P.S.

That's probably the only "serious" picture you'll ever see of Josh - in case you hadn't already noticed!!

Extra Extra!!

Extra Extra, Read All About It!!! Remember when I said I was in the newspaper? I finally found the picture and have posted it for your viewing pleasure. If you click on the picture, you can see it in its full-sized glory! It was in the military newspaper in early September so all of the super-admirals all over the Pacific got to look at me. Anyway, I just thought that was a little interesting. . . also, I finally have my little room studio hooked up. So maybe I'll put a picture of that up soon - and some new tunes on myspace. Fun! - josh

Getting there...

Well....after many many hours of unpacking, we have started to see a little bit of progress around our new homestead! Our living room actually looks like you might want to live in it, instead of looking like some crazy people having a junk sale in their house! It has been fun to find special places around the house for all the thoughtful gifts that have been given to us over the years - thinking of friends and family and their kindness makes unpacking not quite as laborious!
We also rented a steam cleaner and treated our cars, our indoor carpets, and our couch to a very thorough wash...it was a little suprising how much dirt came out of all those things (especially since I'm known for being germ-o-phobic!) We did enjoy much better weather this weekend than we had expected. They were very concerned about a typhoon hitting our area, but we ended up with two sunny and beautiful days! Josh is back to work tomorrow - he's busy preparing himself to run some training drills with the corpsman on the ships. I will continue the unpacking and work on getting through the mounds of paperwork involved with this moving endeavor...(starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!) Oh yeah, and before I forget...a little plug to remind you how easy it is to get ahold of us...my dad found out from Cingular that if you use your cell phone to call us (our Stateside #) you'll get charged just your usual minutes (or however you are normally charged) No extra fees! I assume it's the same for other cell phone companies too...but I'm sure it's easy to find out if you're concerned! Just remember the time difference....we'd love to hear from you!

Tackling the mess!

I'm sitting here wondering why on earth we sent so many things half way around the world. Granted....the time leading up to our move from Norfolk was ridiculously busy, so sorting through our stuff wasn't a top priority....and I guess I do remember thinking that I wanted EVERYTHING to go with us so that we could make Japan feel like home - but really - did I need to bring 30 flower vases....boxes of memorabilia from the last 28 years (of course I did leave a few of those at my parents house...thanks mom and dad!)....and enough small appliances to run a bakery....my goodness. We've already started a pile for the second hand shop on base and now that we're here for longer than one year (my frequent excuse for never unpacking one whole room of junk in Norfolk!) I guess I better get down to business! (I know that Josh might not strike you as the sentimental type - but he can hang on to some memorabilia and stacks of things too...it's not just me!)
Anyway, as you can tell, our household goods did arrive yesterday - mostly in one piece! A few broken glasses and bent lamps and little more dirt than we started with, but we'll survive! Josh is already planning to rent a steam cleaner this weekend for the car carpets and upholstered items that got soiled in the move. (since we paid a total of $800 for two cars, we have to give them a little t.l.c. to bring them up to standard!) Everything made of wood acquired a few extra scratches on the way as well. Fortunately, I spent a good amount of time in my dad's shop watching him fix up "dings" in pianos (along with a whole host of other cool technical things!), so I think I've figured out the magic of the "wood pen" and that should fix mostly everything. Josh will also have to use some carpentry skills to fix both our desk and couch which they broke the legs off of...(though the couch isn't unusable, it will be a good idea to fix it before it really breaks)...Oh, right - I'm supposed to be working! - more later!

Weekend Updates...

