Getting into the Christmas Spirit!

Monsy was posing in front of our Christmas tree! We didn't bring along any ornaments to Japan, so we made our own from seashells that we have found on the beaches. We had a hot glue gun session to make them all! We also used our pieces of rope from the tug-of-war we went to as our tinsel!

Since Nathan and I first started dating we have had the annual tradition of a day filled with making a gingerbread house, decorating our place, watching Christmas Vacation, and drinking cider. This year was no different, but we were not able to find an actual gingerbread house... so we made a gingerbread tree this year!

Our finished product!

Merry Christmas from Japan!!!

Navy Fleet Gift Shop Volunteer Christmas Party!

Last week we had our Navy Fleet Gift Shop Volunteer Christmas Party! It was held at Kelly Varner's home. We had lots of yummy food and an ornament exchange... we are holding our ornaments in the pic! We love our volunteers and couldn't run the store without them!

Gion District: Thanksgiving in Kyoto

We spent our Thanksgiving weekend in Kyoto with John and Angela. We had an amazing time! In the pictures below we are in the Gion District of Kyoto. This is one of the areas where the Geiko (Geisha) culture is still practiced. We went "Geisha Hunting" two nights and I have put a couple of the pictures below. Angela was a great geisha paparazzi! In the picture below, Nate and I are outside of the place were we saw the most maikos/geikos (geisha are called that in Kyoto) coming out of... heading to the tea houses where they would be entertaining.

Okinawa City Festival & Tug of War

One of two ropes that they use for the tug of war. They connect them and then everyone at the festival joins in on the tug of war! This is not near as big as the tug of war in Naha (biggest in the world), but I was in the Philippines during that one. Hopefully we will make it next year!

Here is how they connect the two ropes. Then the mayor of the town said something as well as a representative from Kadena. The festival was really great. They had all sorts of food for sale up and down Gate 2 street.

These people are displaying their skills.... I am not sure what type of skills, but it was really cool. There were also groups doing different Eisa dances, which are traditional Okinawan dances.

That is me pulling the rope during the tug of war. My side lost.

There is Nate during his round. His side lost too.

There were three rounds of pulling. The first one was for kids and it was so cute... I am not sure if the rope moved or not.

Scooter Practice!

This past Sunday we headed out to the "Motorcycle Course" on Kadena for some practicing! I thought people would get a kick out of our pictures. I am officially a licensed motor scooter driver! I completed my two-day safety class yesterday. Nathan will take his class next Monday and Tuesday. We could not take the class together because we both have to have our own bikes to ride! I did miss 5 points on my driving skills test for not going fast enough on one of the courses! I didn't trust myself to go any faster and still make it through the cones... better safe than sorry! I will post how Nate does next week!

Weekend of Beach Camping

We headed out of town on Saturday when I got done with work... Nate had the Pajero ready to go! We drove up to the northern most point of Okinawa called Cape Hedo. By the time we arrived at Hedo Beach it was dark... so we set up camp in the dark, which we have become pros at by now! The picture above shows our campsite the next morning. After we made breakfast we headed out for a day of exploring.

This post was out on the point of Cape Hedo.

It also said the same thing in Spanish on the other side, but I couldn't see the 4th side.

From the top looking down into the water at Cape Hedo... the reef looks awesome!

There is also a cave that you can SCUBA dive in.

We we to the peak of some neighboring cliffs and this is the view of Cape Hedo from the top. The weather was really rainy and dreary all weekend unfortunately.


After driving up the west coast of the island on Saturday we started to head

down the east coast on Sunday to our next camping spot at Uppama Beach.

This beach was beautiful and was more of a sandy beach in comparison

to a lot of the rocky and coral beaches that are very common here.

We had a great time exploring the upper portion of Okinawa this weekend...

so much different from down in the middle/south where we live.

It is a beautiful island everywhere, but the north is spectacular!

Our Scooter!

We are finally the proud owners of our very own scooter!

We are so excited and can't wait to hit the streets with our new wheels.

