If you are thirsty in Japan, you needn't speak Japanese to get a drink...

If you find yourself in Japan, as long as you have some Yen (1000 yen bills or coins), you can easily get something to drink without having to speak Japanese. You just need to find a vending machine, and for 120 - 150 Yen you can easily purchase something. You may not recognize many of the items in the vending machines, but you will likely find Coca Cola, Grape Fanta, 7-up (not as common) and some type of water, though it may be salt water (for fresh water, make sure the bottle in the display is clear). Other than that, most items have pictures on them that give you a basic idea of what they are. It can be important to look at these closely, as it's quite a shock to presume you are about to take a drink of grape soda, only to take a big mouthful of sloppy grape jello! Also, many of the bottles will have pictures of fruits on them, this doesn't indicate that it's actually fruit juice. There is a drink called Qoo (I think I spelled that right) and has a picture of a little alien/cat/creature on it, and the label has pictures of apples, oranges or grapes. I purchased the one with the oranges and found myself enjoying a nice bottle of what tastes just like 'Tang'. If you are after real juice, it will be in a tiny (perhaps 6 or 8 oz) bottle and will still cost 120 - 130 Yen. Oh yeah, one other thing. As I mentioned in a prior blog, some beverages are served hot. The way to tell this is by the color of the button just below the item in the display. If the button is blue or green, the item is served cold, but if it's red, the item will be served hot.

You might ask, 'Where will I find these vending machines?' To which I reply, that you will find them EVERYWHERE!! In fact just the other day I rode through town with my husband, who feels that a car with a 'turbo' that is never used, is a waste. In an attempt to keep my life from flashing before my eyes, I decided to count the number of vending machines that could be seen on the sides of the road between here and the Navy Base. I quickly realized that I would need to count just one side of the road and count the other side on the way back. (whew, something for a distraction on the return trip!) :o) As I began counting, I decided that I would also count the cigarette machines, but separately, which successfully kept me thoroughly distracted, though a little car sick, for the whole 8.75 kilometers (just under 5.5 miles). It's funny, I just realized that the 40 k speed limit means that we drive under 25 mph everywhere we go out in town, unless it's after dark, when everyone speeds up to a reckless 60 k (37 mph)!! Sorry, I digress.

Back to my observation about vending machines. All totalled, there were 68 beverage machines and 37 cigarette machines which makes an average of 7.5 & 4.2 per Kilometer, respectively (12.3 & 6.7 per mile respectively).

So, even if you don't speak a word of Japanese, as long as you've got some Yen in your pocket, you will never die of thirst in the city. As for food, well, good luck with that...

Things we take for granted...

Pictured above is my dishwasher. We have yet to be able to hook it up, because our faucet is an odd size and we're having a very tough time finding an adaptor to fit it. Don't worry, the dishes in there are clean, they're just there for proportion.

While I'm glad to have this borrowed dishwasher, I only just now grasped the full depth of how grateful I should be to have this amenity, working yet or not. As I was just going through the paperwork that comes with all the appliances that we got from the 'self help' depot, a small piece of paper that I wouldn't have otherwise paid any heed to, dropped to the floor. I picked it up and started to toss it into my paper bin when I realized it was the price tag for this tiny luxury. And LUXURY it must be, because the price tag read a whopping 88,000 Yen! That's somewhere around $940.00 US, for a counter top dishwasher that's big enough for 4 plates, 4 bowls, some silverware/chopsticks, and a few little cups. Believe me when I say my jaw just about hit the floor and I am again aware of how increadibly blessed I am and have been in my life, where things like dishwashers and garbage disposals (me putting the food into the garbage can is our garbage disposal) were a 'must' for me to consider renting an apartment, and an oven wasn't even something I needed to consider if my apartment would have or not. Insulation was guaranteed as was a pre-cleaning and my microwave didn't short the breaker after 12 seconds...

I'm by no means saying that things here are bad. Quite the contrary. It is becoming more and more apparent to me how simple life really can be and still be completely fulfilling and busy. Do I enjoy washing all my dishes by hand? Not really. Do I like shivering while I wait for the house to warm up in the morning? No. Is it going to kill me? Absolutely not, in fact, it's making me a happier person because I can so much more appreciate life's moments of grace. A gentle breeze and sun pouring through my windows in the afternoon are so much more glorious. Going through my routine of shivering through the house, turning on heaters and opening curtains to let the sun shine in, gives me a strange feeling of peace, hope and good will. I am more aware that waking up every day is a blessing, and I can't wait to see the sun shine in!

