The Weekend That Isn't

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of our school, so we had the day off, which was great. We did have to go in to school for about an hour this morning to attend an annual foundation day ceremony, but after that the day was ours for the taking.

The huge bummer about having the day off today though is that we have to work tomorrow. It's been a while since I've taught on Saturday. It sucks to have a semi-day off today, work tomorrow, and essentially have a one day weekend on Sunday. But life goes on.

After today's ceremony, which had the effect of sucking the life out of both Chieko and I, we were torn between taking advantage of the rest of the day, or following our urges and going home to crawl back in bed. We pulled through though and after grabbing some lunch, headed down to the local airport with the hopes of catching some low flying jets.

Our local airport is Komatsu Airport. There is not a lot of traffic at Komatsu, and in most cases it wouldn't be worthwhile going there to plane-spot, but there are two factors that change that. First of all, while Japan isn't a particularly large country, it is full of people on the go. So even on short flights, Tokyo to Komatsu, for example (about an hour in the air), the airlines still use BIG planes. So while they me be few, all the flights coming into Komatsu are wide bodied jets, 747's, 777's, and 767's. The other aspect that makes Komatsu an interesting place to watch planes is that it's home to a wing of the Japanese Air Force, so there are lots of cool military aircraft tooling around in between commercial flights.

We've only been to Komatsu once before, and at that time we went to the observation deck in the airport. It was underwhelming mostly because there wasn't much going on, but also because its location midway down the runway meant that when a rare plane did pass by, it was just hauling down the runway, not landing or lifting off. So today we tried a different tact. I was pretty sure that if we could find somewhere to park at either end of the runway, it would be much more entertaining. The task was easier than I thought it would be, as the end of the runway was situated on a pretty main road. We parked at the end of the runway where planes would be taking off over us, and hung out for awhile. Finding no action other than Japanese air force guys jogging around just on the other side of the fence, we moved on to find the other end of the runway. There wasn't much action here either, but I did get one money shot when an All Nippon Airlines 777 came hauling in for a landing. It was cool! We hung out for a little while longer but not much was going on, so we headed out. I really need to get my hands on a schedule for Komatsu so I know when to go and actually see planes more consistently.

So I sit here 10 o'clock on a Friday night the slightest bit stir-crazy as there are certain things I usually do (and drink) on Friday nights, but I can't do them since I have to work tomorrow. Looking to get some kite flying in on Sunday, and listening to the Sox hopefully put the Yankees away in Boston over the next few days. That's all from here.