Hangover Monday
The last time I had this draggy type feeling, I was in Japan after a night out. I was on a strange schedule called 2-2-2-80, which meant we worked two 8 hour mornings, two 8 hour evenings, two 8 hour mids, and then eighty hours off. I always had this draggy feeling before the first midwatch. My body never adjusted with this schedule.
Also we drank like fishes there. It helped just a little to reset the clock for the next shift. I did this watch for an entire year and a half. Then for six months I was offered a job that was a normal 5 day week. I jumped at it.
It was those days in Japan that I learned my limits when it came to alcohol. I had known before that experience that I got really woozy on two beers. Anything more and I was a really happy drunk. I do remember dancing on tables and bars.
I was lighter then-- so it did happen. The three things I used to do to keep going was drink, dance, and drive. Sometimes on my 40 hours off, I would get into my car and drive around Northern Honshu island. I would take pictures of the ocean, the roads, the trees, the birds, and the bars. One fishing village I found on the upper coast had a small temple on a hill. It was a temple for seagulls. People would go up there and feed them. You couldn't walk anywhere around that little temple without running into one of the birds. They were huge and squabbling and expected handouts. I felt lucky that I got out of there with just a little poop in my hair and on my car.
There were little temples everywhere. Sometimes I would walk down a path and there would be a small altar at the end of it. I was told that that one was to a young woman who had killed herself. It kept her ghost appeased so that it wouldn't go after the young men. We have interesting ghost stories and many of ours are benign, but the Japanese ghosts are terrifying. I suppose that is why they build so many of these altars.
But to get back to alcohol, it was in Japan that I learned that I had a head for Sake and I had a reaction to their liquor. I was told by some of my harder drinking friends that Sake was like being kicked in the head. It just makes me happy. I hadn't had Sake in years when my brother took me to a Sushi place in Las Vegas. I can still drink Sake-- it makes me giggly and I don't get a headache afterwards.
My Japanese liquor experience? It was embarrassing to the extreme. We usually went to this little bar offbase that the Marines loved. They would sing "Free Fallin'" with a drink in hand. I would get a Chuhia. This one night the Chuhai went down, gurgled, and came back up. First drink by the way. One of the young men with me dragged me home and settled me by the toilet with water. It was a really bad night. And, everything that came back up was black. Definitely something I won't forget.
The young man checked on me the next day. I had the hangover from hell that lasted a few days.
So this morning is not so bad. I'll have some coffee and I'll drink more water. Maybe remember Japan.