Moving In

The big news is. . we just got our internet hooked up today, so we can start being consistently in touch again! We moved into our tower last Friday, and it was a huge blessing because both of our shipments had already arrived so we actually moved in with everything that we get to live with for the next few years! By the end of the weekend we felt pretty settled. We still have some pieces of government furniture that need to be returned, as the place felt overrun with dressers. We felt good that we were able to find a place for everything and I feel like our place feels pretty open right now. We have a great lit up view at night past our tree line of a few high rise type places, and a big building that says "JUMBO" on it with dancing lights that change color. I think it might be a Pachinko parlor (like pinball gambling, although gambling is illegal here). 

Unpacking felt a bit like Christmas. I wasn't really watching the guys when they were packing in CA, so it was funny to uncover what they felt necessary to wrap individually in 6-8 sheets of large paper so as not to have to pay damages when it broke. Some things wrapped individually:

-2 almost gone rolls of packing tape, which belonged to the mover

-a plastic Spurs cup

-a dirty kitchen rag

-Elmer's glue and glitter

-cupcake liners and a chip clip

-one lonely sock

Hilarious! Perhaps not so surprisingly given their thoroughness, we didn't find anything broken, although we did end up with 5 missing boxes, and we can't figure out what was in them. There is a store on base that will mix your paint, so once we have some paint on the walls and the extra furniture moved out, I'll update with "final" pictures. Living here the past few days has made me feel like I'm living in a dorm again, but with kids. I'm pretty sure the places were built in the same year in the 60's, except ours has really thick concrete walls and an elevator. The building kind of smells and there's big potential for mold growth here, but like any place I know it will have become home by the time we leave. 

Random Pics

OK, OK, I STILL haven't done a good job of taking pictures here, because we haven't hit up a lot of touristy areas, and I don't really see other people whipping out cameras at restaurants, so my words will have to do for now. Soon, though! Just as soon as I'm brave enough to venture off the 58, our main thoroughfare between bases, I will take pictures of some "culture". :) 
 Did I tell you we now own 2 cars? J. in the '96 Odyssey is below. Our other one is a 3 door Mitsubishi RVR. I won't make you jealous and tell you that our hotel bills from 3 1/2 weeks was just less than what we paid for both cars combined. Used cars run cheap around here, but you have to pay big sums for inspections every 2 years and you have to fix what they want fixed, so maybe that will make the cost even out eventually.

Already after a few outings, we can feel it might not be the best pick for outings, nor is the 4 seater small SUV-type car he got, as it's not much shorter or narrower. Already we've scraped the remade bumper on the Honda multiple times pulling U-turns, had ladies glaring at us as we pulled into their lane trying to get into parking lots, and just the other night, almost got stuck in an alley between a lightpole and a house. The only sedan-type cars I've seen over here have American drivers. The Japanese are smart enough to drive cars that fit into their parking spaces - lots and lots of box cars with short fronts and no trunk. We may be in for a trade already!
Anyway, We decided to go south towards Naha the other night for dinner. A. fell asleep in the car so we drove around and pulled into a couple places, but didn't feel quite ready to "go for it" at places with absolutely no English on the menu. Lo and behold, we find written in English -"Jimmy's- Island Restaurant, Grill and Bakery" I'd seen an ad for the bakery part and thought it looked good so we went for it. "Jimmy's" introduced us to our first Japanese-style buffet. Meal presentation is really big over here, from what we've heard and seen already. Instead of regular round plates, we ate off white square plates split into 9 trays. Most of the food we chose from was already portioned off in it's own tiny box - a bite of squid, 2 bites of meatloaf. It was actually pretty classy and the food was pretty great for a buffet, enough American to make us feel at home. 
A. was feeling sick the whole time though, so I had to take her to the bathroom 3 times. We were left staring at 2 doors on the first trip - should we choose the one with the RED circle and triangle or the door with the BLACK circle and triangle? Behind the red door was peachy tile, so we hurried into a stall and I told her to be quiet in case a man walked in. :) She was moaning and groaning at the table so I tried to tell her that she'd have to wear a mask like the people next to us if she was loud, and that we didn't have a mask (yet), so she should quiet down. D. responded by pulling down the fake plant from the ledge beside us. . .I'm not sure if it's because they are very aware of their close quarters, but you see people with masks over their mouths everywhere you look, which is actually very smart and considerate and something we probably all should do when we have colds. Here they are used to it and no one seems to even notice. To tie this up, We think A. might have had food poisoning over our entire move-in weekend. We contemplated taking her to the hospital multiple times, but her stomach pains came and went and now they're gone. On Saturday night, all 4 of us plus the body pillow ended up in our bed. We don't have blinds on our big windows yet, and when we moved in we discovered that we do actually have an ocean view from our bedroom. Not a great one, but we can see water (through some power plant nets)! Anyway, it's been nice to wake up to the sun peeking out from above the adjacent tower. 

This was in front of the hotel that we stayed at for our first 2 weeks "on island" as they say. 

D. liked crawling on the grass while waiting for Daddy to come get us with our "new" car!

Just happy to be out of a hotel room!

Geography

You don't realize how important geography is until, well, you look at a map. We heard our first tsunami warning this week over the loudspeakers, and J. dropped what he was doing to come straight back to our hotel, which is on high ground. They had only briefed us on typhoons in our newcomer's brief, so we assumed that if we were in danger, someone would move us to a safer place. Still, we knew our island was only 4-12 miles wide and what we were seeing on TV while everyone in America was sleeping did not look good. We watched all the Japanese stations, but obviously didn't know what they were saying, and the American news was no help because they were already focused on our west coast. The one radio station on the island is in Japanese, and the military station just kept playing their music. We looked out our hotel window at the East China Sea until it was dark, but praised God that we couldn't see any obvious changes to our water from a mile away. We went to bed devastated that you all would wake up to this, and maybe also (greedily?) at peace feeling that we were safe from this terror. 

