This was less of a vacation and more of a 5 day work trip to Sasebo, Japan.  We had one day off due to extensive jet lag, but worked 10 hour days the rest of the trip.  Still found time to wander around town and essentially feast my way through my first experience in Japan! What a wonderful place!  The people there are so wonderfully patient, helpful, and kind.  I never found the language barrier to be a problem.  Sasebo is a smaller city, so we spoke no japanese and they generally only spoke a few words of english. Occasionally we’d just have a big laugh about the whole ordeal and wander off in opposite directions.  The weather really reminded me of florida… it was 90 degrees and humid as hell the entire time we were there which is very different from the 60’s and dry we were having in Washington when I left.  My 2 trusty coworkers and I stayed in a hotel a few blocks from where we were working and hit the town after work to find excellent food and just generally people-watch… or at least that was what *I* was doing.   The hotel had an espresso machine instead of instant or vile drip coffee… Had a competition with Stan every morning as to who could drink the most shots. I always won. Duh. The plane ride over was awful.  There was a medical emergency leading to an extra 2 hours sitting on the runway which resulted in us missing our connecting flight etc etc and so on. Long ass day. Even though technically it was 2 days. Sigh. The flight back made up for it by being an hour shorter than they predicted. I’ll take it! Really not a lot of jet-lag on the return home, just confusion as to what day it actually was and why people understood what I was saying. I did try to pay for a latte in Tacoma in Yen. They were greatly confused by this. Overall a highly entertaining trip.  Can’t wait to go back!