Monday, April 28th, 2014.

So I started off today waking up with both Shigure and Samidare sleeping with me in my room. I have no idea when they snuck into my room, but okay, sure, whatever, I guess that means that they've both decided to get along with me in the middle. I swear my name doesn't start with Duke.

Like, I just want to make it very clear that by nature I'm not some kind of pimp character. I would have been perfectly fine being with Samidare or any single ship girl - just managing to get into a relationship with any one of them is, to me, a monumental accomplishment on my end as a man. So for me to have...well, let's face it, two girlfriends at the same time...normally that's a bad thing, if we were in America. I guess it's not such a bad thing here. Japan sure is amazing in a lot of different ways...maybe some things in anime and manga do come true after all. I just hope I don't end up on a nice boat. Technically I'm already on one...

But while we were still cuddling all together in my bed, I couldn't help but make comparisons between the two. While Samidare is the upbeat type of sweet girl, Shigure is the calm, follows-my-pace type of sweet. Plus, while I liked her hairstyle before she was Kai 2, her new hairstyle makes her look just like a pettable dog, her and Yuudachi both. I don't know...these two have their own respective charm that appeal to me so much so that it's hard for me to really have a preference. And it makes me feel a bit guilty, too, because I feel like I should be obliged to like Samidare more since I was in a relationship with her first, but Shigure is just as sweet too. I actually brought this up to the girls, and Shigure indeed agreed with me that I ought to give Samidare more attention because she was in a relationship with me first.

Just because I was curious, because they went to bed with me in their pajamas, I asked them to try switching to each other's uniforms when we got out of bed. Maybe it's because I'm so used to seeing them in their own respective uniforms, but when Shigure put on Samidare's uniform, she suddenly looked really, really cute and sweet, even more so than before. And when Samidare put on Shigure's uniform, she started looking more badass and confident. I guess Shigure's black-white-red color palette on her uniform does naturally give a more aggressive and bold appearance, while Samidare's navy blue and white color palette, combined with arm gloves and zettai ryouiki, gives off a more natural...I hesitate to say this, but "moe" kind of feel. I dunno, I'm just rambling at this point, really. My point is that they both fit each other's uniform style really well, so much so that I actually considered having them stay like that for the rest of the day, and maybe perhaps get Yuudachi and Harusame in Samidare's uniform too. Apparently among the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers, only Samidare and Suzukaze share uniform styles, while the others share Shigure's uniform style. Which begs the question why the Shiratsuyu-Class don't all share the same uniform...but that aside, hopefully there are more ship girls who share Samidare's uniform style, because I think it's the perfect blend of moe and professionalism. I mean, if you look at it hard enough, Samidare looks like she could be the world's best and cutest office secretary. Don't tell Ooyodo I said this, because she'll get jealous, really jealous.

My shenanigans with my two ship girls aside, we went around preparing for our trip to Emerald Beach today, and we all left for the place at around 0900 hours. Using our military privileges, we landed right in the middle of the beach, and sure enough, it'd been vacated just for the platoon to enjoy all to themselves.

You would think that for a group of girls who always hang around near the ocean anyway, a vacation to the beach wouldn't really seem so fun. But I guess they didn't care, because having fun was way more important than worrying about the location of their vacation.

So as it turns out, many of the ship girls chose their swimsuits based on their guesses of what my preferences of swimsuits would be. Therefore, for the first hour or so during our stay at the beach, I felt like I was some kind of panel judge for a live swimsuit fashion show, you know, like those kinds of fashion shows where models in a certain theme of clothes walk up and down the fashion aisle (I know there's gotta be some kind of term for that walkway). Everywhere I looked, there were cute, hot, stupid sexy grills in swimsuits. I could call myself Yamato Naoe with a raging libido at that point, but because I like to think I'm a decent person, I didn't. Nevertheless, they all more or less looked lovely in their choice of swimsuits. Even Fubuki, who's gotten quite a reputation at base for being a plain, simple girl with very simple tastes, picked out for herself a cute frilly two-piece that I thought matched her style really well. Kitakami and Ooi, too, came up to me to show off their assets, which I also approved of.

This would be the perfect setting for an American alcohol commercial. Just one guy holding a beer or martini on a beautiful beach on a beautiful day surrounded by beautiful women in bikinis or swimsuits. We could all be millionaires. Just kidding.

And so we partied hard on the beach. We did everything the stereotypical Japanese beach party would include: sand castle building competitions, watermelon smashing, volleyball, etc. And because these are ship girls we're talking about, we also had surfing competitions. Well, not exactly "competitions", just little contests to see who could get the best surf going. The Akatsuki-Class destroyers were surprisingly extremely good at building sand castles, and they built one about the same size as a Hummer. Very impressive. The Seal Team Six guys 'n gals cooked up a beachside barbeque, so we ate lots, too. As expected, Akagi was our default eating champion. She always loves a good feast.

Since I like taking naps, I decided to take a nap underneath one of the beach umbrellas. As soon as I laid down, Iku and Taigei came over to join me. I don't know if you've ever known what it feels like trying to go to sleep with two large-breasted women on either side of you, but I now understand why they call it marshmallow hell, because they didn't let me go to sleep easily. Iku's the one to blame; she convinced Taigei to mimic what she was doing, so they both stuck my arms in between their tits and constantly rubbed them. I'm just trying to go to sleep, and that's what I get? Luckily, Ooyodo and Takao caught glimpse of us and chased Taigei and Iku away, and they offered to stand guard around me while I napped so that I wouldn't get assaulted in my sleep by any opportunistic ship girls.

And finally, because apparently you can't have a true Japanese beach party without some kind of fireworks, we all lit small fireworks in the sand. The girls handle cannons and explosives all the time, so they naturally knew their way around fireworks. We sang happy birthday to both Urakaze and Akagi, whose launch days we'd missed due to the preparations we were doing for Operation Rising Sun, and we had lots and lots of cake. Lauren and Losira had made so much cake with Mamiya and Irako that some of the girls just ended up having a food fight with the cake, and we still had enough to feed everyone. Most notably, Naganami threw a piece of cake at me and got me good, but instead of retaliating, I just ate it up right off my face. Overall, up until that point, it was just a really fun day of hard play and no work that the platoon all deserved. In the event that I can't ever see these girls again, today was just nothing but memories we've made together that we can hopefully all carry with us for the rest of our lives.

But for me, my memory lane for today didn't stop there. Just earlier, when we all went back to base to take a bath, I went into my bathroom in my room to use the bathtub for the first time ever. My bathroom has the whole shower-bathtub combo going on, which is more of an American-style bathroom than Japanese-style, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, it wasn't like I needed to spend my time doing anything else, so I decided to soak up a bit while the rest of the fleet was docked in the bathhouse as well. Imagine my surprise when I hear the door open, since, like I keep saying, I never bother locking my doors, including my bathroom door, and Shigure walks in, still in her swimsuit. She asked me if I would let her join me for a bath. You can see where this is going.

That's when I did get out for a moment and lock all of my doors, because I knew I'd be staying in the bath for a little bit longer than I'd been anticipating. And we did.

After we were done and just soaking in the bath together, I asked Shigure if Samidare knew about tonight, and she said she did. In fact, Shigure even asked Samidare for permission, which just sounds absurd in itself. It also almost sounded like I was some kind of tradeable commodity, but that's alright. Shigure was happy, and that's all that ever matters. Happy waifu, happy laifu. Or something like that.