Things I've learned these last few days

1. Reassurance can come from the least expected place.

2. Energy should not be taken for granted (personal physical energy, or electric/natural resources for that matter!)

3. Faith is the only thing that keeps us going

4. Pillows should be appreciated

5. Often men don't have any idea what things to 'protect' their wives from, but they sure will just about kill themselves trying to protect us from everything, even if it turns out counter productive. (I sure do love him for it!)

6. My daughter is way more knowledgeable than I gave her credit for.

7. No matter what happens, I am blessed beyond measure because my God is always there for me, holding my hand and my heart.

8. Careless words can wound deeply.

9. A gentle touch and a good laugh can make most things more bearable

10. Ignorance isn't always bliss

11. Haste makes waste (I know, it's pretty cliche, but so true)

12. While idle hands may be the Devil's playthings, busy hands sure can get exhausting

13. True friends are invaluable!

14. Compassion can be found in the least expected places

15. We never know when others are learning from us, try to live each moment as if it may save someone.

Some more pictures...

Okay, I think this will be the last of the pictures of our house, since you are probably bored of it by now...

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A furnished living room... The couch is supposed to have a connecting piece between the sofa and the love seat making a 'U' couch, however, put together, it literally was flush against the wall on the right, pushed against the wall behind the sofa (which has big cabinets that were rendered useless) and the other end of the sofa was flush against the wall on the left. I worried that this would lead to mildew, so we took out the connecting piece, tied cord around it and hoisted it up onto the roof of the sun porch, and through a window to put it in our bed room since it's the biggest room in the house and has plenty of room for a seat...

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The dinning room as it is now. For those of you who know us, yes you are seeing some new furniture. We probably could have used our tax return to get ourselves out of a pile of debt, but instead we decided that rather than sit on the floor, we would buy a new couch (the old one literally fell apart on it's own before the move) and since a really nice one was hardly more than a cheap'o one, we went for it. The table, well, our only excuse for that is that the movers lost all the hardware to put the old one back together again. I know, pretty feeble excuse, but that's all I've got, lol.

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A play room for DD. DH insisted that we buy this playhouse for DD, and my arguments were short lived, so our tax return is officially depleted... The 'cool' little foam mats with the little animals on them are really only cool in theory, because as soon as an 18 mo old realizes that they come apart, they are all over the play room and being chewed on constantly!!! Luckily they were super inexpensive at Livin, cause they may soon find themselves on their way to an ebay listing or something.

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Glass doors leading to the bathroom suite as I like to call it. This is located on the ground floor. Once you walk through them, the shower/Ofuro room is on the left, in front of you is the mirror (which with the touch of a button heats up to remove fog) and drawers with washer and dryer just beside and to the right is the toilet room with the super high tech toilet (not the one pictured in the last blog, that is just a regular toilet with the only amenities being heated seat and hand sink atop the tank). The toilet in this room is equipped with a seat warmer, bidet, some other kind of spraying option, plus an air dry option as well as some other buttons that the housing agent told me 'don't touch', so I don't know what they do. The only down fall to this area was that there were no towel rods, but a quick trip to Livin and about 1000 Yen later, I was ready to install them myself!

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One of our two kerosene heaters. These are AWESOME! They make alot of heat for relatively inexpensive cost. These are pretty nice models of the heaters, and I guess they are probably pretty expensive. I don't know though, because they are on loan from the Navy for the duration of our stay here, as are our dishwasher, washer and dryer, fridge, and a couple of power boosting transformers.

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DD's room, still not put together...

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My sewing room. With doors leading into the master bedroom, and shoji blinds on the huge windows which lead out onto the balcony. This is where we brought the other part of the couch in... This room has 4 1/2 Tatami (ta-ta-me) mats.

The MASTER!! The biggest room in the whole house by far! There in the corner is the rest of the couch... The unit on the wall up in the corner is a heater/dehumidifier/air conditioner, and was finally installed about 3 days after we moved in.

