Gratuitous Food and Shopping Post No.1

Since I can't bring myself to write about what is actually happening this week (the car registration process and moving into house process while Adam is gone) (so help me, Navy, I will get even with you one day), I will write about something way more fun: food and shopping!!!

This will probably be the first of many posts on this subject since it's one of my favorites and since I know that I have only scratched the surface of all there is to eat and buy in this country.

First, shopping! OK, so one of my favorite stores EVER is H&M. Bargain shopping, yet totally on trend at any given moment. It is the best of all worlds. I first discovered it when I lived in Germany after college and was SO excited when I moved to NYC and found that they inhabited many street corners there as well. I loved shopping there so much and have missed it ever since I left. Well, about 6 months before I moved from NYC, there opened in SoHo something almost equally as marvelous as H&M - a store called Uniqlo. I had no idea what this new, wonderful place was, but I was smitten at once. Soft t-shirts in every color and cut, adorable rain coats, trendy purses, even sleepwear... and just as inexpensive as H&M. Well, guess what? Uniqlo, as it turns out, is the JAPANESE version of H&M. Holla! And guess what else? There is one within walking distance of this base here in Yokosuka. It's in the main train station.

Check out below the tiny white square with a red square in it. That's it!

Holla once more!!! While this might not be the best news Adam has ever heard, it is definitely making me do some cheers of glee. I haven't been inside yet because I feel that I might lose my mind immediately if I did. I am going to wait until A & J are in school before I head in there. I need total concentration for that experience!

Next up: 100 Yen stores. Adam tried to tell me about how glorious these places are, but I didn't really believe it till I saw it. These are, in theory, the same thing as the "dollar stores" in the US. However! The stuff you can get there is WAY more exciting than what you can get at the Dollar Tree, let me tell you... dishes, utensils, stationary, gift wrap, household items, snacks, organizational tools... and it's all packaged up so cute. And the stores, themselves, are delightful mazes of brightly colored adorable things that I feel I must have immediately:

Below is one of two lunchbox and utensil sets I got at the 100yen store for the boys to take with them to preschool (they start October 16th!!!). How is it that it is all so cute?! And I am so sure there are chopsticks in there!

All right... FOOD! I love Japanese food in general. I love sushi, I love gyoza, I love udon, ramen, yakisoba... etc. So I have been really excited to try any and everything here. We have discovered 2 great places so far that have totally hit the spot for us.

The most important one is the belt sushi place within walking distance of base! Belt sushi is always great because of the instant gratification of taking what you want as soon as you see it. But the place we have been going to has 2 added bonuses: 1) it's super cheap - about 120 yen (less than $2) per plate; AND it has a ridiculously high-tech digital screen where you can special order things. You press what you want and how many plates. When it comes out, a song plays, lights flash, and it arrives on a special boat on the belt. Do you have any idea how much fun this is for 3 year old boys (and me)?!

(You can also order ice cream, obviously.)

The other place we have gone to more than once is a restaurant with a giant menu - you can get grilled stuff, sushi, yakiniku (korean bbq), etc. And it has pictures so you can just point to things rather than trying to actually communicate. Of course we had to get something from every single page:

And finally, a few things that have been great to see here because they bring familiarity to what is otherwise basically an alien planet:

1) Starbucks! They have menus in English, and there is one AROUND THE CORNER from our new place. YES!!! That, alone, might have been reason enough to rent that place.

2) I should have expected this one, considering the huge mutual love between Hawaii and Japan, but it was definitely a surprise when I noticed the storefront: there is a Leonard's malasada place here. Malasadas are, from what I can tell, a specialty of Hawaii, even though they are originally Portuguese. (???) They are somewhere between a donut and a beignet, and Leonard's is the main seller of them in Hawaii. They are so good that one time I made Adam cross 4 lanes of traffic to get off the interstate in order to force my parents and brother to eat them from the Leonard's truck in a shopping mall parking lot. At 10 PM. Anyway, they are here, and that is dangerous!

Now that I'm hungry, I am going to go see what is in the fridge. Then off to sleep so I can face tomorrow....

Yahooooooooo!

I am too zonked to write tonight, but I do want to post one thing...

Ahem. Drum roll, please...

I am now officially allowed to drive in the country of Japan!

