Weeks 18-20: Christmas Concert, Emperor's Birthday, and First Japanese Christmas!

Hello everyone, and merry Christmas (メリークリスマス, or "meri kurisumasu") from Japan!

We have had a busy couple of weeks since our last post!

On December 15th and 16th, the United States Army Japan Band (Christian's band) played a Christmas concert for the Japanese people. They sold 2800 seats between the two nights, almost filling the hall, so it was very well attended! I was able to get a ticket for one of the nights and I was impressed! They played everything from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to O Holy Night/Jesu Bambino. The only downside was that the hall they performed at (which holds 1500 people) only has about 30 spaces in their parking lot! So of course the parking lot was full probably at least an hour before the show started, requiring me to find creative parking solutions! But it was so worth it!

On December 23, we went with the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Center (MWR) on a guided trip to the Imperial Palace to celebrate Emperor Akihito's birthday! See the video below, and scroll down to see more pictures of the Imperial Palace grounds! Super fun!

Then, of course, we just celebrated Christmas today! Jordan had lots of fun opening presents. It took us a couple hours to get everything opened, not because we had that many presents, but because Jordan wanted to spend time playing with each of the toys after he opened them (understandable, I suppose!) instead of opening more presents.

A little about Christmas for the Japanese:

First off, yes, they celebrate Christmas, although just the commercial part of it (Santa, reindeer, presents, etc). Less than 1% of the country is Christian (most are Shinto or Buddhist), so I doubt if many of them know the reason for the holiday (kind of like Americans celebrating Halloween even though most of us aren't pagan and have no idea what the holiday really means).

One funny thing is that it is a Japanese tradition to have KFC (yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken) for Christmas dinner! Many of them are surprised to learn that Americans don't have this tradition! The reason for KFC on Christmas started with American tourists traveling in Japan over the holidays and not being able to find turkey for their Christmas dinners (turkey really isn't a thing here). So, KFC filled the void and opened a restaurant offering fried chicken for Christmas as an alternative. Then they launched a marketing campaign offering the Japanese people a "Kentucky Christmas"! Below is a Japanese KFC Christmas commercial for your entertainment.



They sell boxes of fried chicken including cake and champagne, and people come in droves! People start ordering their boxes of KFC as early as October in order to avoid the lines on Christmas, but lines at some locations are still so long that you have to wait anywhere from 2-6 hours to get your Christmas bucket of KFC! Here's a picture! It's like going to Best Buy on Black Friday! Crazy!

Anyway, that's all for this week! We hope you all have a very merry Christmas!

Weeks 16-17: Sankeien Gardens

Hello everyone!

Lots of Christian's weekends recently have been taken up with surprise work duties, so we haven't been able to go out as much as we'd like, but today we did manage to get out and go to the well-known Sankeien Gardens to see the autumn colors that Japan is famous for! See the video below to see what kind of gorgeous autumn sights we saw! All photos and videos were taken by us, just so you can get a sense of what it looked like in person, without a bunch of edited professional photos.


At a convenience store on the way to the gardens, we happened to stumble across "Bolo" treats, which are little sweet melt-in-your-mouth balls of egg biscuit. They almost remind me of meringue cookies. Bolos are the subject of Jordan's absolute favorite Japanese children's song on YouTube (see video below), and he had never seen the real life version before.


He was very excited to see that we bought Bolos in real life, and here he is trying them out! He loved them and ate almost two whole packages of them before the trip was over.


Anyway, that's it for this week! Stay tuned!

Love, Brittany and Christian

Weeks 14-15: Family photos, Budokan, and Shichi-go-san

Hello friends!

It's been crazy lately! Here's what you've missed!

First off, we found an awesome photographer (Carlee Cobb) who we hired to take our family photos at our local Sagamihara Prefectural Park! The grounds were beautiful, and she was amazing! Here are some of our favorite photos from the session!

