Did you know?!?!

Thought I'd throw in some Japanese trivia that we're learning and living during our time here!

Did you know that 10% of the world's earthquakes occur in Japan? (apparently they have approx. 900 small earthquakes every year....many of them cannot be felt, but every once and a while they're noticeable to the general public)

We just experienced our first one - yikes! It only lasted a few seconds, but it was still kind of surprising!

Home Sweet Home!

We just found out today that we should be moving into our new house next Thursday. (Sept. 6th) Hooray! We only have a few small household goods here in Japan, but the housing office on base has furniture we can borrow until our main shipment arrives in October. Did I mention that there are a few tiny plots of earth around our house where I can plant flowers?!?!? I have yet to prove my green thumb abilities, but am very excited to have a try at it!

I have a job interview with an English school in town tomorrow, so I'll let you know what comes of it. We're hoping to be able to drive our car by the beginning of next week too. (it was given to us by the doctor that Josh replaced, but we've been waiting to pass our overseas driving test here!)

We've learned a lot about the Japanese transportation system during our intercultural relations class this week, so we're thinking of heading up to Tokyo for the day on Saturday....if you don't hear from us next week, we may have gotten a bit turned around during our adventure....let's hope that's not the case!

Alright....hope you're all looking forward to a nice long weekend for Labor Day!

Love, R and J

Hello Again!

Just wanted to send along some updates from across the Pacific! We were able to rent the house that we had mentioned earlier last week and should be able to move in sometime before next weekend. It is a much bigger house than we were expecting to get, with three bedrooms and a nice size living/dining room area. The kitchen is pretty small, but we can still manage to put and small "American" size stove and refrigerator in it. (So I won't have to give up baking/cooking while we're here!)
We have an orientation to attend for the rest of this week, so we'll be learning more about how things work over here. The main event of the orientation is the driving test that we take on Friday to get our Japanese licenses!!!! (I am counting down the days that we have to live out of our suitcases and plan our lives around the base buses......5 more to go!)
Josh's work seems to be going well. The guys in his office seem pretty nice. He has his first outing on a ship this Friday - it's a one day PR kind of thing that they are doing to "run through" an evacuation of a major city....they have asked him to make a 30 - 45 minute presentation on evacuation procedures to a bunch of business executives and Japanese media people (obviously he'll be reading up on this a lot this week!!!)
Somehow between the Seattle and Japan our camera stopped working, so we've had to order a new one. We'll send pictures along as soon as we get back in the digital world again!
Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend!

Konichiwa!

Hey Everyone!

I can't claim to be a techno-wizard, but this could prove to be a fun way to keep in touch with the motherland! I think we've recovered from the jet-lag, but living life 13 hours ahead of the east coast is going to take some getting used to!

My next job is to figure out how to post some pictures on here so that you all can experience Japan with us! Too bad I can't beam my brother Ben over here to help me! We'll see what happens!

Love, Becca