Woo hoooooooo!

Watch out, citizens of Japan, cause I'm on the road now.

Now I just have to get through the horror of registering a car here...

Rainy Day

If there is one thing that strikes terror in my heart, even under the best of circumstances, it's a rainy day. A good 75% of my day is usually spent outside in some way trying to find ways in which to burn off all the excess energy produced by the 2 toddlers I live with. Fortunately for us, the weather during the first two weeks of our stay here has been great. Hot and humid, but no rain in sight. There is also a small playground right outside the door of the Navy Lodge, so even if we didn't have a busy day planned, we could at least get outside and let A & J run around.

When Adam left yesterday for a week in Tampa (thank you, US Navy. I stand in awe of your organizational prowess and common sense), I had my game face on and was mentally coaching myself about how I could handle the next week without him ---- a week that is probably going to be one of my most challenging yet in terms of logistics, paperwork, and Japanese red tape. But at least I knew I had the weekend to explore and get my bearings before having to dive into all of the business of the week.

It started off great! The boys rode in the stroller to the commissary, and we loaded up on everything we would need to make it through the week. They even walked back so I could push the stroller filled with groceries. No problem! After we unloaded, we went outside for the rest of the day. We finished up with a little "Cars" on DVD, and they were out by 7:30. I stayed up late organizing paperwork and drinking beer, congratulating myself on making it through the day. I worked out the trains we would need to take today in order to make it over to the aquarium in Enoshima, which looks like it might be the best thing since Sea World. I was looking forward to a day of taking the boys on their first train rides and tiring them out trekking through the aquarium looking at fish.

Around 9:00 I started hearing rain. A lot of rain. I looked out the window and saw what appeared to be a monsoon. I thought, "OK, maybe it will all be done by tomorrow." I went to sleep around 11:00 still hearing it... and woke up to the same thing at 6:00 this morning. I narrowed my eyes and thought, stubbornly, "This is not ruining my day!"

I tried. I REALLY tried to get to that aquarium.

We left around 8:20 and waited for the bus outside the lodge. The bus arrived. It dropped us off at the gate closest to the train station we would need to use. (There are 2 train lines in this area, and they use separate stations, although occasionally you can find a station that has transfers between the two lines.) I had one umbrella between the 3 of us, naturally, and the boys were wearing their only shoes, the velcro ones.

We sloshed over to that gate. It was closed. Apparently it is closed on weekends. Now I know. We turned around. We sloshed to the main gate. By this point, the boys were completely soaked, and I was getting there. I decided to take a taxi to the train station that houses the other train line, because I remembered that there was a mall of some kind there, so I thought I would try to get them some rain shoes. That mall was closed. We walked into that train station, and I tried to figure out how to get from there to the aquarium. I couldn't figure it out. We took a train anyway that had a stop near (or what appeared to be "near" on the map I have) the original train station so that we could start from scratch, finally. It was not as near as I thought.

What I found, instead, was a mall that was actually open. So we went in, and I found the Japanese equivalent of "Bounce House". I said, "I give up. Boys, go play." For 500 yen (about $6) each, they got to do this for an unlimited amount of time:

After I decided I was done worrying about whether or not they were going to crush Japanese children half their size (who were probably twice their age), I said, "Come on, boys, let's go get outfitted for stomping around in the rain." This resulted in:

Then we braved the weather once again and walked back onto base. We waited for a bus while the boys drank their beloved cherry drinks.

I discovered that a theater on base was playing "Ice Age," so we took the bus there. I bought them popcorn, and we settled our damp selves into the dark theater for what I hoped would be 2 hours of zoning out. The boys lasted an hour. We then trekked back to the Lodge, where it is now 4 PM. They are playing on iPhones, and I am obsessively looking at the weather channel. It says it will be sunny tomorrow. I am hoping for the best. But I have my game face on, just in case.

Chopsticks

This week we are taking our AOB course. That stands for Area Orientation Brief. It's required for everyone just arriving on this base. It lasts an entire week, and includes topics such as Japanese History, Culture Shock, Sumo and other Japanese arts, Using Japanese Trains, Language, Table Manners, and of course it covers all the activities on base we can participate in like the gym, swimming lessons, martial arts, etc.

