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!!!!!