We are living in the Monzen Lodge, one of several TLF’s (temporary lodging facilities)here on the base.

We are upstairs and have a nice place. It’s like a hotel room with a bed, a small couch, dresser, table and 4 chairs, little desk and a chair, and a nice kitchen. We also have a TV with about 6 English stations and instead of commercials there are snippets about the military, or about a particular service man or woman or a piece of military history. There’s also a channel that shows the weather and reports what you need to know if you’re a pilot. It’s interesting to turn on the tv in the morning and see NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

Our Lodge is right on the Monzen River and there’s a Sea Wall along either side of the river. We get up at 0520 every morning and walk the sea wall.

There are stone steps built into the sea wall every now and then which is how we access the walkway.

We walk southish along the wall toward the Inland Sea and often encounter platoons of marines running and working out on the wall. I don’t take pictures of them.

When you look down into the river you can see lots of fish. There is also an interesting array of rocks on the bottom that are really pretty.

When we turn around and walk back to our TLF this is what we see. The base is on our right. Our room is just past the bridge you see in the distance. It’s not as far as it looks, maybe a mile and a half.

I took these pictures on different days so you’ll see how the sky and weather varies all the time.

Everything is very close to us here on the base. The commissary and the exchange are right across the street. We also have a bank, credit union, post office, fedex, library, travel agent, movie theater (we saw Jersey Boys the other night), cell phone store called Soft Bank Mobile, a wood hobby shop, and a huge new IronWorks gym which we pass on our sea wall walks. There’s a Rec Center in the gym where we can check out every kind of sports equipment imaginable (except bikes). They have hiking and camping gear – tents, packs, poles, etc; ski gear for winter; stand up paddle boards, just about everything. And would you believe it’s all free?

For our dining pleasure on base there’s the Club Iwakuni with JD’s Grille and The Landing Zone. And then we have a Food Court with Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Subway, plus Soba Express. Believe it or not we’re doing pretty well with meals.

Since we’ve been here our days have been so busy with getting oriented. There’s been almost no time to write in this blog. Chris had a very long checklist of places he had to visit, many of which I too had to check in. We got government ID cards, took the driving written test, C got his driver’s license plus a government driver’s license, and so much more. It’s been exhausting and interesting and a great opportunity to meet so many new people.