The following week, Christian left on TDY (temporary duty) for 6 days to participate in the Japanese Self-Defense Force (JSDF) Marching Festival, held at Budokan Hall in downtown Tokyo. They call the festival Budokan for short. It is a yearly celebration of the US-Japanese military alliance. JSDF bands from all across Japan come and put on indoor marching shows.  In addition, the bands also do joint performances interspersed throughout the show.

The US Army Japan Band has participated in this festival for 37 years. Other US forces bands often participate as well, in addition to other countries' military bands. This year the international guest band was the Royal Thai Air Force Band.

It is extremely well attended every year. There are 7 shows over the course of three days, and the hall holds 6700 people. Every single show is sold out every year. Tickets are so popular, they are sold by a lottery system (for LDS folks, similar to General Conference tickets). It was a very fun experience, although Christian doesn't want to eat a bento (Japanese style lunch box kit) again for a long time.

Below is a YouTube link to an audience member's personal recording of the show. We will keep searching for an official video, as the videography from the live show was very good. Christian's band (the US Army Japan Band) begins their performance at 1:01:47 of the YouTube video below. The joint performance (all bands in the competition playing in one giant performance) immediately follows.


While Christian was gone at the festival, Jordan and I went to an event put on by the local Kids' Culture Club, called Thanksgiving/Shichi-Go-San, where the Japanese families learn about Thanksgiving, and the American families learn about the Japanese festival Shichi-Go-San -- and all the kids got to dress up in Japanese kimonos! Below is a short 4-minute video so you can see all the fun things we got to do at the event!


We'll try to be better about posting blogs more often!

 Love,
Brittany and Christian

Week 13: Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Japan! This year was Jordan's first time being able to watch and participate in the pumpkin carving process!  

On actual Halloween, we dressed up as Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and Yoda!

We went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood for a little while! Jordan had fun trick-or-treating! He even met his friend Cody on our route!


Then we came back and passed out candy. In just 45 minutes, our stash of treats designed to feed more than 100 trick-or-treaters was exhausted and we had to turn out our lights! Trick-or-treating was set in our neighborhood to go on for two hours, so we probably would have had more than 200 kids come by if we'd had enough treats!

We had a super fun Halloween though!

Love,
Brittany and Christian

Weeks 11-12: The REAL Lalaport playplace, Japanese car show, and Tokyo Water Science Museum

It's been a crazy two weeks!

First of all, last week we had our first typhoon come through: Typhoon Lan! We were prepared with our disaster kits, and we were getting all kinds of emergency alerts and it rained pretty hard, but in our area we never got anything more than heavy rain and just enough wind to knock people's bikes over on their front porches. We have read that most of the damage was caused to fishing boats and crops. People who live around here say we usually get at least five typhoons a year. So I guess we will be seeing more of them!

After being so let down about the "really cool playplace" that turned out to be a dud last week, I researched again online and found our mistake -- we'd gone to the wrong floor of the mall! So we decided to go again, and finally found the right playplace! It wasn't free like some people were saying, but it was definitely super fun for Jordan! Enjoy the video below.


This week we went with a friend (whose toddler son is just about Jordan's age and is his new best friend) to a pumpkin patch at the nearby Atsugi Naval Air Facility Base. Jordan had fun picking out a pumpkin... and hugging it. He likes to hug everything lately.

Jordan loves hugging his pumpkin.

This week we decided to go to Tokyo and go to the Tokyo Water Science Museum, which we heard was a fun free place to take kids. On our way there, we saw a bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses at the train station who were handing out pamphlets. Notable because a vast majority of Japanese consider themselves part of the Shinto religion. There isn't much representation from other religions here, like there is in America.

Also right off the train station, we saw a car show for cars with tricked-out audio systems. So we stopped and looked for a while and then headed to the Water Science Museum. Here is the video of the car show and Water Science Museum (minus the Jehovah's Witnesses because it probably would have been awkward to film them passing out their pamphlets)!


That's about it for now! Stay tuned for next week!

Week 10: "American" Burger Joint and Mall Playplace

Hey friends!

