The first 24 hours of our lives in Japan!

Jet-lag is one of the most awful feelings in the world! I just feel so out of it. I'm sitting here wide awake at 4:40 in the morning, Saturday morning. Which makes it around 3:40pm to all of you Eastern Time Zone folks and 4:40pm to all of you Central Time Zoners. (And it's Friday where you are). Oh, and 4am here, the sun comes up. Up. Wide awake. Silly sun.


The plane ride over:
As we were about to board the plane, I almost threw up. Seriously. I was feeling so nervous and excited, it felt like I had been at Six-Flags all day so I was exhausted but it was time to ride the Batman roller coaster one more time, except I had just eaten cotton candy and popcorn and a giant coke. I also had the feeling like when you're on your way to summer camp as a kid. I worried way too much about being away from home for a week and often cried as a kid.

The point is... I was scared, nervous, excited and had a sense of disbelief that the ride to Japan was actually happening. We made it to the terminal and got through security in under 3 minutes. They re-ran my purse through the scanner but in the end said it was clear to go.

When we got to the terminal I couldn't help but notice how young all of the people there looked! I am not exaggerating. All of these kids, I mean a hundred 18 year olds were boarding this giant plane. They were all military too. I forget that George did the whole college thing, then 3 years of training, and we're just now getting to our first assignment, and he's 24. These kids are straight from high school. But you know what? I was really glad they are all going to be defending our country.

Once I was on the plane and they made an announcement that all the pets had also made it on board I was able to relax a little bit. I brought my laptop to watch movies on, my phone with headphones to listen to music on, 2 books, a magazine and a sudoku puzzle book. George brought an equal amount of entertainment. But then I decided that I wouldn't need any of this entertainment and I would sleep the whole flight. And I did just that. I didn't want to feel too jet lagged (like I could stop it. Ha.) and knowing that when we landed it would be 6am made me feel as if I slept the whole 9 hours then when I landed early in the morning it would feel like I slept through the night and would be fine for a whole day of exploration in Japan. We had originally anticipated the flight to be about 13 hours long, but it was only... hahahaha, only... 9.

I bought one of those horseshoe neck-roll pillows and George told me that I wouldn't like it. Wanna take a guess as to who used that pillow the majority of the flight? Hint: it wasn't me, and it wasn't Cheyenne. The in-flight entertainment was 3 movies, Avatar, G-Force (with the hamsters) and the Tooth Fairy. They announced that the third movie was going to be 'He's just not that into you' but instead we got 'The Rock'. I didn't watch any of them because I slept, only waking up when they brought around food. The first meal was probably 2 hours into the flight, and they served breakfast. I chose pancakes and George got an omelet. The pancakes were seriously rubber but they did give us yogurt and semi-fresh fruit which was pineapples and one strawberry so I ate that. Then I went back to sleep. Meal 2 was a snack, which was a drink and kettle-corn popcorn, which was excellent. Yummy. George hates kettle-corn so I got to keep his bag of it. I'm saving it for later. Meal 3 was about an hour and a half before we landed and was lunch. We both chose chicken but got 2 different kinds of it. Mine was in a sweet glaze of some sort with rice, broccoli and carrots. George had a spicy-chicken meal of some sort and we each got cheese, crackers, a roll, and chocolate cake. That meal wasn't too bad, it was still airline food but was good. I must have been starved.

We finally landed and were allowed to get off the plane! We were in row 19, in the second section of the plane. In my experience standing up to exit the plane when they first open the doors is a joke because it always takes 10 minutes or more to get off anyway. We stood up anyways because hey, we'd been sitting for about 10 hours. (We sat on the plane for an hour before it actually took off) It was enough time for me to get out my passport, ID and put on chap-stick before our row exited. These military kids were so orderly and zoomed off that plane! It was awesome. As we got off the plane we could see Cheyenne being unloaded too!

We made it through customs and Cheyenne's quarantine paperwork in about an hour and then met up with Jane and Dereck who were there to pick us up! We got Cheyenne settled in at their house then went to the housing office. There are no homes that allow dogs that are on the bottom floor. So we are forced to take an apartment on the second floor, which I'm very disappointed about. Poor Cheyenne. I hate that we'll have to take her out to walk her several times a day. I really love opening the back door and letting her go outside to do her business. Oh well. It'll be a challenge but it's nothing we can't handle. I also realized that we'll have to bring groceries up and down the stairs, but it's going to be fine. It'll be exercise if nothing else. Oh, and did I mention that the apartment is in the same building as Jane and Derecks? I'll have to take pictures but the building has 8 units; 4 upstairs and 4 downstairs. There are 2 main entryways, 4 units to an entryway. We'll be upstairs and on top of their next-door neighbors. Which means when we move from their spare bedroom to our house, (hopefully by Tuesday) we'll just be going out their front door, up a flight of stairs and into our own place!