We enjoyed a beautiful and fairly eventful weekend! The cooler and less humid weather was a treat. On Saturday morning we had our internet and phone service hooked up at last. Then on Saturday afternoon we traveled to Kamakura to see the "great Buddha" - the largest statue of a Buddha in Japan (probably about 30 feet tall - plus it was built almost 800 years ago!). The town is filled with little craft shops and bakeries, so that was fun too. Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to taste the local specialty - sweet potato ice cream - so we'll have to go back later for that tasty treat! From Kamakura we took the train back to Yokosuka so we could meet up at the Lighthouse for "gourmet pizza night." (The Lighthouse is a local Christian ministry that we're looking forward to being a part of - they have several Bible studies throughout the week, along with community meals, and other activities and events to be a part of too.)
On Sunday Josh woke up before the sun and met the aircraft carrier (USS Kittyhawk) for their friends and family day. Unfortunately, Josh wasn't able to bring his friends and family because they didn't tell us in time - but it was an eventful day at sea none-the-less. Several thousand people were on the boat and they filled the day with food, music, tours of the boat, and even an air show.
I was sad that I couldn't go along, but managed to have a pretty busy day myself. I met up with a group from Atsugi ( the local Naval air base) at an orphanage to play with children for the morning. The group was made up of people from the Officer's Christian Fellowship and they usually go once a month to share a church service and then play with the kids for a few hours. A little girl named Momue kind of "adopted me" and we had a fun time playing together even though we couldn't communicate very well with words. I loved it!
After that I went along to a "welcome tea" for spouses of doctors and got to make some nice connections with other women on base. I'm realizing more and more that Josh's job is very much an entity unto itself, so it's a little more work to meet people around base....but I will continue to persevere!
This week will bring the arrival of our household goods, the purchase of a second car, my second adventure with teaching English, and many more experiences in adult medicine for Josh! Hope you are well! Love, R and J

Thank you!

Thanks to everyone who remembered my birthday yesterday! It was a cold and rainy day, but Josh and I had a really fun time celebrating anyway. I woke up to a surprise call on my cell phone from my parents and Grant, Sam, and Lydia….5 Woodworths on speaker phone is a very interesting experience! (but a fun one, of course!) Josh and I went out to dinner at a Thai food restaurant in town, where I got my “usual” – green curry and rice and Josh got a fun noodle dish. Then we did some window shopping at the mall and ended up at the bakery to pick out a slice of cake for each of us! (All of the malls and department stores in Japan have a grocery store in the basement, so you can always pick up little things when you need them –it’s great!)
When we went home we opened some gifts and birthday cards that had come in the mail and enjoyed our cake. Josh was very brave to do all of his birthday shopping at stores in town (not on base!)…so that was fun! Even though I was very far from most of my favorite people – it was a very nice day of birthday events!

Hooray!!

Hey all! We just got some great news....our household shipment has arrived and will be ready for delivery next week! (a few weeks ahead of schedule - hooray!!!) I think unpacking seven crates worth of stuff should keep me busy for awhile! We will have a futon and a spare bedroom for anyone who wants to book their flight now!!

Updates!

Hi again! We’re still counting down the days (3!!!) until we have internet access from our house….now that we’ve moved off base it’s even more of a pain to drive back to base to get service. Anyway, we’ve had another eventful week here in Japan. We got to “mow” our lawn with a weed eater, clean the mold off the outside of our car (love the humidity!), and plant some cool flowers in our little garden patch! For all you garden buffs, we planted cosmos, chrysanthemums, petunias, ferns, and a few plants I had never seen before. (and unless I learn Kanji sometime soon, I’ll probably never know what they are!) Then we also got some oregano, mint, basil, sage, and cilantro for a little herb garden along the side of our house. (although I tried to plant them today and I kept running into pipes for the house – oops!)
Josh had his first chance to organize a helicopter evacuation from a ship that was out at sea, so that was exciting. (a sailor’s fell and injured his leg and they were very concerned about it) Overall, he is doing a lot more paperwork than he would like to do, but he’s learning a lot about adult medicine and we’re still enjoying having more time together!

I taught my first night of English classes last night….yikes! The director of the school requested that I teach on Tuesday nights until the Thursday classes begin, so that I can get practice using the curriculum. I teach two classes of high school students and one class of first year college students. We will work mostly on conversational English, which is something that they do not stress in their English classes at school. It was a little stressful for my first time ever teaching English to non-English speakers, but the students are very nice and it will be a great way to help them and it will help me to learn more about Japanese culture as well. All in all it should be a good experience!

Move-in day!

We just spent our first night at our new place and all the move in details went pretty well! (with the exception of our express shipment being pretty banged up - our computer tower and printer were cracked and our stereo is broken....hopefully we'll get reimbursed for the damages!!)
Got our gas hooked up today, so I can actually cook again - hooray! Looks like we won't have our vonage account hooked up until sometime after next weekend (the 16th or 17th), so that's a bummer....but we are still really looking forward to making stateside phone calls for free whenever we get everything hooked up!!!
We are discovering lots of cool Japanese perks inside our house, but I will wait to put together some kind of virtual tour when our new camera arrives. (sorry to keep you in suspense!)
Hope all is well in the U.S. of A! Love, Rebecca

Everything's shipshape!