We still have to get it registered, licensed and insured. We also have to take a motorcycle saftey course in order to get our motorcycle license. Yes, we have to get a license to drive a scooter :)

Marine Corps Ball

Monday night was the Marine Corps 233rd Birthday Ball.

Another Trip to the Dentist!

I had my root canal appointment on Monday of this week!

I have the best dentist ever... no pain! We even went to eat Mexican afterwards.

Fishing Trip

This past Saturday Nate and I ... along with 11 other people... went on a deep sea fishing adventure! We meet up with everyone around 3am and hit the high seas. The boat ride out to where the fish were biting was about 3 hours! We got to see the beautiful sunrise over the East China Sea while we were heading out.
We caught all Yellowfin Tuna.
Osamu was a huge help on the boat with our fish. Some of the fish were really big! Captain Billy didn't think we caught any big ones.... but since I am used to Blue Gill these seemed like monsters.

Captain Billy and First Mate Osamu getting all of the fish out of the cooler at the end of the day. Nate and I ended up taking home about 5 one-gallon bags of cut tuna fillets! We did cut some sashimi when we got home... which was really fun and good!

This past weekend our friends Jeremy & Julie had a Yukata Party at their place. Yukatas are the summer version of a kimono. It was so fun to get dressed up in them! Both of our shoes were too small, so our feet hung over the ends! We are a little sunburned from our 12 hour fishing trip that we had taken that day.

This is the sushi platter that we had for lunch on Friday at work! It was so amazing and pretty... just thought that I would share it!

This is Megumi and Erina, two of the ladies that I work with. They are in front of our Kokeshi Doll display. Kokeshi's are a traditional Japanese wooden doll that a lot of people collect now. Megumi is from mainland Japan and Erina is a local Okinawan.

This is one of Monsy's "Senior Pictures"!!! Just thought I would show everyone how handsome he still is here in Japan! Monsy will turn three next month :)

A Delicious Weekend!

This weekend we were able to try out three new restaurants! The amount of restaurants here truly amazes us!

Friday night we went out to eat with Matt and Jody to a Do-It-Yourself type of restaurant called An An. You order your meats and veggies, then you cook it yourself over a grill type of contraption in the middle of the table. The food was great, but the grill is definitely very hot and can cause some dinner-time sweating!

On Saturday afternoon Nate and I tried out Japanese style Mexican food at Obbligato. The food was great... but definitely different from American Mexican food. Our meals came with sticky rice, hash browns, potato salad and dippy eggs! All and all it was a great dining experience and we plan to go back! Nate has told me that we aren't supposed to be eating at the same place more than once because there are too many that we want to try.

Saturday night we had some friends over for a BBQ at our apartment. Nate was manning the grill, making burgers, brats, and chicken.

Sunday afternoon we tried out an Indian restaurant called Kebab's. We decided to go with a "Set". The meal came with soup, a puff pastry thing with potato in it, our curry main dish, nan (one was garlic and the other herb) that was AMAZING, and ice cream dessert!

We are looking forward to this coming weekend... weather permitting, we are headed out with 10 other folks for a deep sea fishing adventure!

http://www.saltwater-fishing-okinawa.com/

Since there are 12 of us in our group, I am pretty sure that we get the boat and the captain to ourselves! I am so excited, and I will be sure to take a ton of pictures! We get to keep all of the fish that we catch, so that should be great! An Okinawan fish-fry will hopefully be in order.

A Visit to Dr. Seng

Well... I had my dentist appointment this morning. It was just your regular routine cleaning and exam. It turns out that I am going to need a root canal! It is NOT because of poor oral hygiene, it is because my canine (tooth #11) has a crack in it (from either grinding my teeth or something) that is deep and is causing the tooth to die! Needless to say, I was a little unhappy to hear that news. I knew that something was wrong with the tooth, because it had been giving me problems for almost a year now!
I tried to take a picture of Nate while he was being my dentist, but he refused... quite adamantly. I then thought maybe I could take one with my cell phone camera. But under no condition was I allowed to take pictures :) Nate is such the professional dentist!!

Jody's Birthday

Last night we celebrated Jody's 27th Birthday... with KARAOKE!! We all had such a blast singing the night away.

