend request, but not much else for about a month or two.  Then, in October 2009, I got a message that started with "You'll never guess where I'm getting stationed next."  Although it wasn't his first choice, Jason was moving to Misawa in March of the following year. He said that he was looking forward to hanging out with some non-pilot friends and a familiar face.  We kept in touch quite a bit better than the previous two years...but in late January, I got a short-notice deployment notice.  I had 3 weeks to get my life together and get to the east coast for training, followed by a six-month deployment to Iraq.  I was so bummed...I let Jason know immediately and e-mailed all my friends asking them to take care of him.  I even went so far as to "suggest" him as a friend to all my Misawa friends on facebook...he still doesn't know who all of them are, since he didn't get much of a chance to meet everyone.   There's two reasons that happened:  1.  I never had to deploy...it got cancelled not even a week before I was supposed to leave, and 2. he left on a "deployment" to Korea just 5 weeks after he arrived at Misawa.   

Single kids (personal photo)

In that five weeks, we hung out a lot.  We were two of the few single officers in such a little community.  That fake date charade I mentioned earlier?  We continued it in Japan...he'd invite me to squadron events so he wouldn't be the only one without a date.  Just a few weeks ago, our last commander's wife just figured out we went together the whole time...
When he left, we ended up chatting every few days...we've since decided that we liked each other then but were in TOTAL denial about it.  Looking back, it's pretty obvious.  I'd get mad when he'd ask me to stick around on Skype, but then go out with the chick he was chasing there...but then a day or two later spend HOURS showing me random places in Milwaukee on Google Earth.  We passed 4 months like this.  When he got back, we got to see each other once or twice before we spent a total of one month in the States (he went for two weeks and came back the day I left for two weeks).   One of those days was to Yoshino's, a delicious local steakhouse, which was our first real date that wasn't really supposed to be a date.  .  We kept up e-mails until we both got back from the US...and then the sparks really did fly...