A New Home

The princesses say welcome!

Here's something else that has been keeping us busy: we moved!  Adam was offered a townhouse on the main base while we were gone, so the week before the girls and I arrived back he packed up everything, moved it over, and cleaned out the old house.  We never even got to say goodbye to our cute old Japanese house off base!  (But I also never had to help with moving, mwa ha ha...)  There are many things we'll miss about the old spot, but we're loving the new one.

Their favorite part about the new house,
a big (enough) backyard to play in.

This might come as a shock to some who had no idea we were even considering living on base.  It all happened really fast, so we're still processing it too... even a month later.  We really enjoyed our time out in our Japanese neighborhood and wouldn't trade it for anything.  It was a great start to our time in Japan.  There were so many benefits,  the house was awesome.  Our kitchen had a fancier fridge than I've ever experienced, gas stove (with fish broiler that Adam loved), and all sorts of funny Japanese quirks like the basket in the sink drain to catch food (brilliant, except when you had to clean it out).  I'm sure we'll miss the Japanese style bath this winter, and I actually loved hanging our laundry to dry every day.  Not only was it good for our bill, our clothes, and the environment, but I appreciated how it forced me to be organized and start a load in the morning so that it would have time to dry during the day.

We rarely played in our other backyard, unfortunately.  Since the houses
were so close together, they were always screaming into half a dozen
extremely quiet neighbors' kitchen windows.

Plus, for whatever reason (no breeze between the houses?),
mosquitos were killer at our old house.  Once while watering our tomatoes I counted
20 bites after five minutes outside, and that was after spraying myself.

Living off base forced us to experience aspects of Japanese living that we would have totally missed otherwise.  Trash and recycling was a totally overwhelming learning curve.  We had at least seven pages of instructions that we referred to regularly.  Small metal objects (ie bottle caps) had their own bag, sheesh.  There was a pickup for some sort of trash or recycling almost every day of the week, so I usually got to say hi to one of our neighbors every morning.  Living off base also forced me to be comfortable driving around the sometimes small, sometimes crazy Japanese streets.  I can now back into miniature parking spaces like everyone else does here.  :)

Our little patch of grass.  Still drying some laundry.  :)

The commute was getting old for me, though.  The reality was that kid activities (library, storytime, swim class, and any other classes we'd consider starting like Japanese language class or ballet), as well as grocery shopping, and workouts were bringing the girls and me to base almost every day.  30 min each way turns into a decent chunk of time when you're doing it every day with kids.

The new baby added a new motivation as well to driving less (my babies historically hate cars).  In our first day at the new house, we walked to a doctor appointment, walked to the park, and walked to the grocery store.  I love the idea of doing all that with our new little one.  It was a tough choice deciding to move, but so far we're all so happy we did.  No commute means we get more time as a family, and we even get to see Daddy during lunchtime regularly now.

We'll have to make a more concerted effort to experience Japan, but I'm not particularly worried.  Memorable inter-cultural moments happen every day. A few weeks ago, the girls and I drove up to Tokyo for Elena to do voice overs on a commercial (a modeling post to come soon).  I added to the excitement by forgetting to fill up the the gas tank on base and got to drive around Tokyo on empty frantically looking for a gas station.  It was only our second time filling up off base, and my first time alone!  We also had a dresser delivered from the Ikea in town, and I got to coordinate with the drivers how to escort them on base.  The first guy who called didn't speak a word of English, and I just thought he had a wrong number.  Several phone calls later we finally established the point of the call and a meeting time, then the girls and I got to wait outside the front gate to help them in (and wait, and wait... as they got stuck in evening traffic).  We ate pizza that night.  ;)  And Halloween in Japan is always entertaining.  I had great plans for costumes, but the girls ended up being princesses (we're going through a phase, can you tell?) and had a blast.  We even got trick-or-treaters at our new house!

I love having an outside area to make messes, and so do they!

As you can see, the backyard is currently one of our favorite parts of the new house.  I'll get pictures of the inside too, though!  We've still got some boxes sitting around, but we're slowly making the house a home.  There's still a guest room for any family and friends pondering a visit to Japan!