January 12th, 2014.

Got a big surprise today.

The supplies that were scheduled to come in this morning came by ship - well, technically, helis chopped in from the J.D.S. Hyuuga. Two MV-22 Ospreys landed in the chopper landing area of the base that I like to call the Six Pack, since there's six white circles denominating the landing zones of the helis that, if you look at it from above, it sorta looks like a six pack of beer. Anyway, they came in and dropped off a ton of stuff - shells, ammo, food, miscellaneous stuff, supplies we'd need to live and drill and whatever.

They also brought in new ship girls - Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou. I'll talk about them later.

When I went out to greet the Ospreys and supervise the unloading of the cargo, to my huge surprise, Captain Liu came out of one of the Ospreys to see me. He's one of the American spec-ops guys assigned to work on the Moebius Four Armament project - I think he got transferred from Seal Team 6, that enigmatic special forces squad that no one knows what the hell they do or can do. We met briefly before I got deployed here at D.C., when he debriefed me on what I needed to expect and do and all that shit - stuff. Ah, forget it, too lazy to erase. He's a chill guy, a really cool dude. He was the one who told me that if there was anything I ever needed, all I'd have to do is email or dial the headquarters up in Tokyo for it and I'd expect it within a week.

He told me that the supplies had come in like this just for today - it wasn't going to be like this all the time. Apparently the J.D.S. Hyuuga's going through some training ops with newly inducted servicemen, and because it was going to operate around the Okinawa area, HQ figured that they may was well delay shipment of some of our supplies and group 'em together and dump it onto the Hyuuga and let the training pilots ferry 'em over. Explains why I haven't seen that catnip which I ordered a few days ago until this morning. But I can't blame HQ just for trying to be economical, I'd've made the same decision.

I asked Captain Liu why they let the training guys go around using the Hyuuga - like, there are specific auxiliary and training ships in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force built specifically for training ops and regimens, but Liu said that this training course was specifically designed to help pilots get acclimated to working with helicopter destroyers, which I forgot the Hyuuga was. Makes sense if you think of it that way. How often does a navy have a training ship that's a helicopter destroyer? Probably not too many.

He didn't stay for too long - probably long enough to make sure all the cargo was tagged, registered, and confirmed delivered. Usually the processing takes around half an hour to an hour, depending on the amount of supplies delivered on that day and taking into consideration how long it's taken before. But he gave me a file with more instructions and updates to my objectives and orders and also gave me the slip that I should expect the arrival of more ship girls to the base soon.

Liu also asked me if I was enjoying my time here, which was an interesting question at the time since I didn't know how exactly I would answer that. I paused for a bit, thinking about what I would say, and he just grinned at me and told me that I didn't have to answer if I didn't have one. I ended up saying that I wasn't sure. I told him that there'd been problems between me and the girls, but for the most part they've been resolved. I told him that I wasn't really sure if everything would work out, if I was the right guy for the job. Not because I didn't want to be here, but because I'm basically entering an unknown chapter of modern naval warfare. There's nothing that I can use as a reference to know if I'm doing a good job or doing things correctly or not.

Liu told me to man the fuck up and deal with it.

If I'm a soldier, as my position in the navy would imply, then I would know how to deal with a new environment and a difficult situation. It's not like I've got bullets pinging all around me and snapping over my head or anything, and that by itself makes me automatically better off than over half the US Army.

I mean, he's got a point. I can't argue against that, much less against someone who ranks higher than me. But just like what I said about fear earlier, it's not something you shake off so easily.

I watched him take off in one of the pair of the Ospreys back to the Hyuuga, which I realized I could see from the Six Pack just a bit. Not much, but it was out there...maybe about five or ten miles out or so, God, I suck at estimating distances, which, for a naval officer like me, is really, really bad. Makes me wonder how I even became a naval officer in the first place. +1 to the American military chain of command, hoo-rah mothafucka.