We live on the Ryukyu Islands - did they even draw our tiny specks? Our island seems REALLY small when compared to the size of mainland Japan. 

Lots of important countries over here. Our military was working hard alongside the Japanese immediately after the tsunami. J's office worked through the nights this weekend to get guys where they needed to be. 

We live just a bit north of Naha, closer to Urasoe, on the East China Sea side. 

From our island of Okinawa, it is:
385 m. to Taipei, Taiwan
514 m. to Shanghai, China
540 m. to Fukuoka, Japan
620 m. to Busan, South Korea
634 m. to Hiroshima, Japan
891 m. to Pyongyang, North Korea
894 m. to Hong Kong
970 m. to Tokyo
1135 m. to Sendai, Japan
and 
6554 miles to San Diego, California




"The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much."  James 5:16 

The Tower

We were given 2 options for housing, so we had to decide between a slight ocean view from the bedroom or a nice park view from the living and bedrooms. The 2 friends we know live in the "park view" tower, and that's the one we ended up choosing. We'll be on the 4th floor out of 9, and I learned after this weekend that floors 1-4 are always evacuated during tsunami warnings since we're really close to the water.  I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of space, and slightly bummed that we weren't offered places with kitchen windows (like the ones I'd seen in my friends' places). Guess I just won't spend as much time in the kitchen! On the other hand, maybe I'll spend more time there because the washer and dryer are actually right next to the fridge, so as soon as the little angels stain their clothes with food, I should be very inclined to clean it right away. The look of the place will take some getting used to, but hopefully once we get some rugs down and a little paint on the walls it will feel less like a sterile hospital ward and more like home! The base we live on is different from the base J. will work at, but he's made the drive without traffic in about 10 minutes. We heard it can take a lot longer during peak times, so we'll see! A. is excited to live in a tower like a princess. Maybe we'll act out Rapunzel everyday and Daddy can climb up to our balcony to rescue us and take us to dinner. :) Come visit us! The building's so old that there is no elevator, so you'll get your exercise. 

 Just kidding, A. has already gotten very good at pressing elevator buttons. 

Okinawa Soba & Baskin Robbins

We decided to be adventurous and try venturing out for dinner on our own! The girl at the front desk gave us directions to Okinawa Soba. We ate Japanese style for the first time, taking off our shoes and stepping up to the tatami mats (I think that's what they're called) and sitting on the floor, which we could get used to because we just sat D. on the floor next to us while we ate. I had an uncooked slab of fatty bacon on top of my noodles (yum :), and J. had tender spare ribs on his. A. was happy with her rice bowl and very tiny chair she got to sit on. We are frantically trying to learn our basic Japanese phrases so we don't look so ignorant. We pointed at the menu items we wanted (They gave us the special English menu, luckily), smiled and said "Domo arigato" a lot, and were ready to pay with our yen. We feel like it's a good deal going out to eat here, because there is no tax and they don't tip. Woo hoo! Of course, we're not getting near as much for our dollar, but we'll still pretend like we're coming out on top. 

Soba noodles look like this, and taste kind of like Ramon! The pork was extremely tender. 

After dinner, we drove around to find some dessert, and happened upon Baskin Robbins! They had some really different flavors that we didn't get around to trying. A. and I shared Hazelnut Chocolate, and J. got a sundae. :) The inside was really nice, not all dingy and fluorescent like in the states. The workers looked really professional too, with cute blue hats and fitted striped blue shirts. We can't wait to go back and try some more exotic flavors!

This is what the inside looked like. Super clean and modern.

First Week

Just before going through security in Seattle - 9 hours of travelling already with 23 to go!

Our travels did end up taking quite a long time - 32 hours from the time we walked into the airport in SD to the time we stepped off the plane in Okinawa. All the stewardesses on the plane just thought that A & D were so well-behaved, and we were very thankful to be holding the only baby that never screamed once over the entire 32 hours! Our first view of Japan was flying over Mount Fuji, which was just beautiful in the early morning sunlight and completely covered in snow. 

We've been seeing the same people all week, as we're all car-less, homeless, jet-lagged and staying at the same hotel. :) Yesterday was the day of freedom, though, as after our newcomer's brief, we all took our driving test and were issued our new licenses. We are now the proud owners of a '96 Honda Odyssey, although it has a much smaller body that what you'd find in the states. It's probably one of the biggest cars on the road here, though. We feel like we're turning into the opposite lane every time we travel. J already tried to take out a whole line of cars when he turned onto the right side of the road, then reversed quickly, barely missing a bus! Luckily he was on base, alone, and after the other drivers got over their initial fright, they gave him looks of pity and knowing half-smiles. The maximum speed limit here is 60 kph, and most of the roads we'll drive it's 50 kph (about 37 mph), so hopefully that will make us feel safer on the skinny roads. 

Hopefully by the end of the week we'll have a place to live. We haven't taken many pictures yet because we've only been out a couple times with our sponsors.  Lots more will be coming soon when we're brave enough to venture out on our own!

Just some random stores. . can't tell you what's in them. . yet :)

Their movie tickets cost about 1,600 Yen (about $18!). I didn't think anything could be more expensive than CA. :)