Here is a shot of the martial arts demonstration. That is a Japanese Kendo teacher and one of the Navy dudes (in the armor!!!) getting his ass kicked:

The entire week has been completely fascinating! Learning about the history and culture has been so interesting. I feel like I could explore the country for the next 10 years and still never learn all there is to know.

However, my biggest take-away so far is that there are about 1,000 ways in which you can insult a Japanese person and yet you will never know it if you've done it because they are so stoic and polite! This is, in itself, fascinating and is just one of the ways they are so different from us. I mean, if you make someone mad in America, you will pretty much know it right away, even if the person tries to pretend they are not mad. But here? Probably not! I could think about just this aspect of this country for days it is so fascinating to me. This is also somewhat scary considering we are all probably walking around insulting people left and right without realizing it.

Take bowing, for instance. Apparently you are not supposed to actually look the person in the eye when you bow. This is a grave insult. Unless you are a Sumo wrestler or are doing Kendo, in which case you MUST look your opponent in the eye when you bow. Also, you must return a bow at the same level or lower? Otherwise that is disrespectful.

Oh, and the gift giving. We are supposed to go over to our neighbors' when we move into our new house (we move on October 2nd, by the way!) and present them with a gift. However, it can't be TOO big of a gift because otherwise that person feels obligated to give a gift back and then you end up giving gifts endlessly to each other. And don't EVER open the gift in front of the person who gives it to you. Or tear the paper of the packaging. Or throw the paper (the paper!) away in front of the giver. Insults! The lot of them!

Also, Japanese carry around name cards with them that they trade when they meet people. (This is SO 1950's South to me!) There is a specific order you are supposed to go in when you introduce yourself: say the Japanese phrase for, "Hello, I am Shelley, it's nice to meet you," then bow, then hand the card with both hands to the person. If someone gives you a card, you must take it with both hands, and don't fold it, for god's sake! That means you are rejecting their card. And don't put it in your pocket. Either hold it respectfully or put it into your special card carrying case. (Purchase these at the local dollar store!)

And the chopsticks! This one is really good. There are 2 things you must NEVER do with chopsticks: 1) leave them sticking straight out of your rice bowl, and 2) pass food between one set of chopsticks and another. Both of these things are things they do during funerals. WHAT?!

Oh, and you are supposed to be mostly silent (no talking, yelling, talking on the phone, etc) when you are on the trains. They are going to LOVE me when I travel with the boys, let me tell you what.

But again, you will never know you are offending them because they basically just stare straight ahead and don't acknowledge any of these things when you do them. And I'm sure there are so many more things than this that I don't know!!! I have probably offended the entire country by now, and I've only been here 2 weeks.

Anyway, after I take this driving test I'm going to have to study up on all these things so I can try to be a polite citizen!

In closing, here is a Japanese lady in the restaurant we went to yesterday who is probably offended:

House Hunting

OK, I think I'm ready to talk about the house, now that we have actually found one. Warning: this could get long, so you may want to get a cocktail or snack if you plan on being here for the long haul.

All righty....

It has been a hot, sweaty, and exhausting week, but somehow in a good way. All of these challenges are partly fun, because it's so interesting to me to see how differently things are done in other parts of the world. In addition, the boys have been sleeping like champs every night thanks to us walking them around all day long in the ridiculous heat and humidity. BONUS! So while this has all been one long sun-blasted week, I feel pretty good about where things stand right now.

First, we finally found a lovely house to rent that I am so excited about. Here are photos: http://www.japanbases.com/housing/viewproperty/type/view/id/3128/3ldkloft-usui-home-in-ikego.aspx

It is a decidedly Western house. The owner is Japanese, but he spent time in England and put a lot of Western touches into the house ---- there are regular doors with knobs (most Japanese doors are the sliding variety), there is an OVEN (Japanese homes do not have ovens, ever), the walls and floors are all very sturdy, hard wood; and, there are no tatami rooms.

Tatami are the mats that line some of their floors in special rooms of Japanese homes. They are usually multi-purpose rooms, but the mats are somewhat fragile, and the doors leading to the rooms are as well, as they are made of paper divided into sections by lightweight wooden frames.

