It’s the little things I love!

We’ve been in Japan for an entire month already, and we are loving it!  There is so much to see and do and try that every day has been exciting.  Even with exciting travels and adventures, I’ve realized that it’s the little things I love the most.  One of my favorite things here are the vending machines.  They are on every block, and have the best coffee drinks I have ever had from a can.  Since James and I are both addicted to coffee, this has been fabulous.  And there are so many different kinds of canned coffee here.  I have tried over ten, and my favorite coffee so far is the Georgia Cafe Au Lait.  So good! You can get it cold or warm, and you just have to make sure you press the right colored light.  Red for warm and blue for cold.  I am still fascinated that you can get a can out of the vending machine warm.  Coffee, tea, sake....you can get them all warm! I also love that the American Coffee brand has an american flag, a muscle car, and a blonde lady sitting on the hood of the car.  I laugh every time I see it.  Silly americans and their ladies and cars! :) And how could I forget the banana milk!  I really really love the banana milk.  It seemed strange at first, but I had to try it, and it is by far my favorite thing that comes out of a vending machine.  I mean, this stuff is so good that I crave it now!  Much better than dessert....all you need is banana milk!  Another little thing I love is how the Japanese put little smiley faces and cartoon characters on things.  It’s all so cute you just have to smile.  In fact, I bought an orange juice (from a vending machine) the other day just because it had a cute smiley face on it and it made me happy.  See....it’s all about the little things!

Send us American Love!

James and I have an address, so please send us stuff! :) We would love to hear from you, and If you send us a letter, we will definitely write you back! ;)

James and Angela Gouger
PSC 477 Box 3
FPO, AP
96306

James has to bring the mail home from work, but at least we can get things now! :) 

Getting Oriented Navy Style

Things we’ve learned so far in orientation:

• There are 2.3 million people living within a 3 mile radius of base.


• 126 million people live in Japan, and 40% of them live in the Kanto plain (where we live).


• We live in Ayase city, in Kanagawa prefecture, in the Kanto plain, on Honshu island.


• The base, while named Atsugi, is not in Atsugi city, which is a few kilometers down the road.


• There is a shrimp burger at McDonald’s off base that I have to try.


• American’s are being drugged in the Roppongi district in Tokyo and wake up with thousands of dollars on their credit cards.


• If we get into an accident, it is always our fault, no matter what happened.


• If it’s a fender bender, we should just be able to give the other person some money, and it will be over.


• If we hit someone who goes to the hospital, we should visit them in the hospital bearing gifts and apologizing, or risk a criminal offense charge.


• We can go to jail for 23 days for questioning without being charged.


• Speeding can put us in jail.


• Camp Zama is 5 km away but takes almost 30 minutes to get there.


• Driving 15 km will usually take you about an hour.


• Trains! Trains! Trains!  Driving takes forever.  And all the freeways are tolls.


• From here to Tokyo and back will cost about $70 to $80 just in tolls.


• You can be charged with a DUI if there is anything in your system, even if it is one beer.  BAC of .03 begins criminal charges.  Jail time and $500 minimum fine.  SOFA can’t get us out of jail.


• We get charged by our rank at the New Sanno Hotel in Tokyo (seriously???).


• The base recently cut recycling because it was costing too much. :(


• Our water is safe to drink! The base produces their own, and we can pay $16 to test our house water if we don’t believe them.


• Japan burns most of its trash, so we have to separate trash into burnable and non-burnable.


• We have to use clear trash bags, yet the commissary sells black ones (that I bought!)


• Mt. Fuji is supposed to erupt while we are here.  And the F is an H sound, so it’s Huji San (Mountain).  And we are hiking it July 31st!


• We can’t get a post office box because James is on shore duty.


• And we’ve started learning Japanese, but just basic phrases for now.

We’ve only had two days of orientation, and I am exhausted.  Three more days to go and then we can get ready to take our driving class next week!

Liberty Lane

On Friday, we picked up the keys to our new apartment! It is a spacious two bedroom, one bath garden apartment (actually bigger than our apartment in San Diego!) and it has a big living room, small dining room, and decent sized kitchen.  (Plus a washer and dryer and dish washer!) It also has an amazing patio, with a tiny yard (full of bugs and rodents).  I am excited though, as this is our first yard, and it is the perfect size for us.  When we checked in, our backyard was completely full of weeds, grubs, and a mole.  We spent the weekend pulling weeds, putting down grub killer (which will hopefully encourage the mole to leave), cutting what was left of our yard, and putting down fertilizer so we can start growing grass.  Our backyard faces the child development center, and a playground, so AJ should have plenty to bark at when he finally gets here.

Our furniture will not arrive for another 4-6 weeks, so the Navy has graciously given us a loaner couch and bed.  Thankfully our express shipment arrived, so we have some pots and pans, sheets, towels, a mini tv, and our wii (the necessities!) Unfortunately, you can’t move batteries or candles, so our express shipment was lacking a flashlight, batteries, and candles, which was awesome when the power went out for 6 hours on Friday night!  It was our first night in the apartment, and it was pitch black.  We were trying to get ready for bed using the light from my macbook screen, and using our iphones as flashlights.  (Yay Apple products!) Luckily there isn’t much to bump into since our stuff isn’t here.  Our keys are interesting.  When we picked them up, I was a little surprised to not see the traditional “key” that we think of in the US.  These keys are magnetic and look like big dog-tags.  Thankfully the lady demonstrated how to use them for us, and even after the demonstration, it still took us almost five minutes to open our door.  The lady told us to be careful around our cell phones, because they will demagnetize just like hotel keys, and we will need to call security to get into our house.  Hope that doesn’t happen too often!  We live on Liberty Lane, along with most of James command.  It’s a small base, and reminds me of being an RA, since we now live where we work.  I will post pictures soon!

