a post for my brother...

My mom told me today that my brother (hi Craig!) got a kick out of the bathroom photos I posted and apparently he's reading my blog now so I'm going to share this with him via my blog.

On the toilets here, the flush handles turn either up or down as indicated by the arrows and kanji like so:

Today in our class we learned the kanji for big and little.  According to our sensai, big looks like a sumo wrestler and little looks like a fighter jet.  There fore, you turn the handle up toward the sumo wrestler for a "big flush" and down toward the fighter jet for a "little flush".  They're so clever over here!  Craig, I know you'll appreciate this!

WE HAVE A HOUSE!!!!!!

I am so freaking excited I have to share with the world!  We've only been in lodging a week and we already have a house!  They put us on the wait list based on when we left our last duty station (we've never lived on post before, so I don't know if this is normal or not) so we were at the top, but we heard of people waiting like 60 days so I am super excited about a week!  We have to go through all the ropes, so we don't move in until next week but I'm glad I have a date to look forward to.  We got super lucky and got a house that is way larger than we had ever anticipated, 3bdrm and 2.5 bath on the main post here where EVERYONE I've met so far lives, so it is exactly what we wanted and then some!  Plus we'll only have to get one car because everything is within walking distance.

I'm going to share all my dorkiness with you, here is a video tour of our empty house:

***************EDIT:  I decided to take the video's down********************

another update from Japan

Well we survived week 1 in Japan =)  1 week of no text messaging (this is like taking away oxygen for me!).  1 week of not speaking the native language.  1 week without a car.  1 week with no friends other than the husband (although there are at least 3 potential friendships in the making).  1 week of living in a hotel,  1 week of being away from Mr Puppers (the walk to see him is not one I'm willing to make everyday in this heat/humidity).  1 week without multiple daily phone calls to my mother.  1 week of people staring at me everywhere I go (for one of a million reasons).  1 week of AFN.  1 week of lots of mental math (meters to feet, Celsius to Fahrenheit, time zone chances, etc).  1 week of learning another culture/language/history. 1 week of our new life!

Sunday we went to church on post. 

It's going to be an adjustment, but I think it's a church we can learn to call home.  We arrived at a convenient time, as the new year of PWOC is about to start.  I'll have to miss week 1 due to head start (I'll talk about that in a minute) and week 2 due to an orientation (possibly, we're not sure if I have to attend this one or not) but for all intents and purposes, I'll be able to attend from the beginning.  We also made some potential friends while we were there which is always a plus.  The woman we met JUST volunteered for a similar position I was going to volunteer for in Okinawa when that is where we thought we were going.  I told her I'd be more than willing to help out as much as she wanted.  The spot is for a historian for the spouses association.  She basically is to attend every event and document it through photos, and some other ways I'm sure.  Tomorrow during lunch is the super sign up event so I plan on stopping by and finding out all the details.  The family we met took us to lunch at the golf course on post.  This post is apparently famous for their golf course.  EVERYONE talks about it around here!  Who knows, maybe I'll learn to golf while I'm here.  Random fact about eating out in Japan, you don't tip!  It's going to take me a while to get used to that one.  Oh, and tax is included, so if you buy something for 130 Yen, it's 130 Yen, which is nice, one less thing to have to calculate in my head!  Any who, after lunch, they were nice enough to drive us up to the kennel so we could see our dog.  He was super excited to see us, especially his daddy!

As we were getting out of the car, I thought it would be a good idea to shut my finger in the door!

So not cool and it makes a lot of things VERY difficult!  Like typing.  Try typing a sentence without using your right index finger...NOT EASY!  It's taking me entirely too long to type out this post!  And using chopsticks?!?!  Nearly impossible, but I managed! (ps. real Ramen is SOOOO good!!!!)

This was yesterday in Machida where we went in search of a 100 Yen store (Japan's version of a dollar store, but WAY larger and way better quality!) and the camera/electronics mega store (think 5 floors of Best Buy).  We went for cases for our new cell phones, but I was in camera lens heaven!  I managed to walk out empty handed, but my birthday is coming up...wink wink husband!

Today was the 1st day of our head start class.  Everyone who comes to this post must attend a 5 day course, to learn a little about the host country's history, language, customs, etc.  I guess this is unique to the Army and I'm not really sure why.  So far it's been a useful class.  We started learning the language today.  Once someone breaks it down for you, it's not nearly as complicated as it looks!