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Here's one of 7 closets in the house (only half is visible due to the sliding doors). 6 are this size and one is only the top and middle section, that's where I'm sitting, lol. The only downfall is none of them are tall enough inside to hang a dress... But I guess if that's as bad as it get's I'm pretty stinkin' lucky huh?

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The 'Man Room', after DH had a go at it. He's not done decorating yet, as we still need to figure out how to hang things on the walls without making the paper/sand mixture coating crumble and fall apart...

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Tatami mats in the man room.

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our house from the back side.

And with the rain shutters closed. There are 7 panels that slide across to enclose the house. Closing these at night would also help to keep the cold out, however, opening the doors to do so lets in alot of cold all at once, so I haven't yet decided which is better...

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The little hole in the wall used to push the panels in and out of their storage area (pictured below). The panels slide into the holding area and then must be pushed forward to make room for the rest of the panels, then to put them back out, they must be pulled forward and then slid out of the little slot and across the doorways. There is also a little wooden sliding door to close this little hole to help keep the cold out.

At last some pictures of the house and such...

It costs a bit to get moved in over here. Here is a picture of the stack of Yen we had to give to the housing agent in order to sign our lease.

952,100 Yen to be exact. Thank God the Navy gives us a monthly housing allowance to cover the monthly rent of 230,000 Yen (way more than they would ever give us in the states!!) and gave us money to cover the Owner bonus, the agent bonus and the agents income tax on their bonus. They also loaned us the money to cover the security deposit which was equal to one months rent. The only thing we had to come up with was our renters insurance which was 20,600 Yen for a year.

Gifts of Chocolate for our new neighbors as well as for the electricians.

Our beautiful front door!

This is the living room. According to the housing blueprint this is a guest bedroom, making this a 5 bedroom house. We chose to have it be the living room. Somehow I had thought it had Tatami floors, but I guess my memory was playing with me. We then chose to have the 'dining room' be a play room and the 'living room' which is right off the kitchen be the dining room...

One of my favorite features is the Ofuro (Oh-foo-roh), a bathtub that is about 3 ft long, and 2 1/2 ft deep. Ours is very new and all you must do is push a button on the touch pad that you see above the end there and it will automatically fill for you with 42 C water and when it's done filling, a little song plays and a voice calls out to you in Japanese that your tub is ready for you. There is also a control for it from the main water heater control panel located in the kitchen, so you can fill your tub from there and listen for the chime. Something else nice about it is that there is a call button from the one in the tub that chimes the kitchen in case you need something while relaxing in your tub, which by the way you could stay in all day without ever worrying about the water getting cold, because there is a thermometer that constantly tests the water and when it starts to cool, begins re-circulating the water out through a pipe, heats it using propane and sends it back into your tub toasty hot!!! AHHHHHH......

The only thing is, you must never use soap in your Ofuro, as it will cake and clog the recirculating system.

The shower and the tub are all in one enclosed room that's probably about 6ft x 6ft. The shower head just comes off the wall in there, so it's a very spacious shower. The shower head is quite low (just over 5ft up). An interesting feature is this waist high mirror... I guess personal grooming is paramount.

A picture from inside what is now the play room into what is the dining room/computer area. Just now, I'm sitting in the cubby there on the left of the picture. I've opened the doors to the cabinet there and put my computer there with my desk just underneath. What a great way to save space! The doors you see on the right lead out to our back yard. The next picture you see was taken from that corner where you see the curtain.

Our sun porch!! This porch is the length of 4 double sliding glass doors, and comes equipped with gold, orange and brown curtains from the 70's to help block out the cold at night, lol!! This entire side of the house is floor to ceiling glass doors and windows, as just on the other side of that stairway is the living room with it's glass doors.

The view from the dinning room. I LOVE the Shoji (Sho-gee) doors that also can be pulled closed to make a whole wall of paper doors, which also really help to keep the house warm at night. Ha, who would think that paper could make such a difference!