We had originally been looking at traditional Japanese homes, but after Jackson poked a hole in the paper door leading into a tatami room in one place we were looking at, we realized maybe that wasn't the best idea. I mean, the boys would have torn those paper doors down in about 2 seconds flat, let's face it.

Here are a few pictures of tatami rooms from some of the houses we looked at:

There are 3 things about the house we decided on that are definitely Japanese: 1) it's small by Western standards; 2) there is no yard or outdoor space, and 3) the bathroom(s) ---- in Japanese homes the toilets are always in a room by themselves, and there is a separate room with a bathtub and a showering floor NEXT to the bathtub. The sink is in another room altogether.

And a kitchen with no oven!!!

 
Anyway, I am so excited about the place we found, and the challenges along the way have been laughable already. The main thing that has been a challenge is not having a car. This base here is enormous - so big that there is actually a bus that goes around it all day. (This has been both convenient and also a good form of entertainment for the tiny terrors, who have never been on a bus before.) However, sometimes the bus doesn't actually come at the time that would get us where we need to be on time. So then there is a lot of walking...

Some of the real estate agents in town are able to drive onto base, and some are not. (Meaning, some have permits to do so and some do not.) So if you are using a company who cannot come get you on base, you have to make your way into town and meet them somewhere. We do not have a stroller yet (we sold our awful ones back in Washington before we moved), but we do have the car seat dollies that the boys love to push around. (We also had to bring the car seats anyway since we were riding around in cars with the agents.)

This is all great until 2 days ago when Adam had to go to the bank, and the boys are with me and decide they don't want to walk anymore. This is, naturally, at the same time I have to meet an agent at the front of base, and the bus won't get there until 20 minutes after we need to be there. So of course I decide to walk and pull the boys in their strollers on the dollies. (This is an attractive sight, let me tell you.) Then what happens? No big deal, Jackson's wheel just breaks off and we are stranded on the sidewalk with a broken wheel and 2 boys who ain't going anywhere.

Fortunately, there were some angels smiling upon me - a very nice stranger walked up and said, "how can i help?" and ended up putting Anthony in her stroller while Jackson pulled one car seat and I carried the other one on my back. (Thank you, Jackson, for being stalwart; this totally makes up for the $100 hole in the paper door.) Then when I didn't think it could get any more absurd, the angel with the stroller flagged down a nice Japanese man in a truck and ended up getting us a ride the rest of the way! By the time we met up with that real estate agent we were pretty much delirious, hot, sweaty messes. But already laughing about our ride in the truck.

And finally, before I go to sleep, here is a young, sweaty son with dreams, drinking a Japanese cherry soft drink of some sort. Sometimes that's all it takes to make him happy!

Cell Phones, Cars, and Houses, OH MY!

So lots of things are somewhat challenging here, in terms of logistics and red tape. The Navy walks you through most of them if you ask around and/or take the right classes upon arrival, but in the end you're on your own to actually make it happen around here.

Our first challenge arrived the day after we did. We decided to go ahead and get cell phones on our first full day here so that we could more easily hunt for houses and cars, and communicate with each other when needed. Our sponsors volunteered to go with us and monitor the boys while we shopped. (crazy people!) So we set out with intrepid hearts, leaving the security of base behind and heading into the great unknown of urban Japan. After wandering around for awhile with mouths hanging open at all the lights, brightly colored candy and clothing stores, and people riding bikes and vespas all over the sidewalk as well as the street, we wandered into what appeared to be a cell phone store. Just kidding, this is just the accessory store. Turn around and wander around some more till we finally find it. We arrived, and there were 2 English-speaking employees there. Score!

Apparently there are a million different ways you can end up being charged thousands of dollars by your Japanese cell phone company. There seemed to be one guy in the store whose sole purpose was to explain all of these ways to the 5 Americans in the store trying to buy phones. We had to sit attentively in chairs while he went down a list and made us check each item off dutifully after making sure we understood. This took approximately one hour. The other hour was spent having the other English speaking employee explain the contract to us. She could have told us anything, really, I mean let's face it. We probably promised them Jackson at the end of the 2-year contract. We won't ever know until someone comes to collect in 2 years. She did also kindly download lots of free apps for us so that we can communicate with people in the states, so there's that.