 (no that's not my BBF's cell number whited out, I wasn't texting her via email from my iphone during class! Not me!)

and later in the week we'll learn more of the language, how to use the train system (we're going on a day long field trip Friday), some history of the area, and some things to know about eating in Japan.  The teacher is Japanese and very easy to listen to/entertaining.  I've definitely sat through much more boring and less useful classes before!

Today I had to do some brain storming for dinner this week.  It's a big change going from a kitchen this size with almost every gadget known to man

to one this small with only one small pot, one pan, and no oven!

We're not people who can eat out 3 meals a day for weeks on end.  I also didn't want to have to buy lots of ingredients, so we'll be having tacos, keilbasa and saurkraut, and hamburger helper.  I can't wait to get into a house and be able to cook the way I like to!  I guess I should be grateful to have a kitchen at all huh?

Oh, on a completely random note (my husband couldn't believe I took photos of this...are you surprised?  I'm not!  Of course I took photos!), I had my 1st Japanese public bathroom experience yesterday!  I'd heard about the hole in the floor that you have to squat over and bring your own TP (thank God I've been getting my butt kicked at CrossFit the past months...those squats do have a purpose!), so I was somewhat prepared when I walked in and found this

however, I was completely surprised and relieved (pardon the pun) when I saw this in the next stall....I am SO glad I checked! Yay for an American toilet! (when in doubt, check near Mc Donalds!)

Days 3&4

So we decided to spend some time in Tokyo since we couldn't get anything accomplished on base over the 4 day weekend.  (Well, we did manage to get ourselves some iPhone4's since the local cell phone place on base doesn't close for the US holiday.  I'm kind of sad to say goodbye to my beloved crackberry.  I know a lot of people have problems with them, but I had a pretty solid love relationship with mine! Anyone want to buy a perfectly good Verizon BlackBerry Storm 2?  It doesn't work over here or I would keep it!) Oh, and with the 2 new iPhone contracts came 2 AAFES gift cards which resulted in the perfect little coin purse to hold my rail pass and Yen =)

We had about an hour train ride to our hotel in Tokyo (yay $58 hotel courtesy of the Navy).  We found the Tokyo rail system to be extremely simple to use.  Everything was written in Japanese and English and the signs are very clear. Way easier that the subway system in NYC!

I apparently only have shots of the train names in Japanese but you can see the name of the station written in English at the top and some instructions scrolling in English

Japan is famous for their vending machines, they're everywhere and sell everything!  I made Jason document my 1st time using one =) of course I bought a Coke!

We found a book store whose name was in English, so I was hopeful that they would have some books in English.  No such luck.  We did find a copy of Harry Potter in Japanese that we purchased in hopes of being able to read it one day

We chose this place for lunch, again hoping that since the sign was in English that they would at least have English menus or staff that speaks some English.  No English in the menus (but they did have pictures!) and our waitress spoke enough English to get us by!

The photo I pointed to was fried shrimp with a bunch of small portions on the side.  Those sides turned out to be spaghetti and tomato sauce, potato salad, tartar sauce and coleslaw ha ha.  Not the Japanese meal I was expecting but still good

 In order to get a room in the hotel we stayed at, we had to have dinner at the French restaurant in the hotel so we got a little dressed up

and after dinner, ordered banana's Foster which they made table side =)

then went to the Tokyo Tower

Jason liked standing on the glass floor more than I did!

Today we went to the fish market

even getting up at 6 am and getting there by 7, we'd missed all the action =(

We also found out that Shibuya Crossing is far less crowded at 10am on a Saturday than at night...I guess we have 3 years to go back and see it in all of it's glory

We found these fun signs in English on our way home

While we were out in Tokyo, one of the signs for the rail we wanted said 130m and had an arrow.  Jason pointed this out to me and I responded with I don't do meters so he told me it was about 140 yards.  My response?  "Oh, a touchdown and 4 1st downs, the sigh should just say that".  If only football could be the universal language, I'd be in great shape!  I'm already tired of doing math in my head.  Metric to Standard.  Celsius to Fahrenheit.  Dollars to Yen.  Tokyo time to Cincinnati time.  My brain is FRIED, I hate math!

Today, after we got back to CZ, we decided to get Subway for lunch but weren't sure exactly where it is on post, so we asked some guy walking by.  He said, sure, he'd show us the way and after a 5 minute walk, we realized he was walking us to the physical subway, not the sandwich shop...guess we have to learn to be more specific here!