We also got an e-mail and then George called to confirm that our furniture is here!!! Yay! It can be set up to be delivered as soon as we have keys to our place! All the apt. needs is a good cleaning, and they said it's been vacant since last year.

George has had 2 large disappointments. The first was when he realized that HDTV is not offered here. So much for him being so excited about our new TV that we only used for a couple of months. The second was when he realized that ESPN is also not offered here. Poor Georgie.

Driving:
One of the funniest things is that the cars drive on the left side of the road which makes the steering wheels on the right side of the car. Jane was driving us around yesterday and we were both in the backseat and it looked like she was going to turn into oncoming traffic. George and I both kind of gasped and looked at each other, then cracked up when we realized that everything was okay. Another funny thing was when we were looking for a parking spot and Dereck saw one (in the passenger seat) and said “Turn left, turn left, turn left!” I told him that I couldn't figure out why he was yelling at himself to turn. Driving will be something to get used to, but I'm sure we can do it! We won't get our drivers licenses until Thursday, so we'll have a full week of being carted around, which is fine by me! I'm in no rush to drive yet! Too intimidating!

Phones:
We'll be getting a home phone through Vonage (maybe?) and when we do it'll be an American 10-digit phone number that you people at home can call and we can call you back all for free, it'll be just like calling a regular number for you guys, and the same for us!

We'll be getting cell phones here shortly, and they give away I-phones here for free when you sign up for a contract. The I-phones are apparently crappy here compared to what you can get. We hear that some phones have 12 megapixel cameras and are really fabulous. I love my palm-pre and may have George look into seeing if we can keep those, but I bet we can't!

Jane insisted that we stay awake the entire day, and that there would be no napping so that we could get on a regular sleep schedule. She did a great job and became 'dictator Jane' because when we would look like we were falling asleep she'd make us get up and do something! She kept us busy all day doing errands, getting our mailbox set up (we have a mailing address now), looking at cars to buy on base (which we will do sometime in the next couple of days), giving us a tour, taking us off base for our first off base lunch. Jane and Dereck both had to head to work for a bit in the afternoon so George and I had some time to explore on our own. We would have rather napped but decided against it because we knew if we went to sleep we would never be able to get back up.

A quick note about our first lunch off base:
We went to a Chinese restaurant for our first meal in Japan. I love the irony. We didn't really think we were hungry until we sat down with food in front of us. I had fried rice with garlic chicken and George had spicy chicken fried rice. I realize now how similar that sounds to our airplane lunch at 4 in the morning. Hahaha. We got to use Yen for the first time, and that was exciting. The streets are very narrow and I can't believe their 2 way streets! The restaurant is a place that 2 different people recommended to us back in the states and is called the Red Dragon. Inside there is a poster of Matt Dillon, the Blues brothers and someone else funny. The menu was written in both English and Japanese. The food was delicious and I can't wait to venture off base again to eat different foods.

While they worked we took a walk to the BX-tra which carries furniture and other things like that. We got Cheyenne some new food and water dishes and looked for an entertainment stand and a new coffee table. We didn't love any of the furniture there so will have to keep our eyes open for something we like off base. We also went into the shoppette and looked around. George is absolutely thrilled that they carry Vault here on the base. I am disappointed that no one seems to have Cherry Coke Zero. Oh well, I guess I'll find a new coke to drink. And I guess I shouldn't be drinking coke anyways. We also showered and got ready to head to dinner!

Before dinner we went to George's new squadron and met a ton of new people! Everyone was so nice and welcoming and it is such a great feeling to know that everyone else has been in our shoes and wants to help! We even had people offer to give us rides or to borrow their cars. We had a drink there with everyone and then headed to the Officer's club for dinner. On Friday's they do a free buffet. They had wings, sandwiches, seafood, sushi (which I was told not to eat so I can have my first real Japanese sushi place off base), pizza and tons of other choices. It was so good. I also got to meet a ton of wives and everyone was so friendly and welcoming. I really felt comfortable and can't wait to hang out with them again!

We left around 7:45pm and at 8pm Jane finally said we could go to sleep. I don't think I've ever fallen asleep so quickly! But they were right, I was up at 4:30 and I wish I wasn't. But it's okay, I'll try to nap later this afternoon then go to sleep around 9 or 10 tonight and maybe get on a good schedule! And I'm so glad that George is sleeping still! At least one of us will be on a semi-normal schedule!

Love you all,
Chelsea

P.S. I'll try to post pictures of Japan when I can!