Gloomy

It’s been raining ALMOST every day since we’ve arrived on Okinawa. Today we finally bought umbrellas and signed our lease! YAY!!! So we have our housing appointment tomorrow to discuss furniture and all of that fun stuff! Also Balinda(the owner of the housing center) told me about this place called Nitori which is like Ikea, but Japanese! So neat I’ve been looking on their website and hope to go soon. We can’t/don’t want to buy much in the way of furniture but there are some musts. We also have to find a car, HAVE to! Not much else to report on, just waiting to see that sun shine!

Loving the plant life here!

Just another beautiful hibiscus I got a picture of while waiting in the rain for the housing agency =) no decision on a house yet! We viewed two more that we liked today. House #1 from yesterday is out, we decided no yard, no deal! So now we have 3 in mind and the decision just got much harder.

Another day another dollar

Today I rejected our housing offers. We decided to go with an off-base house. We actually have two houses that we are super happy with and now we have to pick one which is really hard. Now I will just elaborate on our offers

click here to visit site to view house choice #1

House 1:    3 bedrooms 1.5 bath, more traditional Japanese home, HUGE master bedroom not typically found in Japanese homes, Tatami mats taken out so there is no risk of ruin, also has a hobby/computer area room, a lot of storage space, enough room for a dining room area and a living room, plenty of space for visitors or friends, nice quiet area with neighbors on one side only, the back yard and other side of house are surrounded by vegetation. NO YARD =(

click here to visit site to view house choice #2

House 2: Ridiculously modern looking, 2 bedrooms 1 bath, You park on the roof (it’s concrete, it’s safe), has a video camera so you know who is waiting at the top to come in, beautiful dark wood floors and accents, small living/dining room area combined (possibly fit a 2 person table max), pretty small space in general,  Brand new, the owner is the architect who designed the house. Wonderful yard for Lily!

We are having  such a hard time choosing between the two of them. The pictures really don’t do either of these places justice, they are both super amazing! Any input our friends and family have we would love. If house #1 had a yard I wouldn’t think twice because there is so much room, but it doesn’t. House #2 is super awesome, great yard for Lily but not a lot of space, this is truly a house for a couple.

To House or not to House…

So today we received two offers from housing on where we will be living for the next three years. Offer one sounded amazing but would never work for us. It was a new apartment at Camp Kinser. This would be 20 min+ for Josh to travel to work, which was fine in New Bern but in Japan we will exercise a bit more caution. The other problem was…its an apartment, no yard for our Lily! And the fact that you can’t even have pets in these apartments factored in as well. Offer number two was a duplex on Foster. While it was ON Foster, this meant you had to go out the Foster gate to get back on because it is a separate housing entity. We went and visited and weren’t too thrilled with the prospects of living there. Meet our possible new home…

                        

It’s not amazing, but most of the base housing isn’t really amazing. It is older and unrenovated, but on the plus side it has a pretty big yard for Lil. From the outside you can’t tell but the ceilings are actually pretty high in all of the rooms. Its not a super bad layout, but it’s hard to not compare it to our old house that I loved so much. Tomorrow I am going to go talk to someone in housing about possibly living off base, and whether it is affordable  to our little family. We’ve found some really awesome looking places online and are really hoping they might look as amazing in person! Josh has to work tomorrow; he has a PFT and a gig that he can’t miss! Now that we are here he is, again, the only euphonium. Other than that, today we bought some cute kokeshi dolls to start our collection and I took a few more pictures! Enjoy.

Pictures from Camp Courtney (That haze in the background is the ocean, dang you overcast skies!)

Pictures from around town, nothing particular

Pictures of the plants- Hibiscus and a really bright bush, I think they have both of these in the states, but they’re more fun here =)

This one, I just found peculiar. Whenever they were doing yard work at the hotel here, they had another person holding a shield by the vehicles so that they wouldn’t get dirty. In the states they either tell you to move your car, or you get grass all over it.

                         

Another Day in Oki!

Sorry its been a while since I’ve updated you all but we’ve been busy and tired. Along with both of those we’ve also had a couple days of nothingness. Today was our newcomers brief where we got a lot of information about the island and I got my license to drive in Japan! Josh can’t get his yet, he has to send his card up to Command to be looked over and signed prior to getting it, but he did take the test and pass, so that’s good anyways! After a long day of listening we headed to Camp Courtney to try and get some of Josh’s check in done, but the people that work there that we need were, of course, not in at the time. So we drove a while out of the way for nothing…at least we got to sight see. The only bad part was we forgot the camera. SHAME SHAME, I know. We’ll get better at this hopefully. After “work” we went out with Sandra and Steve to Coco’s. Coco’s is a super popular quick serve curry restaurant here. The food was really good to say the least. After, we went and walked around another mall type thing which is rather fascinating to me. I also got a fun stamp out of a kids toy machine to put on letters, mind you I have no idea what it actually says. Only 7:51 here but I think its about bed time we did have to wake up at 6:15 this morning after all =)

Edit

So… two of my pictures from the last post didn’t show up so here they are. The capoeira. Martial arts/dance

And the Habu Sake made with snake venom.

On the Town

I have the pictures you’ve been waiting for! Yesterday was an amazing day, and also our first full day on the island. I went with Melanie to buy some groceries and she showed me around some, and then her husband Victor showed us around some more. A little later in the day we got to hang out with the Ways, Sandra and Steve. They took us around off base in the area called “American Village” . They have this humongous Coke Ferris wheel, it’s pretty awesome.