We finally had most of our stuff delivered! We have received 3 out of 4 crates. Downside is, a lot of the stuff we actually have is useless without the 4th crate. For example, we have our box springs, but no mattress, and no bed frame. We have our bookcase and all our books, but none of the shelves that go in it. We have our computer and printer and computer chair, but no computer desk.

So it's been interesting because we now have useless items floating around our house, making it pretty messy around here. We do have a bed and a few furniture items that we've "checked out", so we at least have a bed to sleep in. We should get our last crate on Thursday, though!

This week we had heard about a playplace in a local mall that was supposed to be super fun. So we headed out there and ate at an "American" burger place in the mall, and went to do the playplace. Watch the video below to see what adventures awaited us!

 See you guys next week!

Weeks 8-9: New House!

Hello everyone!

Sorry we missed last week! We had a sick kiddo (standard cold type stuff) and couldn't go out anywhere, because people in Japan are very health-conscious, and we couldn't get said toddler to keep a surgical mask on (surprise!). We even took him in a stroller to a Japanese grocery store to browse for a few minutes and he coughed (granted, a wet-sounding cough) and we got several shocked looks from shoppers around us. So we decided to not risk taking him anywhere else in public until he got better. So no excursion for last week. Sad.

BUT! This week we moved into our new house! FINALLY! Below is a video tour! We got a little bit of our household stuff a few days later, so right now the house looks a little bit more filled up than it did in the video, but you can see what the house looks like! We are so excited!


This weekend we planned on going to go to a "bunny and otter cafe". Basically a petting zoo for rabbits and otters, but indoors. In a cafe that served only drinks. We were excited about it, but when we arrived at the cafe (in Tokyo, an hour and a half from home), they asked whether we had reservations (we didn't) and then told us that the next available slot was in an hour. Apparently they only let a certain number of people into the cafe at a time. It was already getting late in the day, as we didn't leave till the afternoon because had errands to do in the morning. So we decided to skip the bunny/otter cafe for the day and just eat dinner and head home.

We ate at a "Denny's", which, besides the sign, bore little to no resemblance to the American version. Everything was painted lime green and white, for starters. There were pancakes on the breakfast menu (breakfast menu NOT served all day), and a dessert-y stack of pancakes with a cute powdered sugar animal on them on the dessert menu, and a few dishes included eggs or bacon, but other than that, I saw no typical American "Denny's" foods. The Japanese usually eat the same types of things for breakfast as they do for lunches and dinners. Like rice, ramen, chicken and pork, vegetables, etc. So stuff like that is mostly what was on the menu.

I ended up having a "hamburger steak" with rice and curry. Christian also ordered a rice and curry dish, and we shared a dish called "grilled cheese, spinach, and tomato" which was just that -- spinach, tomato, and cheese, all cooked up together (not on a sandwich). Because my curry was stronger than I prefer, the "grilled cheese, spinach, and tomato" was actually the best thing I had there... pretty yummy. Jordan had a "kid's meal" which appeared to be a flat piece of meatloaf, some scrambled eggs, a ball of rice, and a flat tater tot cut in the shape of a happy face, along with some Jello. He seemed to like it all pretty well, especially the Jello.

Anyway, we'll definitely keep the bunny and otter cafe on the "future excursions" list and we'll make reservations next time (we really need to learn to do that when we plan on going somewhere).

See you guys next week! We've got some awesome ideas!

Week 7: Enoshima Aquarium, New Car, and Driving in Japan!

Hello family and friends!

This week has brought some new things! First off, we now officially have a car and we are learning to drive in Japan! It's a little stressful right now, and we've accidentally turned on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal a few times (the sides are flip-flopped from the way they are in the US), but thankfully, we haven't accidentally driven on the wrong side of the road yet! 

Watch the short video to see our car, what it's like to drive in Japan, and what our church building looks like!

Our excursion this week was to Enoshima Aquarium. Beautiful aquarium and we all three had lots of fun! Check out the video!

Love you all!
Brittany and Christian

Week 6: Jordan's First Dentist Appointment and Ninja Trick House in Tokyo

We've officially been here for 6 weeks! Crazy!