Do you want to hear about my boat ride? Here's the story of my first time on a Navy ship:
In Japan, they have National Disaster Day twice a year where they practice what they would do in a disaster. So last Friday, they pretended that they had had a major earthquake. Our job was to help “evacuate” Tokyo along with several ships from other countries. As the Medical Officer for the group of ships that included the one "evacuating" Tokyo, at first I was told just to show up to demonstrate our medical readiness for an evacuation, then I was told to have a medical display, then to give a 30-45 minute presentation on Non-combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO). Finally it turned out that I had to talk for about an hour and talk about NEO and teach the 31 Japanese “evacuees” how to eat an MRE (that part was fun - MRE's are the meal packages for use in kitchen-free environments and include a built in heater). Apparently I was in the Stars & Stripes (the military newspaper) with a picture of me teaching how to eat an MRE, but I haven’t seen it yet. Nobody burned themselves on the MRE which was good. Anyway, I was only out for a day, so I still got to have a 3 day weekend, which Rebecca has told you all about. That's all for now - while I'm supposed to be working! Sorry that there are no pictures, we'll post some as soon as our camera comes! - Josh

Our Labor Day Weekend!

We had fun weekend adventures to Yokohama and Tokyo. Went to Yokohama on Saturday for the day - did some window shopping, checked out the tallest building in Japan, walked along the waterfront, and saw the biggest ferris wheel in the world! Then on Sunday after church we headed to Tokyo. We stayed at the Navy's hotel there (really nice!!) and enjoyed the evening in the Ginza section of town.....kind of like Times Square meets 5th Ave. (neon lights and high dollar shops galore!) Then on Monday we went to the part of the city called Akihabara....it's a whole town filled with discount electronics stores - including music stores filled with hundreds of pianos and guitars (Josh was in his glory!) We spent loads of time looking at all the latest MAC gimics and searching for some rock n' roll gear for Josh...he in turn took time to look at stationary, flower shops, and a few gardens with me!! Unfortunately the gardens around the Imperial Palace are closed on Mondays, so we'll have to check them out another time. All in all, our first big excursion on public transportation was a big success!

Ohiyo!

Hope everyone enjoyed the Labor Day weekend. Sorry to hear that the east coast was pretty soggy for most of it! Turns out that the typhoon that is heading this way has been down-graded from it's "super typhoon" status, but it will still bring us a bunch of rain by the end of the week.

A few updates from here: I got my license today and am thoroughly enjoying the freedom of getting around - though I will be Josh's taxi for the week since he can't take his test until Friday....no big deal! We sign the papers for our house today and will "move in" tomorrow. We're able to borrow a bed and other necessary furniture until ours arrives in a few weeks, so it still won't feel quite like home, but it's a step in the right direction!

I did have my interview on Friday at the English teaching school and it went well. I was offered the "positions" but unfortunately they are all in the evenings since that is when people are not working or at regular school. I decided to take just one night of work for now, so I will teach classes on Thursday nights to the employees of the Yokosuka City Office. I will go to the office for several hours and teach about conversational language they will need to help out city tourists who are English speaking. Hopefully, I can find some individual students to work with during the day.

Josh's event on Friday went well also! He met the mayor of Tokyo, delivered a talk about the process of an emergency evacuation, and taught the crowd how to eat MRE's (the Meals Ready to Eat that they have for combat/training) He got lots of compliments and is in the military newspaper for Japan! (though we haven't seen it yet) And.....he didn't even get sea sick!

Natural Wonders!

Japan is full of natural wonders and phenomenon! In addition to the 4.5 earthquake that we experienced yesterday....it is also the middle of the typhoon season! Any of you who live in the southern U.S. or Gulf Coast can relate to this. We are expecting a fairly strong typhoon to pass through the Tokyo region over the next few days....typhoons are much like hurricanes and include a lot of rain and high speed winds. We were hoping to head up and explore Tokyo for the weekend, but we may have to postpone our trip because of the bad weather conditions.
I just heard from Josh and he is on his way back from the evacuation exercise that they did in Tokyo today.....he said it went well (and I don't hear that too much from him, so hopefully he feels good about his presentation!) Hope you all have a fun and sunny long weekend!

Back to the rain for me! :) Rebecca