After a week on board ship and a week of dorking out in Kyoto, I paid the dues inherent to my job by living for two weeks on an army post somewhere outside Osaka. After centuries of practice, the ground forces of any civilized nation retain the knowledge and ability to revert to their primitive skill sets and straddle the divide between modern convenience and age-old technology -- mainly by insisting upon expansive tent cities and rows upon rows of latrines.

Our quarters were ancient barracks; our offices were green tents reminiscent of M*A*S*H; we ran miles of concertina wire around our work spaces and more miles of electrical cord and cable to power our laptops and projection screens because if there’s one thing the US Army knows, it’s roughing it… in a very special sort of way.

Permit me to narrate my first morning at Camp I.

I awoke atop an extraordinarily firm (not to say orthopedically torturous) mattress on the top rack of a two-man bunk bed in a flamingly hot barracks room with four such sleeping apparatuses. An off-key bugle was blaring out Reveille (or the Japanese equivalent thereof), and a weak winter light was piercing the smoked glass wall of windows. I knew I would not need an alarm clock for the duration of my stay.

I half-slid, half-fell out of my rack and slapped barefoot into the bathroom where I was overjoyed to discover real Western commodes -- not the Japanese style squatters that ruin a good chance to sit and think or to catch up on the newspaper. My glee was somewhat mitigated, however, by the eight sinks and mirrors that I would have to share with approximately eighty women for the entire length of this exercise. If you have an image of Army chicks painted up in camouflage and toting semi-automatic firearms while shunning the accoutrements of a modern woman’s toiletry kit, you have another thing coming. My friends, that washroom was every man’s -- and, indeed, some women’s -- nightmare; curling irons, make-up bags, and even eyelash curlers (which do, in fact, exist, contrary to urban myth) were wielded with equal prowess to how one hopes these ladies wield a weapon.

All I really wanted or needed to do was brush my choppers and poke my contacts into my eyes, but I was lucky to garner a sink into which to expectorate my residual toothpaste before a make-up brush full of some powdery substance was whisked through the air, filling my nostrils with grit. I skipped my otherwise routine ocular ministrations.

Back in my room, I laced up my boots and grabbed my GI issue fleece (have to blend in, you know) and joined my colleagues for a stroll across post to the mess hall. It was a cold-ass February morning, and seeing my breath streaming from my nostrils was still a bit of a shock for this tropics-living girl; and so, I jammed my hands deep down into the pockets of my trousers -- something I would soon find out was anathema in the US Army standards of appearance. Halfway to the mess hall, a Master-Sergeant stalked by and yelled at me, “Get your hands out of your pockets!” Without thinking, I shot back at him, “Go screw!” This response elicited a gasp from the Lt. Colonel walking with me and a shocked giggle from another civilian colleague of mine. What? I’m not military; I don’t have to give a rat’s ass what is acceptable and what ain’t.

In any case, before I could finish my breakfast, the story had spread amongst those that had traveled with me, and my Hawaii-based crew spent much of the day embellishing and retelling the tale such that it quickly became camp legend that I had, in fact, told the esteemed NCO to do something else, um, more obscene, shall we say. Though many congratulated me on my pluck, I must defend myself by saying that it was merely gut reaction and that people don’t normally admonish me at quite that volume quite that early in the morning. I can, in point of fact, occasionally keep a civil tongue in my head.

And so, the boredom-laced days and cheap Japanese beer-filled nights all sort of ran together, and two weeks passed mercifully quickly with only a spotty occurrence of cat fights or elbowing for space at the mirror; only once do I really recall having to trip another chick and outrun her to the one open shower stall… well, okay, not really, but I would have if it had been necessary. By the time the exercise ended, we all were in violent agreement that the only thing on our collective minds was just to get home, sleep in our own beds, cook in our own kitchens, drive our own vehicles, and sit on our accustomed barstools in sunny Honolulu.

Even the shock of living Friday twice due to the International Dateline’s execrable presence between Japan and our island home was not enough to dampen our mad joy as we rushed to the airport. We boarded that flight with visions of waves and palm trees and pints of Guinness and arrived home on O’ahu exactly twelve hours before we left Osaka.

I promptly went home to sleep that bitch off.

Thus, I conclude the anecdotes from my latest adventures in the Land of the Rising Sun. My February fortnight of semi-in-the-field living taught me, much like my week on ship, that there are reasons aplenty why I did not join our nation’s armed forces -- not least of which is that little thing called “authority.” Until next time then, my friends, keep your hands firmly out of your pockets.