This was our second time to this karaoke bar (Kuganea sp?), and needless to say... we love it!

Labor Day Weekend

FRIDAY

Friday we had our household goods delivered, which kept us very busy. We did venture out to eat to a place called Izakaya Genki with Matt & Jody. They have very large and delicious sushi rolls. We also dined on a staple dish here… Yakitori, which are kebabs.

SATURDAY

We ventured to our first secluded beach on Okinawa! We went with Josh, Suzanne & their two boys, Max & Brand; Ray, Cat and their daughter Lauren; Soon (who is a dentist for the Navy) and his girlfriend Kiko; and Tran (who is also a dentist for the Navy). We had such an amazing time! Not only was the beach beautiful, Nathan was very excited to try spear fishing for the first time! He came up empty handed, but Josh and Ray both speared a couple of fish and also an octopus. I snorkeled, but didn’t stay too long for the spear fishing adventure… but I did see Ray come back to the surface with his octopus still alive. You have to free-dive down to where the fish are, so Nate is going to have to work on how long he can hold his breath.

SUNDAY

We went to church on Camp Foster, and the priest is one of Nate’s patients. He is a really nice, funny guy. After church we decided we were going to have an adventurous day!

We first had lunch at a restaurant Nate has been wanting to try. It is called FAB. It is a curry restaurant in Sunabe. Sunabe is a very short drive or bike ride north of where we live. The food was delicious and our view was even more amazing! We were outside looking directly at the East China Sea.

After lunch we started driving north with the intention of going to the Ocean Expo Park… which is the 2nd largest aquarium in the world behind Atlanta. We actually didn’t ever make it there because we stopped at so many places along the way! Our first stop was Todoroki Waterfall. It is located in the village of Sukuta. The waterfall was a short walk back in the woods, which was so great to be out in nature… away from the cities. It wasn’t a huge waterfall, but it was so peaceful and pretty.

Moving more north, we thought that it would be fun to stop next at the Nago Pineapple Park! The pineapple park is a very popular tourist spot for Japanese. The park is situated near a pineapple field. You get to tour the park in a very cool Pineapple Golf Cart! After the tour is over we got to sample 3 different types of pineapple wine (very good) and also sample all types of pineapple foods and normal pineapple. We were definitely stuffed with sweets by the time we left!
By this time we had driven over an hour and thought we would head back south, but we did stop at a glass blowing factory along the way! The glass factory is called Mori Gurasu Kobo (Forest Glass Factory). We watched the guys working for a while. It is a really neat process, and they work very quickly!
On Sunday night we went out with Matt and Jody. We ate at a place by Araha Beach (where we both live) called Jet City Burgers. They have the most innovative burgers I have seen! I had a Hawaiian Burger that had the burger, cheese, avocado, pineapple and some other things I can’t recall.

MONDAY

We decided we should do some final organizing in our apartment. Then we explored the local 100Yen store (Dollar Store). The 100Yen stores are so great here! They have everything!! We also checked out a store called UniGlo. People have told us that UniGlo is the Japanese Gap. It turned out to be a great store… we didn’t get anything yet since Nate is bigger than most of the clothes.

We had Matt and Jody over for dinner and grilled chicken. Nate loves to grill now (which I love too)!

Furniture!

It was a very exciting day yesterday at the Seng apartment!
We finally had our household goods shipment delivered. We have been living in our apartment with very little furniture for the past month.
Monsy was very happy to have more places to lounge. He made himself right at home again at his usual old spot on the couch. He is so funny.

Things are still going great here! Nate really likes his clinic and is getting to do a lot of different dental procedures/things. I am going to have my first dental appointment with him since he was in dental school! I go in on Sept 8th, so I will be sure to report back on how that goes! haha
I really like my new job as well! The people who I work with are really great... and that makes it all the better!

More to come later... time to get packing up to head to a beach on the Northeast side of the island. It is a secluded beach that we hear is awesome... pictures to come later!

Internet, Beer Festival, Karaoke

We FINALLY got our internet set up today! It seems like we have been living without internet for ages, but it really has only been about 3 weeks. It is amazing how disconnected you feel from everyone!

