Day 12- INDEX (End-exercise)

Today we ended our exercise at around 8am.  We had a running pool on when the exercise would end and as it happens, I won.  In fact I guessed the date and time to the minute.  I'm a bit bummed because this means that we need to pick up leave.  Tomorrow we all load up on buses and go to our home stations.  The experience here is one that I will look back favorably and remember all of the soldiers that I worked with.
The only thing that hasn't changed is the stupid stuff we need to do to clear an installation.  Once we picked up our equipment and cleaned up our tent we were allowed to go off post.  I quickly made it back to my tent and changed into my civilian clothes.  I was looking forward to see more of Japan, at least in a 100 KM radius.  Leaving by 10am today would allow me to really get a quick tour of the area.  But, it always gets messed up when it comes to army "tours."  One bad apple spoils the lot.  I met up with my buddies and we headed out to the CQ to sign out of post.  Unfortunately, we waited and waited and waited with no word on when we could leave base.  BUMMER!!!!
It's 17:49 hours right now and we still are locked down.Which means I've been waiting for 7 plus hours with no indication of when we can have some small liberty.  I'm suspicious that we are locked down because the active duty bubbas don't want to risk having 4,000 plus guardsmen go into town and cause an international issue.  Unfortunately, we've had a couple of "incidents" already but I'm not sure if they were guard soldiers or if they were active soldiers.  In any case, I'm pissed that we can't leave this post.
Earlier today, I was able to exchange gifts with some of the Japanese Defense Army soldiers and tonight there is a bilateral social/dinner. I'm taking more gifts just in case.
Tomorrow we load up and I won't be able to blog for at least a couple of days.
This has been an awesome, once in a lifetime experience for a national guard soldier from Kansas.  I'm proud to have represented The Kansas National Guard and The US Army in this exercise.  I will take back many memories of a country I only read about.

This is Major Bob Arteaga, signing off from Yama Sakura 59.