Anyways, Ooyodo and Akashi, who came out with me to see in the supplies, introduced me to the new ship girls I mentioned earlier.

Mamiya (間宮) and Irako (伊良湖) are apparently both supply ships, so I guess them wearing white kitchen aprons makes a lot of sense. Mamiya just looks like the paradigm of a Japanese housewife. What's the term that they use for the ideal Japanese woman again? Something something nadeshiko, I'm forgetting the first half. But yeah, I mean, looking at her, just by looking at her, you can tell that if anything household-related needs to get done, she's the one to call. She said that she and Irako would take care of all the cleaning, cooking, whatever, so I mean I guess I can rely on them. Irako looks more like the big sister-type, mainly because her face looks teenager-ish, while Mamiya has that dignified, mature air of a housewife. I dunno, it's hard to explain unless you've met people like that. The other ship girls all seemed super happy to see them, 'cause as soon as we went back inside and called out to the ship girls to meet their new comrades, Sazanami practically dived straight into Irako, and the other girls did similar stuff.

They say an army runs on its stomach. So would it be accurate to say that ships float on food as well?

That's just weird.

I'm forgetting Houshou (鳳翔, Phoenix in Flight, a badass name again that doesn't fit her at all, like Fubuki). She's Like Mamiya, she gives off the whole mature housewifey vibe, but she's noticeably shorter than Mamiya. She's supposed to be an aircraft carrier, and Ooyodo had to explain to me that Houshou's the very first commissioned CVN, which I didn't know and made me very impressed. Houshou just chuckled and downplayed it, saying that it wasn't really worth mentioning or making a big deal about - well, I don't mean to stereotype the whole Japanese housewife image, but I wasn't really surprised by that.

What do they look like? Uh...where do I start...

They're all fucking gorgeous.

Usually in America, when someone asks you to imagine an ordinary housewife, right, do you necessarily imagine "hot" or "gorgeous" as potential adjectives in the description box? Not really, no, unless you had a Sports Illustrated bikini model as a mom. So why did they turn out like this?

It's not that there's a problem with my coworkers and subordinates being hot and cute as hell. I guess I'm just way too used to working with and in the ugly side of everything. I mean, hell, that shouldn't really be all that surprising, considering I'm working in the military, and everyone in the military's bound to see or do something ugly. Breathing in fighter jet exhaust on aircraft carriers, holding meetings with petty officers who haven't showered in two weeks, getting bloodied casualties and bodies into stretchers, all that shit, it jades you, just makes you think "hey, well, just part 'a the job, just another day" when you see a leg bleeding on the ground, jagged bone and ripped blood vessels and all. So for me to work with these ship girls is...how should I say, refreshing.

It's like subconsciously, just by being around them and working with them and commanding them, they're making me slowly realize that there is a silver lining somewhere in the world after all.

Another thing is that because of how I was raised, I wasn't really all that close with my parents. Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel Kevinson were frequently on patrol or in some random military base doing whatever, and I wouldn't know what they were up to. They'd just...they were like ghosts, they would be there one day, and the house would be empty the next. I learned to make myself independent as a kid, doing shit like chores and grocery shopping by myself and stuff. The idea, or should I say concept, of "Mom" isn't quite as developed in my head as it would be for other people.

In other words, Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou present this foreign image that my brain isn't familiar with, and now, I'm having a lot of trouble accepting the fact that they're ship girls.

We just spent today helping them get their stuff moved into the dorms, and I cancelled drills for today to get our newcomers acquainted with the base. Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou ended up cooking a huge dinner for us tonight...which I sort of regret because I'm full as fuck.

It's already been over a week, but the arrival of Ooyodo, Error, and Akashi, and now Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou reminded me again that my life here's gonna change again and again every time we get more ship girls in here. I mean, I prided myself on being able to adapt to new situations on the fly.

But does that include meeting new people every week?

Fuck it, I'll just end it here...I need to sleep...