We don't have our Vonage line set up quite yet... but we hope to have it up and running within a day!

We are so excited to be able to call & receive calls from everyone. It has been so long!

We went to the Orion Beer Festival this weekend, which was our Japanese version of Strassenfest this year. After the festival we had our first experience at a Japanese Karaoke Bar! It was SUCH a good time! We are definately not microphone shy!!

Awesome Sunset

Last night we were out grilling & saw the coolest sunset from our place!

We have not seen a sunset like it since we have been here & wanted to share it!!

3 Weeks In!

We have been in Japan for a little over 3 weeks now! We apologize for not updating our site & emailing as much as we would like. As you can imagine... we have been very busy getting settled. Finding a new place to live, getting Japanese driver's licenses, getting new cars, moving in to the new place, Nate checking in to his new command.... and so on.... have kept our days very full.

We also do not have internet in our apartment yet. We thought it was going to get installed yesterday... but that was just our "inspection" for internet. Our new date for internet installation is Aug 26th. We should also have our Vonage phone line up and running that day. Once that is installed we will be able to call and receive calls from the US like a normal stateside number! We can't wait for that!!

We have been snorkeling and are getting ready to do a SCUBA certification. The coral reefs here are beautiful and can't wait to get in the water more! We got full-body wetsuits today. I need mine to keep warm & we both need them to protect from jellyfish. We have been told they are the worst they have been in years. Yikes.

We are really enjoying the Japanese cuisine! We love going out to eat with new friends & trying all sorts of interesting dishes. The price of going out to eat here is much more reasonable than what we were used to in South Carolina, so that is very nice! We were at one restaurant where no one spoke English... I am pretty sure we ended up eating a small bird egg, liver and some cartilage.

Monsy is a very happy kitty here in Japan... he really likes our new place and has his favorite spots to hide already. We have tile and hardwood floors so he slides around a lot when he is playing, but he is getting used to that! He is having some allergy problems, the vet said it has to do with the coral dust in the air. We are going to take him in next week to get checked out, just to make sure all is ok.

We will be sure to post pictures soon!

5 Days!

We are 5 days away from our big move!!!

We are pretty well squared away after a long road of jumping through hoops & loads of paperwork.

We took a road trip to Fort Stewart, GA yesterday to get Monsy's health certification... he is set to fly! We have also done a "test run" of giving Monsy Benadryl so he will sleep on our flight... which was VERY interesting! He will be flying in the cabin with us from Savannah to Seattle on Tuesday. That should be a trip!

We are getting very anxious for the move now... really ready to go. It is amazing how quickly you get tired of having only an airbed and a laptop!

More exciting news to come very soon!!!

MEXICO

We just got back from a WONDERFUL trip to Mexico!

Here is one of the family shots that we had taken on the beach.

TWO WEEKS and TWO DAYS until we move!

Monsy, Move Day #1

Monsy likes it up there, he was not allowed up there when we had all of our pottery out.

The kitchen is completely empty!

On top of the bed in the spare bedroom.

Leigh & Derrick's Wedding

Leigh, Diane, Me, Deborah, & Jill

Nate and I headed back to Jasper/Huntingburg this past weekend for Leigh and Derrick's wedding. We had such a great time seeing & hanging out with everyone!

Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/user/omechina

When Nate and I were in Wilmington we were walking around and these people asked us to be in their commercial for a British pub. If you go to the link we are in the first of the two commercials that are on the YouTube video. The guy who shot it, just sent it to us!

It's pretty funny... we are running down the street!

Good Bye Cars!

As some of you have heard.... the Explorer has new owners! We sold it on Sunday evening (in the pouring down rain) at the local Walmart parking lot. The lucky new owners are a nice group of hispanic men who are planning on driving it to Mexico this week!!
We will have my car until Friday. A couple from north of Atlanta are going to buy mine! He is flying down to the Hilton Head airport where I will pick him up.
We are still trying to figure out the logistics of having only one car... which will be a rental that we are still looking for.

t-w-e-n-t-y s-e-v-e-n

Happy 27th Birthday, Nate!!