Park

Since we don't have our own cute kids to post pictures of, we took a few of some random Japanese kids (we actually took a bunch, but are only posting a couple). The slide was a lot of fun. We didn't try out the white bouncy thing, but several Japanese adults did.

Sunflowers

We visited a park not far from us and found a huge sunflower field with several different colors of sunflowers. The picture with the large tree gives an idea of how big the field was. The pictures look a little darker on the slide show and I don't know how to remedy it. If you click a picture you can enlarge it. BTW, I do realize that the pink flower is not a sunflower! Erik made some great tasting honey...what a cute worker bee.

Money Bags

We forgot to post this picture earlier. This money came from the bank, not a monopoly game. To get our mansion we had to pay: one month's rent (200,000 yen), deposit (200,000 yen), key money (one-time fee that everyone pays when renting a place in Japan: 200, 000 yen), agent fee (200,000 yen), and fire insurance (10,ooo yen). I don't know why we look so happy to be paying this much money. Anyway, we heard that it is much worse in Korea. A friend told us that he had to carry a suitcase full of money, 3 years worth of rent paid up front, to get his place. What we had to carry was mere chump change in comparison...

New Mansion

We just moved into our new "mansion," which is what apartments are called here. We're on the top floor of a five floor building. We have 3 bedrooms, one tatami (bamboo mat) room, kitchen, living room, and 1 bathroom. Since we're on the top floor we have a large wrap around balcony. On the floor plan you can see how big it is.

There is a train line running right by our apartm...,I mean mansion, building. We are on the opposite side of the building from the train line and don't hear it from in the house at all. Erik and I have a 5 minute walk to one of 2 train stations.

This one is called Fussa Station. You can see all the taxis, the KFC, and the Golden Arches Steakhouse (what my parents called McDonald's when I was little- so I wouldn't know). Larger train stations have restaurants, book stores, and boxed lunch places. Seiyu, on the right, is a large department/grocery store with I think 4 floors. It is owned by Walmart. The food items in there have the familiar "great value" Walmart brand logo. We probably won't shop there too much!

As you like it pancakes

We went out to eat with Erik’s coworkers who are also new to Yokota. We went to an okonomiyaki restaurant. I’ve seen it translated “as you like pancakes.” Basically you get a bowl of batter (not sweet) and a bunch of chopped cabbage. You choose the rest of the toppings from all kinds of meat, seafood, and veggies. At the table you mix it up and grill it. It was fun, especially since some of the directions were a mystery to us. One of our orders had mochi (pounded rice), which is ooey gooey when melted, and cheese. The rest were pork, bacon, and beef. We even ordered a dessert that required the same process of mixing and frying. Yum, yum, yum! It’s funny to go out to eat to avoid cooking and end up at a restaurant where you….cook. Well we didn’t have to prepare or do dishes and, of course it was fun. The tables beside us produced perfectly round and browned pancakes. We realized that we’ll have to return again to hone our cooking skills. Darn!

Marie and Tokio

Erik’s sister Marie and her husband came to see us on base. Tokio was AMAZED and excited to be in the U.S. For sightseeing, we went to the commissary and exchange and looked at all the American foods and products. We had Pizza Hut for lunch. Tokio said that next time he wants to bring a friend who’s never been outside of Japan to visit the U.S. by coming to the base. This amused Erik and I since the base is pretty small and ALL of the buildings are brown and tan.

Packaging

Everything in Japan is packaged nicely. Most items are individually packaged. When you go to a bakery, each bread item will get it’s own plastic bag and then all of those items are put into a bag. We recently went to a cookie shop and took some pictures of us unwrapping our goodies. First you have to take items from the plastic bag.

Then the cold item and cookies were separated into their own brown bags.

Inside the brown bag, each item was wrapped in a plastic bag. Notice each cookie has its own desiccant. Wow, that’s a lot of work if you’re really hungry!