Konnichiwa from Atsugi, Japan!

After two months of living nomadically without a home, we have finally made it to Japan! These last two months have been jam packed, with James traveling between Virginia, California, and Florida for training, a vacation for James and I in Savannah, GA, two friends weddings in Blacksburg, Spring Game, lots of visiting with family, two showers for my new sister-in-law, my brothers college graduation, and his wedding! Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we left for Japan.  We left on Sunday morning (the 23rd) at 6:00 in the morning, and we arrived in Tokyo at 1:30 in the afternoon on Monday (the 24th). Our check-in went surprisingly well, despite the fact that the Navy spelled my name wrong on my plane ticket.  The flight to Dallas was only a few hours, and we slept the entire way, since we decided to not sleep on Sunday night.  (And we still had to pack for Japan, since we had spent a week in Connecticut up until hours before our flight left!) James and I have a way of jam-packing everything into small amounts of time, and then desperately getting our stuff ready for some crazy move we are doing.  Such is our way our life!

The flight to Tokyo was thirteen and a half hours, but it really didn’t seem very long.  I slept most of the way, and James went in and out of sleep, despite the three year old kicking him and creating a great deal of chaos with the flight attendants.  We were hoping the kid would fall asleep, and when he finally did, it was on the ground, which just created another scene.  We saw the flight attendants quite a bit on that flight.  Long flights mean lots of food, although I thought three meals was a bit excessive.  Our first meal included sushi (yay!) and I was hoping we’d get more, but it was just part of the first meal.  When we landed in Tokyo, it seemed like we had just gotten on the plane, yet like we had been on the plane forever.  We didn’t really know where we were meeting our sponsor, but we had hopes of running into him.  Customs and immigration took us less than five minutes, and all of a sudden there we were, in our new home! It was the first time it really hit me, and I was excited, but anxious as I realized what a big airport it was, and that we had no idea where we were being met.  We wandered for a bit, and couldn’t find the military liaison, which we later realized was in a completely different terminal.  Thankfully, James had met the guy who picked us up at his school in Florida last month, so they recognized each other.  I was thankful, since I almost had my first breakdown when I didn’t think it was possible to find the people picking us up!

The drive from the airport to the base was about two hours, and we were exhausted, so I didn’t take much in.  The freeways looked pretty much the same as ours, except you drive on the other side of the road, and I couldn’t read the signs.  But, basically exactly the same.  We’ve been here almost a week now, and we have finally started to really adjust to the time.  In the first few days, I woke up at 4:00 am every morning, and I would be wide-awake.  Usually I need an hour or two to feel even slightly awake, and that is slowly coming back.  We are moving into our new apartment on Friday, so these nomadic Hokies will finally have a place to live for the next three years.

Actual Time to Think

I’m sitting on a small pier on the St. John’s river in Jacksonville, FL, listening to the waves crashing against the metal and feeling the wind against my skin telling me a storm is coming.  I’m a little bit chilled, yet I stay and watch the dark clouds roll in and listen to the waves crash with more and more diligence each time, and I feel refreshed.  There is nothing here for me to do but enjoy the sounds of the water and watch the occasional plane fly overhead.  The wind is toying with the spanish moss, and life feels simple and right.  A white crane is fishing on my left, oblivious to my staring, and distantly on my right, cars are scurrying across a bridge, unknowingly being watched by me as I question and contemplate the day to day life of their drivers.  How many of them, I wonder, are stressed out and running late, cursing the car in front of them for driving too slowly?.  How many of them, I wonder, are talking on their cell phones to double the use of their time?  How many, I wonder, are looking out their windows and admiring the beautiful river on either side of them, relishing in the beautiful scene purposefully placed around them? I am reminded of a country song I heard on the radio on my drive to Jacksonville, along I-95 in Georgia.

“So now I'm slowing it down and I'm looking around
And I'm lovin' this town and I'm doing alright
Aint' worried 'bout nothing cept for the man I wanna be
I'm thinking maybe it's time to be livin' the rhyme
When I'm singing a song about nothing but right
And it'd sure be nice if you would roll with me”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoPg1EG2AKk

The Great Commonwealth of Virginia

Day Four was a pleasant Sunday drive on familiar roads, up I-40 to I-81.  Southwest Virginia is always a welcoming drive, and even at the end of winter, when the leaves are gone, and the buds are yet to pop on the trees, it is still a very peaceful and calming place.   The drive was virtually on autopilot, since we have driven these roads countless times.  Angela and I tried to figure out how many times we had driven this stretch of road, but it was too many times to remember.  We reminisced about the many trips back and forth, and wore ourselves out thinking about how much we have done these last few years.  We sadly drove past the Blacksburg exit, since we were so crunched on time.  It’s not very often we have skipped our favorite place in the world, but we were exhausted, and I had to be at class the next morning.  While we had run into some traffic in Tennessee, real traffic began an hour from our destination in Newport News!  The 757 welcomed us with traffic and rain, and I began to question why we had ever left Southern California.  I had chosen to drive across the country on I-40 for several reasons, but mainly to avoid population centers and traffic.  And we had almost made it across the entire country without traffic!!  You can almost fly across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma with little to no other cars on the road.  It is perhaps the best stretch of road in the country.  I hate traffic...and will go to great lengths to avoid it.  But there is no other option other than 1-64, and we had to sit and wait the traffic out.  A few hours later, we finally made it!  3,000 miles and four and a half days later, AJ couldn’t be happier to get out of the car.