Oh, it's hot here!  And insanely humid!  Everyone walks around with little towels to pat themselves with and I need one bad! And one of those cute fans.  Yep, those are both on my to purchase list!  I saw quite a few people walking around with masks on, like the kind doctors wear.  I haven't figured out if it's because they have germs they don't want to spread or if they're afraid of catching other peoples germs.  Either way, it makes me feel dirty, like I need to be wearing one.

I have so much to learn about this country and I can't wait, I'm loving soaking it all up so far.  The MWR here is way more active than at any other base we've been at.  They sponsor trips pretty much every weekend and Jason and I plan on going on a lot of them.

Now it's time for bed, trying out the church on base tomorrow...hopefully it goes better than at our last base!

PS, any iPhone users have any app recommendations?  Any must haves?  I'm clueless!

Days 1&2

I really want to tell you all about our 1st couple days, but I really want to sleep, so I'm going to copy and paste the emails I sent my mom and edit it just a bit.

Day 1
Ugh, that flight felt like eternity! They kept waking us up to feed us (3 meals in 10 hours!?!?! I eat a lot, but it's the middle of the night, let me sleep!) The guy who came to pick us up from the airport this morning was not prepared for all the stuff we had with us. We were going to have to leave some of our stuff behind and have someone go get it later in the week but they wouldn't let us leave it there. Luckily, we had met a woman in Seattle who was also headed to Camp Zama and she had tons of extra room in her car so we piled our stuff in and all took off toward CZ (Melissa, I don't know if you'll ever see this, but you are a lifesaver!). We all met back at our temporary lodging a couple hours later and then we had to go take buster to the kennel because he isn't allowed in the hotel. She offered to drive us but Jason wanted to walk him there since he'd been cooped up for so long so she left. Well 10 minutes later we were told we couldn't even keep his cage in our hotel room with us so we had to call her back and ask her to drive us up to the kennel with the cage. She was super nice about it and very helpful. Then we had lunch at the golf course here and got a PO Box (it will be our address the whole time we're here) and got on the housing list. The housing we're supposed to get (2bd 1 bath) has a long wait list of Jr Enlisted so they're putting us on the list for a 3bd ?bath house and we are #2 so it shouldn't be long at all. I'm not holding my breath though but I will be pumped if we get a 3 bdrm! We just had dinner at the community club on post. Mongolian BBQ, YUM! We were able to pretty much walk everywhere we needed to go today which is a big change for us, but it was nice. So far the base seems ok. A little old, but it seems pretty efficient and everyone is super friendly. Now I'm going to go lay down while Jason toughs it out and tries to stay awake a little longer!(he fell asleep before I did!) Tomorrow we will finally meet our sponsor (he's been out doing a field exercise for the past week and a half) and get started on our in processing. We haven't seen much of Japan other than on our drive from Yokota AB where our plane landed to Camp Zama, but we'll tell you more when we get a car and can get out exploring.

Day 2
Walked to the commissary and almost cried! 4 AISLES?!?!?!? You cannot possibly stock everything I want in 4 aisles! I have some serious adjusting to do! Apparently there is another commissary that is a little larger in the other housing area so that should be helpful. We started getting Jason checked in today. The base has a 4 day weekend so we can't get much else accomplished now. And next week, all week, we have an orientation class that teaches us some basic Japanese and their customs and stuff then on the 14th we have the driving test and the 15-16th, another orientation class so we won't be all checked in until the end of the month. We went to visit Mr Puppers today and I cried. He didn't even get up when we walked in, he just laid there with his sad face. It was so hard to leave him there! I really hope we get into a house soon! I can't keep going back to see him like that!  Tonight we finally met our sponsor. He drove us to a town near by where we met his Japanese girlfriend and went to an authentic Japanese Ramen place. Thank God she was with us because EVERYTHING was in Japanese and you just order from a machine and someone brings it to you.

The machine

My meal

(I'm glad those both turned out decent, I have no clue about any of their customs yet and didn't want to be the rude American so I shot without really looking at them! Gah!  I just noticed my chopsticks were sticking in my bowl and I know that is a NO NO...oops!  Guess I am a rude American anyways!)

Since we can't do anything around here for the next 4 days we're going to Tokyo tomorrow. We were able to get a hotel room there tomorrow night for only $55. Hopefully there are some restaurants in English there or we might be in trouble!  Ha, who am I kidding, I hope we can figure out the train system to get us there!

I'm off to get some sleep so I can be functioning on all cylinders in the morning.  Wish us luck/say a prayer for us!  I'll post again when we get back =)