Mt. Takao

It took us over an hour of fast paced climbing to get up Takao mountain. The mountain is 599 meters high (for those baffled by the system the rest of the world uses, that’s about 2000 ft). It was a beautiful hike as you can see by the pictures. After getting to what we thought was the top of the mountain we saw these stairs. It turns a corner and keeps going! The tiny white speck is a hiker.

If you notice in the pictures, I was not prepared for the hike. The Japanese hikers had appropriate gear including boots, walking sticks, backpacks, and headbands (I guess sweatbands). I had on my church dress and heeled sandals and had my plastic umbrella in hand. A girl’s gotta always look her best. Anyway, we had a great day and a great end to the day, i.e. a great dinner. The Japanese have a type of restaurant that is similar to Spanish tapas. You order several small dishes and share. It’s a good way to try different items. The chicken on a stick, yakitori, was very tasty. We should have taken pictures of the dishes; I’ll spare you a full description.

This is one of the views from the top of the mountain. It was too overcast to see Mt. Fuji. The mountain had many very old, large trees. They were impressive. Below is a statue of a tengu. I can’t remember exactly what they are (that’s what wikipedia is for if you’re interestedJ), but they were all over the mountain temple area.

Wrong Station Blessing

We had a great day. We visited a church in the morning. It was an American run church and, with the southern drawl, shouts of “amen,” and traditional hymnals, you’d never know (aside from the Japanese attendees) that you were in Japan. After the service, we wandered to a new train station, bought the appropriate tickets, and then got off at the wrong station (a station that only has trains coming through every 30-40 minutes). Oops. So, we decided to kill time and find air conditioning. We found a tiny restaurant next to the station that was built onto someone’s home. We ordered our food and as time passed we realized we were going to miss the next train and then have a 40-minute wait for the following one. Well, it ended up not being a problem at all. The food was so good. I asked the owner/cook what was in the salad dressing. After telling me, he disappeared into the kitchen for a few minutes. He returned with a small plastic bottle of freshly made dressing with two small ice packs all in a plastic bag! We sat and finished our food while watching TV with the owner. I then told Erik we probably should go because we had already stayed there a long time. As we got up to leave, the owner told us that we still had 25 minutes until the next train (we knew this) and that we could just wait with him. His wife told him it was going to storm later and they asked us with concern if we had umbrellas. With embarrassment, we said no, and he disappeared into the kitchen again. He returned with two plastic umbrellas. Please tell me if you’ve ever had a similar experience at a restaurant! We left so happy and not at all concerned that we spent over an hour at the wrong stop.

Akiruno Park

We took the train to Akiruno. There was a lot of farmland and a large farmers market. Corn was going for about $1.50 an ear. They also had Japanese eggplant and cucumber. Both of which are smaller and skinnier and better tasting then the American version. We stumbled across a public park that had a running track, a rose park, and a fountain with naked Japanese kids playing in it. We had fun watching the kids while eating our red bean waffle enclosed ice cream. Erik especially loved the stubby legged dachshunds.

We had lunch at a train station. The restaurant had a vending machine where you push a button for the food you want to eat. You put money in and it spits out a ticket for you to take to the cook to prepare. Dishes usually include pickled items on the side (cucumbers, radishes, and eggplant are typical). Yum! Speaking of vending machines, almost all machines here dispense hot and cold drinks. The picture is not the best, but we took the picture mainly for the actor, who both of our moms think is cute. Also notice the “Black Boss” coffee. There’s also a coffee called BM (bowel movement).

Arrival

It’s hard to believe we're here...in Japan! We left from Dulles on the 9th and arrived at Narita on the 10th in the afternoon. After all of our daydreaming about eating good Japanese food, we had Popeyes as our first meal! We are staying on base at the Kanto Lodge (pictured) until we find an apartment off base. Living on base would be like living in mini-America (which has it's perks), but we want to have more chances to speak Japanese and make Japanese friends. Since we've forgotten most of our Japanese language skills, it will be an adventure!

God has been with us each step of the way. There have been so many blessings that I’d have to take a full page to recount them. We hope that you will find little surprises and joys in each day and know that God loves you!