Almost There...

I am typing on my phone just to say that i am stil alive and kicking. We were supposed to get internet today but apparently a hole will have to be drilled into the wall. ????? And so now we have to ask the owner if we are allowed to do that. Which means im pretty sure it will be another 2 weeks before we are online. good news is that we are in the house! We are a block from the beach, the house is amazing, and slowly but surely it is starting to look like a home. Probably most exciting for me is that I have a kitchen in working order! I'm cooking again, woo hoo!!! OK I'm off the grid again till I can post from my computer.

A Car, Finally

This is Phyl:

You may also refer to him as "the nicest man in the universe." He has made our car buying and registering process a lot less horrible than it usually is. We met Phyl on our 1st full day in Japan, when we trekked over to the lemon lot on base to see about buying a car. We ended up buying one from him that day and another one today. He buys junked cars at auctions, fixes them up, details them, takes care of title and inspection paperwork, and sells them for good prices to people like us.

Here are the steps you must go through to get a parking pass and register your car, once you have actually purchased it:

There are 4 different buildings (City Hall, Land Transportation Office, Police Station, and Vehicle Registration Office) that you have to visit multiple times and in a certain order so that you can complete the process, and these 4 buildings are all in different CITIES in this area.

One of the most annoying parts is that, during the whole process you have to have temporary plates on your car. These must be obtained at City Hall. However, they only give you plates for 5 days, so you have to keep going back and renewing them every 5 days. Because let me tell you, 5 days is NOT long enough to take care of all this nonsense. Phyl, bless his kind soul, took me there himself the first time and then went back THREE different times for us and renewed the plates. In addition, he sat with me in the insurance office to make sure we had the right paperwork to insure the car. And, probably most annoying of all, he fielded countless "what do i do next?" phone calls from yours truly.

Seriously, where would we be without Phyl?

And now, finally I have a car that is actually registered. It has plates, and it has base decals. I can drive legally, people. Technically, it's a minivan. By American standards, it's more like a hatchback on steroids. It does have a 3rd row of seats, but the seats are small, and when you put down the 3rd row it has about as much storage space as a VW Bug. You can't tell from this picture, but I am taller than this car.

And, now we also have a 2nd car! Adam will use it when he has to get to work. We have to start the whole paperwork process for that one now, God help me. I am hoping Saint Phyl isn't tired of us and might help us with this part as well. I also love this tiny car and will definitely be driving it myself when the boys aren't in tow:

And finally, just for another check in the "hooray" box: omorrow we get our furniture delivered to our new place! We are definitely making progress!!! Yahoo!

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!