(Meanwhile, of course, Anthony was throwing a fit in the corner and Jackson was pouring entire bottles of water out on the floor of the store. GOOD TIMES!)

However, we did persevere and left the store with shiny new phones. They are great except that I have to navigate through the Japanese keyboard till I get to the English one, and some of the keys are in different places when I do finally get to the English one, but beggars can't be choosers, I guess.

Next up: a car. We went over to the "lemon lot" on base, because we had decided to buy a used car and then sell it before leaving in 2 years. This is a common practice, so you can usually find a car for less than $3,000 and sell it for about the same when you leave. People just keep passing around cars. This is all fine and dandy, except that you can't actually buy a car unless you can prove that you have a parking space, somewhere, which usually means having an address of some sort. You also can't buy a car unless you have your driver's license, which is going to be a big deal for me next week when I go to take that test, right? So what do we do? Oh nothing, just fork over a "deposit" to a nice gentleman in order to "hold" a car with the promise to come back to collect the car after we get all that other inconvenient stuff taken care of.

I will report next week on whether the nice gentleman is ever heard from again, whether the car is the same one we told him we wanted to buy, and if it does still exist, whether it is in the same condition we saw it in this week. Crossing fingers...

We are still in the middle of the house hunt, so I can't even begin to describe it at this point. I'll just say that Jackson already poked a hole in the paper door leading to a tatami room today (goodbye, $100...) and that the parking spaces I mentioned above are about big enough to fit 1 Smart Car. Will report more after we actually secure a house.

On a very bright note, you can actually get some great grub at convenience stores here. Please witness gyoza and some kind of sesame beef goodness purchased for less than $10 on our way back from house hunting tonight (bud light with lime and red hook TOTALLY necessary at the end of the day):

And finally, here are some tired souls:

(I told Adam to "look tired" but he gave me "angry." I was, in fact, too tired to make him do it again.)

GOOD NIGHT!!!!!

And... We're Off!

So flying has always been tons of fun to me. I love the idea of being on the way somewhere, sort of in limbo with no responsibilities that I can really tend to at the moment. I always love picking out which books and magazines to bring, drinking ginger ale, and zoning out, not really talking to anyone (I hate chatty plane neighbors!), and generally relaxing.

And then I had kids!!!! Traveling has become something entirely different since they came along, to say the least. Needless to say, planning this plane trip has been a logistical nightmare, and the thought of actually entertaining them and/or forcing them to sit in one place for 10+ hours was sending me into a frenzy of anxiety, complete with marathon nail biting and eye twitching. After debating it for about 2 seconds, I decided to bring not only drugs, but also about 9 million DVD's, books, and other toys, including small, wrapped packages given to me by a friend for them to open when things started to get really scary. I felt that I was as prepared as I could possibly be, but also that I could never actually prepare for such an undertaking.

And so, the day started at 3 AM (!) because we were flying an AMC (military flight) out of Seattle. One of the military's many annoying qualities is that they think you need to show up places about 17 hours before you actually need to be there. So we were supposed to show up at 5 AM for an 8 AM flight (with lots of warnings about not getting on the flight if you fail to get there on time, naturally). Anyway, by the time 8 AM rolled around, we had made about 12 trips to the bathroom, drank 50 cups of coffee, and dealt with Jackson's decision to sit down on the floor and not get up while we tried to get through security. We were already DONE.

Fortunately what this meant was that, with a little help from the medicine cabinet, all 4 of us slept for the first 4.5 hours of the flight. The rest was spent eating, walking back and forth to the bathroom, and entertaining the boys. But they did so much better than I could have ever hoped. They really managed well. Of course by the time we actually checked into the Navy lodge, they were about to kill themselves and each other, but at least by then we could just throw them into bed and let them sleep it off.

Today (is it really just our first full day here???) has been a flurry of exploring the base, trying to buy a car from the lemon lot (most people who get stationed here just buy very, very, very used cars and drive them till they leave, at which point they sell them to someone else just arriving), and trying to get cell phones (a whole entry in itself, to be dealt with later, after the trauma of that has worn off).

And finally, here is something new I discovered over the last 2 days: they drive on the other side of the road in Japan. WHAAAAAAAT?! I have no idea how I am going to get used to this, and also can't even begin to address it right now. For now, check it out:

OY!