Now that you’ve seen a bit of our life on the base, I’ll show you a little of what we’ve discovered as we’ve wandered off the base. First, I must say it’s been amazingly HOT here. When I check the weather it might say “83 degrees – feels like 97” very high humidity. In fact, often when we step outside our glasses get all steamed up. Since we don’t have a car yet we do our walking and wandering early in the morning on the weekends and later in the evenings. And even then it’s too hot. But we (I) am trying to get used to it. Here’s a sign that’s commonly seen in the bathrooms around the base.

As you head off base this is the road to the main intersection, commonly referred to as Four Corners.

Home is never far away.

We opted for a Japanese restaurant and had no clue what we were getting in to.  Very small.  Everything in Japanese, of course.  No one spoke English.  But we did it.  And had a great lunch.

Here’s our bill for this meal.

Iwakuni, much like the rest of Japan, is surrounded by the sea and by very high mountains.  The towns are tightly packed in between.  It’s fun to walk along the back roads which are really tiny.  Among the small tightly packed houses are small vegetable gardens everywhere.

There are also small cemeteries squeezed in throughout the neighborhoods.  This was by far the highlight of our trip so far for me.

I’m sure they will appreciate their caps this winter when it will get really cold.

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.

We were at the gym this afternoon and on one of the big TV screens was today’s Tour de France stage and on the other was Sumo Wrestling. What a contrast of people at the top of their sport.

Now that this blog is up and running I want to back up and start at the beginning of our adventure .

Monday, July 14, 2014                            9am

Wow, it’s finally here.  We are at the San Diego airport waiting for the first leg of our journey to Japan and great new adventures ahead.

It’s been quite a week with the pack out on Wednesday and lots of loose ends to wrap up.  We’ve shipped nearly everything to Japan, most of it will arrive in September.  About 250 pounds we packed in an “Express” Shipment which will arrive in a month.  The express load consisted of 1 tandem, 2 road bikes, Chris’ work clothes, a pot, 2 cups, 2 forks, 2 bowls, and 2 towels.  My road bike and our 2 city bikes went on the slow boat along with the rest of our household goods.   (And, if anybody is keeping track, our Twin Schwinn beach cruiser tandem is going to Ashland, OR later.)

I am moving back to Coronado in late September to continue to oversee the caregiving of my mom so we scrounged up enough furniture for me to get by – a bed, a chair, a table, a cup, a bowl and a plate.  Then we emptied the storage unit and moved all that miscellaneous stuff into the apartment too – just so I won’t get lonely.

We’ve also had so many amazingly wonderful send off parties.  The bike club at the Yacht Club, Chris’ work folks at the old Police Headquarters in downtown San Diego,  the Thursday Night Bike Gang dinner – with chopsticks as well as dinner and lunches with so many special friends.  Thank you all.  You guys are the best and we’ll miss you all.

We left San Diego right on time at 10:53am this morning, arrived in San Francisco at 12:30pm and walked right on to our 747 for the big trip “across the pond” as my Papa would say.  We are in Row 60 – last row, a window and an aisle, just two seats – so romantic – and very spacious back here.

Sooooo, we got on the plane at 1pm, and took off at 2pm Monday afternoon.  We landed in Tokyo at 12 midnight California time or 1600 (4pm) Tuesday afternoon Japan time.  That means we were on the plane for 11 hours.  But the good news is that we did get lunch, dinner and breakfast along the way.

The sign on the seat in front of us was our first clue that we were headed for Japan.  Our second clue was that all the flight announcements on board were in Japanese and then an abbreviated version in English.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

When we arrived in Tokyo we had an hour and a half to go through declarations and customs and catch another flight to Hiroshima.  The Tokyo airport was very big and clean and not very crowded.  This process went very smoothly thanks to the helpful Japanese staff along the way and the signage and by just following the other passengers.  Our last flight got us to Hiroshima at 1900 and by the time we got our luggage it was around 2000.

Lucky for us, Nikki and Cody, two people from Chris’ staff met us at the airport and drove us down to Iwakuni about 95km (60miles) south.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Day 1 in Japan.  We had a great night’s sleep in our TLF (Temporary Lodge Facility) on MCAS (Marine Corp Air Station) Iwakuni and lucky (again) for us, Chris’ staff stocked our room with Cheerios, milk and Starbucks coffee so we had a nice breakfast this morning.

 

Greetings,

This is my first attempt at writing a blog.  I just want to see if it goes anywhere and maybe I’ll try to add a picture.

Taa Daa  I think it worked!   So far so good.