 

We went into the Jusco which is kind of like a mall in the US but not really. They have a lot of really random things like laundry detergent, bikes, and fancy makeup. It’s kind of set up into store/booths but sometimes you can’t tell at all. We also tried a drink, the actual name is escaping us at the moment. It was close to a chocolate milk, but it had these odd tapioca balls in it. They were essentially flavorless gummies. Neither of us were really ready to jump on that bandwagon. I also picked up my first souvenir, a bracelets with my name in Japanese, hopefully he wrote it correctly it’s Sha-ah-nah, I think.

     

We went to the top floor where they had an arcade with some super awesome games. They had a taiko drum game, just like all of the other rhythm games that have become such a hit. They also had the small children’s rides but they were more awesome.

They also had a lot of restaurants and food stands at the Jusco I found one plate that definitely looked appealing  =) Also a kids toy machine I thought was really fun. 

Next, we walked a bit over to the Sunabe sea wall which I found to be pretty awesome. They allow people to paint/graffiti it and there are some really awesome things on it! Also a lot of fun stenciling.

It’s super true what they say about the Japanese and their  vending machines they are everywhere out here! Mainly drink machines, at least that’s all we’ve seen so far.  

We also went by a Japanese theater that shows American movies. Here are movie posters for Alice in Wonderland and Iron Man.

We also watched some capoeira perform. They do a style of fighting-dance which is really interesting to watch. Steve told us that it originated with slaves not being allowed to learn how to fight, and so they made it into a dance. There is little to no contact involved, at least in what we watched. The other picture is a Sake with a snake in it, it has a name but I don’t know they name of it.

At the end of the night we went to a sushi-go-round. They have some in the states, if you like sushi you may have gone to one before. It was pretty fun but they didn’t have very many rolls there and that’s mainly what we like to eat. Also a picture of me with Hello Kitty, just for fun =) she was in the arcade. 

Hope you enjoyed it! I know we sure did. I am so thankful for new friends!

A little help

A clock of the time here in Okinawa. We are 13 hours ahead.

Just so you know

We have arrived in Okinawa! 5 flights later and we've finally made it. They weren't too bad but from Seattle to Yokota AFB was a 10 hour flight! That alone was way longer than I ever wanted to spend on a plane. Our sponsor, Victor, met us at the airport and took us to our temporary lodging. He was really awesome and way prepared! We arrived on Kadena AFB and drove through town for a bit and ended up on Camp Foster. I must say, the drive through town couldn't have been more than 15 minutes but I was completely in awe! Not to mention I knew that the driving here was opposite than the US but I never pieced together that left turns are now easier than right turns. weird. I can't wait to take pictures so that ya'll can see it, and so that I can explore. It has rained since we got into town rather heavily so we dont have much of a chance to walk anywhere. Its already 7pm on friday here which completely amazes me, where did the time go? I think I might turn in a little early tonight, I think maybe I've earned that. Dont forget to email me at shaunacm7@yahoo.com if you want to keep in touch.

Hello Seattle.

Pardon me if I’m harsh at all, but I just wrote a blog entry that my computer froze up on and deleted. So we arrived in Seattle, we got our baggage, and our Lily and now we have nothing to do for 14 hours. Apparently the USO is not pet friendly, so we will not be allowed to go in with her. Silly. This airport is way different than any airport I’ve been in. They have a large open area with two airplanes hanging from it, AND there are several birds in here. I don’t know if their presence is intentional but I must say that I’m enjoying them. We went from Raleigh-Durham to Chicago O’hare, changed planes, and then came to Seattle-Tacoma. So now here we are until our flight to Japan. Also I think the airport code we were confused about being South Korea or Russia is actually Iwakuni, Japan. Which makes since, but IWA is not the international airport for it obviously. Josh is off scavenging for food so I’m just enjoying the sounds of the birds and watching my Lou sleep. Maybe I’ll get around to updating later, but I’m really not sure I have sooooo many things to do! =P

                          

A big 7 years old

             

Okay, so maybe before Seattle. Just wanted to make a quick post for Jesse. Happy Birthday Monkmonk! I love you lots!

Almost time!

I can’t believe May 4th is finally here! Time has gone by so quickly and people have been fussing because I’m a lazy updater =) We’ve been in SC for approximately two weeks and our traveling begins tonight/the morning. At midnight we are leaving to drive to Raleigh for our 8:40 flight to Seattle. It’s only a four hour drive, but just in case we get lost or have doggy issues we are preparing for the worst. We’ve done a lot of fun things on this vacation. In Tennessee we went to the Ripley’s Aquarium and The Lost Sea. The Lost Sea was really neat because it’s an underground lake, it’s amazing really. In SC two of my New Bernian friends came down to visit. We went to Carowinds and Jessica and I rode “The Intimidator”. It was by far the most amazing roller coaster I have been on, climbing 23 stories high and 80-something degree drop, and no shoulder restraint. Given there were no loops or corkscrews it still felt like something you  needed more safety restraints for. The next day we took a trip to the zoo which was also great because Jess had never been to the zoo. We take advantage of such simple things when they are presented to us often, and it’s always a joy to see someone in a fun new situation. We’ve hung out with a lot of great friends all over the place, and great family too. Today is my little brother Jesse’s birthday, and I can’t even say how happy I am to be here to see him turn 7. I need to head on over there for cake, ice cream, and presents. See you in Seattle (if I can find wi-fi)!

                         

ps: ignore my friend’s finger in this picture =)