Our Welcome to the Land of the Rising Sun!

Going into our housing area, cherry trees, not in blossom right now.

It has been such a long time since I have blogged or looked at other blogs. The past 4 months have been consumed with getting ready for our move to Japan. I spent a lot of time going through each room in our home in Germany. I donated a lot of clothes, consigned and sold a lot of items and then decided what to put in storage. I downsized considerably.

We are now very happily settled into our home in Japan. After so.... many hurdles on the European side of this PCS it is so nice to have a place we can call home again. Some of you may already know, but the government or someone cancelled our plane tickets to Japan at the last minute, because they weren't within the travel per diem rate. The government travel agency should have known this, but apparently this time they did not. We had tickets to fly out on Thursday, June 26th with Lufthansa, flying over Russia, this was about 14 hours flying time. Instead they wanted to reroute us through the States from Stuttgart to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to London Heathrow, London Heathrow to Chicago with an overnight stay (12 hours total). Chicago to LA and LA to Tokyo. No overnight stopovers were allowed other than the Chicago overnight, because that would be considered our RAT trip that is paid for by the government. We only get one government paid flight each time we move, nothing in between has been paid for, so we didn't want to use such a valuable trip on a layover for one night other than Chicago. We planned on our trip to the States in May being our RAT trip, but many problems were created and we are now paying for that trip out of pocket. The total door to door time of this trip for the flight over the States and not Russia was about 72 plus hours. They don't care if you have small children or not. In Chicago we would have been able to catch about 8 hours of sleep, so that would have been our grand total of sleep for 72 plus hours. We found during our travels the little ones don't sleep on planes. On Friday our luck changed and Air France dropped their rates to Japan via over Russia drastically and we were able to get a flight for Sunday, July 1st. Thank God!!! We flew from Stuttgart to Paris and then from Paris to Tokyo. The flight was uneventful with the exception that they changed our seats and had our 5 seats scattered around the plane (on Friday we were confirmed with 5 seats together in the middle, bulkhead with 2 bassinets for Anika and Alexander). They would not change our seats, because they said it wouldn't be fair to change the other passengers seats without their knowledge, even though they did that to us. We still had the bassinets, but they were not together so ultimately we were all separate from one another. I asked the man at the gate desk if they provided baby sitting on Air France, since they had the babies sitting by themselves, he was then able to get 3 seats together, amazing how that works. Once on board they got Alexander, John, Anika and myself in bulkhead, together with the bassinets. Lexi was sitting, behind us and was not happy at first, but I bribed her with promises of Hello Kitty products. She also made a friend. She was sitting next to a Japanese girl and they spent most of the flight talking and playing video games. In spite of the fun Lexi had, Hello Kitty was not forgotten. Lexi ended up getting some Hello Kitty pajamas. We now live in the land of Hello Kitty, but unfortunately the prices don't reflect that, although the choices are broader.

I digressed, back to our arrival. The flight was extremely pleasant, the attendants were friendly and helpful. They had great toys for the kids. They had kids meals for Lexi and Anika and a baby meal for Alexander. The bassinets were our saving grace, Anika slept for almost 3 hours at the beginning of the long flight and then another 1.5 hours at the end. Alexander slept off and on. He basically slept for 1/2 hour and then would cry for 10 minutes throughout the flight. That was really great for him, so we were thrilled. During the downtime on the flight they had a self service area set up with beverages and snacks, so if you were dying for water, you weren't at the mercy of the flight crew you could just help yourself. They also had a selection of 16 movies. I highly recommend Air France, it was a very pleasant flight and very child friendly. One of the best flights in a long time. Even though there was the glitch in the beginning, the last 4 months of flights, many different airlines separated us even though we had confirmed seats. Us Air changed our seats on us at the boarding gate, even though we had our boarding passes in hand.


From Tokyo it was about a 2.5 hour drive to Yokota Air Force Base. The lack of sleep was starting to get to us, but the excitement of our new surroundings and home kept me and John awake, while our little angels slept peacefully away (sarcasm). Why they wouldn't sleep so soundly on the plane I will never know. I think Alexander's ears bothered him.

The base is huge. There is a North, South, East, West and Main side to this base, the flight line pretty much separates the base. We live on the East side. The day we arrived we napped for about 5 hours and then ventured to the East side housing units which have the newly renovated quadplex style garden units. There are almost a thousand garden units scattered throughout the base but only about 50 newly renovated, which 90% of the renovated units are occupied. We saw a garden unit that had only been occupied by one previous family for about 6 months and they had just moved out that day. We looked at 5 newly renovated units that were unoccupied and this was the one we had our hearts set on. It was an end unit with a playground off to the right of our back yard. We had an appointment with housing in the morning and were praying things would start going smoothly. We were told before our arrival that it took about 4-6 months to move into permanent housing. Our appointment with housing went well. The housing officer looked at us and said I have one Garden Unit for you, but you can't look at it, because the contractors are working on it. If you so choose to deny this unit your Temporary Quarters Allowance will automatically stop and you wont be offered permanent housing for another 30 days. You have 4 days to accept or deny my offer. Well................ this is not how the Air Force housing booklet described the housing process for Yokota, but okay, we played the game. We asked her which unit it was and lo and behold it was the unit we had our hearts set on. What are the odds???? Hundreds and hundreds of families PCS'ing in, only a few renovated units. Otherwise it meant going to an old unit and then moving in 2 years so they could renovate, these were the options being given to other families we spoke with. Where do we sign??????????????