Unfortunatly Shoji and DH don't seem to get along very well, as he has already put about 4 or 5 holes in our Shoji doors in just over a week!! Luckily the supplies to repair them are readily available at 'Livin' (Japan's equivilent to Wal-Mart, and infact they sell some of the same brands) for really quite cheap and it looks relatively simple to replace. We'll see. When I undertake that task, I'll take pictures and blog about it in case anyone out there happens to be in need of knowing what not to do when repairing Shoji, haha!

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A portion of my kitchen

The glass encased shelves make a great place to display DH's crystal and china that he inherited from his aunt and grandmother. We just pray that there wont be a biggish earthquake while we're here, though more for our own safety than that of the dishes, but it really would be sad to loose such heirlooms.

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Here we have the other side of the kitchen, and yes that one cupboard door is totally a different color! I find it amusing that the counter tops are just below my waist level, while the upper cupboards start at about 6 1/2 ft from the floor, meaning that I need a step stool to pretty much reach anything that's not just inside the door. The counter space is less now, because we have a dishwasher on there now... (pictures to come)

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Once I get a chance to clean this, this is meant to be a place to store emergency supplies. It opens right up out of the kitchen floor. I guess many Americans use these as wine cellers, since they stay cold pretty much year around. While I suppose drunkenness could make a natural disaster not seem quite so bad for a few hours, I would much rather have food and water in mine...

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Cooking facilities! My two burners, fish grill, and oven. They all run on propane and the oven and burner/grill are two seperate units. Many houses do not even have an oven, just the fish grill that you see there above the oven. I've discovered that the left burner has a great feature. It has a sensor that shuts off the gas when your pan/tea kettle gets lighter than a certain weight, thus keeping you from boiling your pot dry!

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The smallest oven I've ever seen!!! This oven is about 13 x 10 x 13 inches, and workes kinda like a microwave in that you put your food in there, turn a knob to set the time and push start (well presumably start, I don't know it japanese, I just know it makes it go). Then the fire roares and cooks your food for you at whatever temp Celcius you happened to guess was close to the degrees farenheit that you need to cook your food at. When you open the door, the fire shuts off instantly (no heating the house with this oven...).

Side note, our microwave can't be used for longer than 10 seconds at a time without flipping a breaker, which happens to shut off power to half of the lower part of the house, and possible parts of upstairs... Breaker systems don't seem to be set up at all the same here as back in the states. Thank goodness for breakers though, because due to the dry electric or kerosene heat we use, the wood in this house is very very very dry! Sometimes I think that perhaps a few people could pick up the house and move it if they wanted to, since the wood is so dry and many of the doors are hollow paper covered 2mm wood in wooden frames, and some are just paper with wooden cross beams...

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A before picture of part of my favorite room in the house before it became 'The Man Room".

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The upstairs toilet complete with hand sink attached to the top of the tank. Only downfall here is that the water is freezing cold... Not gonna kill many germs that way. There is a sink right outside the door, however, the hot water doesn't work, because the pipes are rusted shut from unuse.

Our super tiny laundry facilities! It's been an interesting trial and error system trying to figure out what cycles do what, as the instruction sheet I got just told me things like 'this button selects which cycle', but no where did it saw what any of the cycles do, lol. Yes, I know I've got my hand in a few of these pictures, thats as a reference point to show size.

Here come the back yard pictures!

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One of two bamboo fountains

Some pics from out front.

My personal addition to the house...

a Japanese Apricot tree that I got at the commisary for $15

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I love this front gate!! The brownish thing on the right isn't supposed to be like that, it's supposed to be across the parkingspot over to the right. It's my fault that it's there like that, as it's our parkingspot it's supposed to be covering.

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Just in front of the front door.

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The 5 ft deep gutter that runs behind the house...

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Trash seperation...

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After my trip to the local market and inability to keep myself from buying the tiny little cute eggs, we had a breakfast of quail eggs. DD LOVED them and ate 9 of them for breakfast. Unfortunatly, she has now decided that chicken eggs are not so good... They taste much like chicken eggs, just not quite such a strong egg flavor. I liked them too, but had a hard time getting past the fact that they were quail eggs. Not sure why it should make any difference at all, but for some reason it just made them hard to swallow...

Well, that's it for this post. I just ran around and snapped a bunch more pictures during short breaks while I was typing this up, and I'll start that blog, but nap time is almost over, so I probably wont get the next one done for a little bit.