Our first week in Japan

I am going a little out of order on blog posts, but I figure that most people who read my blog are most interested to hear how things are going for us in Japan...so here is our first week (really first 5 days) in Japan:

Getting here was SO long. It took us over 30 hours in total travel time, including spending a night in the USO room of the Seattle airport (pictured above). It was a rough day, but we were thankful to have the USO...couches, TVs, WiFi, and food:)

This is the base housing. They are midrises. The base is only 6 miles long (only 3 miles of which are used) so there is not room for traditional base housing. We actually already have an apt assigned to us and all of our belongings have already arrived in Japan way ahead of schedule! Zach is signing off on the paperwork today and I am hopeful I will be sleeping in my own bed by this weekend! Making our hotel stay a week rather than the month we anticipated! I will post more details about our living situations once we move in.

This is the hotel we are staying at in base. It has a full kitchen, living, and bedroom.

During our welcome orientation we got to go on a tour of Iwakuni. It was so much different than I expected. It is bigger, dirtier, and older than I pictured it would be.

The language barrier is a big hurdle. We went to the 100 yen store (like the dollar store) and the entire process of checkout our cashier was talking 100 miles per hour in Japanese to us and we had no clue what to say back!

Kintai Bridge in Iwakuni. This picture was taken from a moving bus, but we definitely plan to visit it again. You can walk across it and then take a lift up to a Japanese castle at the top of the mountain. We can't wait to do it once the weather warms up a bit more.

The boys have been really good! They are already adjusted to the time difference (more than I have) and they are loving the novelty of everything.

Mason, in particular, has been really enthusiastic about everything! He was jumping up and down in the housing, which was needed since Zach and I were struggling to let the positives stand out above the negatives.

Public women's toilets. Thank goodness they are not like this in the houses! You have to stand on either side and then squat down! And you have to either bring toilet paper from home or buy a few sqaures from the vending (and the toilet paper is so thin it is see through).

We took a tour of the base and are excited to "jump right in." I am going to a "Mothers Of Preschoolers" get together this morning and already have a Japanese spouse to take me on a tour of the Japanese schools and to text if I am ever caught out in town and need a translator:) It is very intimidating, and I am scared to death of getting my drivers license and leaving the base alone. But everyone has been so nice and helpful and the base store prices have been way lower than we expected. We miss our friends and family so much, but are going to do our best to take advantage of the opportunity of living here.