went to Yokota base today for Mia's friend Clare's 3 year birthday party. They used to live two stops away by train, but the American GI father decided Japanese apartment living was not for him.

They moved far away from us to the base.

So you can't just walk up to the base and say "I'm here for Clare's birthday party" surprisingly enough.

You have to like get papers showing your citizenship and license and tell the military the name of your ex roomate's dog's former owner.

Just kidding.

Anyway, what should have been about a 5 minute process where you go to the visitor's center and get a pass turned out to be like a 50 minute ordeal in which little kids, babies, G.I.'s with Japanese girlfriends and other various people piled up inside this little room waiting for a pass.

As far as I could tell, basically the guys (japanese) who were running the show were like....incompetent. Couldn't get the software running. Took 3 minutes to take one digital picture. Didn't actually know who they were taking a picture of at the time ("you're suzuki, right?" "suzuki?", this to Naoto despite the fact they had his picture i.d. in front of them and that there were more than 2 suzukis in the room).

Nice to know our military is running efficiently and smoothly with all the new high tech and security requirements.

As I was waiting, I read the surprisingly long list of countries whose citizens would not actually be allowed on base ever. It included, to my surprise, India, China, and Sri Lanka. Yep, those dangerous Indians. Gotta keep them out of our military bases. Bad enough they are stealing our high tech jobs....

But gosh, that would have sucked if I had been from India. I couldn't have gone to Clare's birthday party.