We moved in on Saturday, they delivered temp furniture, which is all brand new and fantastic quality. We can keep whatever we want, once our furniture is delivered (at the end of October) for the duration of our tour. Had we known how nice this furniture was we would have put almost all of our furniture in storage. The house is wonderful, new everything, open spacious, we couldn't ask for more, well maybe more storage area. We bought a TV so we have cable and in November the base will have 40 channels to choose from vs our 5 in Germany. We also have a stateside landline number. The Commander chooses the area code locations and then we can choose from those. I think we had the choice of Florida, a few Midwest locations and Pittsburgh, we choose Pittsburgh, so when you call us it will cost you the same amount as if you were calling Pitts. We are still working on e-mail. I will send out via e-mail our new number, mailing address and e-mail address for security reasons I don't want to post it on the blog.

Lexi started a juniors golf program today and loved it. She will go every morning this week for 1.5 hours and on Thursday she will receive her own full set of Junior Ping Golf clubs that is included in the cost of the program all for the price of $99. Yes, you did not read that wrong a full set of clubs that she gets to keep. She is also signed up for a week for fine arts classes in August and they will use different media each day, water color, pen and ink, oil etc... She is also doing a clay class for a week and will learn different ways to work with clay including a pottery wheel. If she's not busy playing with her newly made friends, she spends time at the youth center geared towards 9-12 year olds. Last week they learned how to make smoothies, 4-H club, etc.... It is run by adults and they must be signed in and out, but the doors are open Monday-Friday 1400-2000. She will be going on a field trip to a beautiful park in Tokyo next week through Youth Services. It is an all day field trip via the train and the total cost is $3.00.

Fourth of July was spent at the 374th Airlift Hanger. We celebrated with 1000's of other Americans and local nationals. They provided live entertainment, 2 different bouncy castles, arts and crafts, carnival games, go carts, pony rides, air balloon rides and all the food, sodas and bottled water you wanted. This base fed everyone hot dogs, hamburgers, ribs, pulled BBQ pork sandwiches, corn on the cob, baked beans, sno cones and ice cream on their dime and a lot of donations. They also offer a lot of bus trips here, rafting trips, etc... for fantastic prices. Most day bus trips cost about $20 per adult a big price difference from the Stuttgart USO. We have been to the indoor swimming pool and it also has a wonderful kiddie pool. Lexi will be having her birthday party at the pool with a big pirate ship in the center of the pool that we are renting. The golf course is fully lit so you can play in the evening, which it gets dark around 1930 and it is light around 0330. Our neighbors are incredibly friendly and everyone surrounding us has at least 3 children. The units have 4 bedrooms so you have to have at least 3 children in order to qualify for a 4 bedroom unit. This makes it nice because there is a child out there for everyone to play with. This is really going to be a great tour for our family, the base focuses so much on the quality of family life. We are really excited. I start step class tonight. Should be interesting.

There were 2 teenage girls at the golf course that were assisting with the juniors course today and I asked if they babysat, they do and they are both Red Cross Certified. One girl is 16 the other gal will be 18 in a few months. They have lots of younger brothers and sisters. The 18 year old was one of the winners for the DODD's essay contest and she is going to Washington DC next week to accept her Presidential Award. They really seem to be great teens.

On the downside driving off base in Japan is very intimidating since all the signs are in , well..........Japanese, so I don't know how we are going to figure out where the heck were going. We have a built in GPS in the van we bought, but once again it is all in Japanese, so it doesn't help much. John also has a car. Both were extremely reasonably priced and it is nice to have 2 vehicles, especially since the base is so spread out. In order to get from the East side to the Main part of the base you have to drive across the flight line/runway and when a plane is landing or taking off the red light comes on and you wait. You can not walk this way, because you wouldn't be able to get off the airfield fast enough so the walking path you have to take you must go all the way around the flight line. The commissary is about a 2.5 mile walk from our house one way, which is fine and good exercise, I just wouldn't be able to buy many groceries. The van is nice to have, especially with the heat and humidity, which is so nice, we love the warm weather.

On Sunday Typhoon Man-Yi was headed directly for us and we were at TCCOR1, which means a typhoon is due to arrive in 12 hours or less, with winds above 72 MPH and damage is expected, John's office had a phone tree calling everyone advising everyone. It was also posted on AFN what TCCOR we were on. It missed us , but we had a lot of rain for about 72 hours, steady downpour.

I am sure as a reader you are tired of reading by now so I will stop overloading you with information. I just wanted to keep everyone posted of our arrival. We are all healthy, happy and settling in. Please leave a comment on the blog, we love hearing from you. We miss our family and all of our friends in Germany so... much. We think about you constantly and you guys are the best:)