Several days ago, Christian and I took the driver's education class and got official Japanese driver's licenses! Basically it was a couple hours long and just instructed us on basics like driving on the left, meanings of different Japanese street signs, and some other rules of the road. Interestingly, it is illegal in Japan to play loud music from your car. (Yesssssssss!!!! Take that, previous North Carolina apartment neighbors who liked to blast the bass so loud that they shook the building!) In fact, playing loud music from your car gets you more points on your driver's license than not wearing your seatbelt. The Japanese have interesting priorities!

Earlier this week Jordan had his first dentist appointment! He had some pretty great people working with him. Watch the short video to see how he did!



This weekend we visited the Ninja Trick House in Tokyo, and ate some street food! Here's a video detailing all the adventures we had!



All in all, we are having loads of fun here! It still feels like a vacation to me (Brittany), but Christian says he officially feels like he lives here now. Maybe because I'm not working yet. Still trying to figure all that out. But we love our weekend excursions and we are excited to move into our new house soon and get our household goods shipped in!

See y'all next week!
Brittany and Christian

Week 5: Tokyo Toy Museum

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mealey's Adventures in Japan!

For our excursion this week we were planning on going to the Ninja Trick House in Shinjuku (subsection of Tokyo), but as you can see in the video, all reservations ended up being full. So we went to the Tokyo Toy Museum instead. Jordan had a blast! Watch the video!


Not much to report this week other than this! Still waiting for October 4 when we can move into our new house!

Love you all and see you next week!
Brittany and Christian

Week 4: Ohhhh Big Buddha, Big Buddha, Big Buddha. Oh yeah.....Big Buddha

Hello friends and family! We bring to you another post from Japan!

 This weekend we went to visit the Daibutsu in Kamakura! "Daibutsu" is Japanese for "Great Buddha". It is a bronze statue of Buddha that is 43 feet high and weighs about 267,000 pounds. The Japanese have several statues of Buddha, but this one is notable because it was the subject of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Buddha at Kamakura". It is estimated to have been built in 1252.

We took a trip inside the Buddha (there are stairs inside it) and were able to view the inside. On the way home, we tried some Japanese sweets called "kintsuba". Here is a video so you can see it all!


This week also brought us some good news -- we were offered a house! It is a 3-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath "row house" (about 5 houses that are all connected as one building) and we have a local playground basically right in our backyard. It is in the Sagamihara Housing Area (SHA), which is about 3 km away from the rest of Camp Zama.

The house is available to move into on October 4. So we have to stay in our temporary lodging (two-bedroom-with-living-room hotel suite) for another month. However, the silver lining is that, while we are staying in temporary lodging, the army gives us an allotment every ten days to cover the cost of our room as well as food and other stuff like that... and the allotment that they give us is a lot more than what we actually spend. And we get that every ten days. So we're just saving up money left and right!

We originally had planned to go without a car for the entire three years we lived here, and just take the trains and buses, but for several reasons we are now officially planning on getting a car, the main reason being that it is far easier and cheaper to have a car here than we had been previously led to expect according to online sources. Specifically:

1) You can get a decent used car for well under $4000 here. For example, there is currently a used but great condition 2004 Nissan family van being sold for $2500.
2) Insurance is only about $300-400 for two YEARS (IF you are military).
3) The process of getting a driver's license in Japan (IF you are military) is just to take a few-hour class and then take a written test. Boom. You're licensed.
4) The normal inspections that cost the Japanese a fair amount of money are much cheaper for military members.
5) It costs about $8 for us to go to church by train every week. That's far more than we'd spend in gas driving to church, even though gas is a little more expensive here.

Anyway, we plan on taking the driver's tests next week, and then getting a car soon thereafter.

We have lots of good plans for upcoming trips, so stay tuned!

Love,
Brittany and Christian

Week 3: Black Eggs and Samurai

Hello again from the magical world of Japan!

Earlier this week, we attempted our first homemade Japanese recipe: onigiri. You can see what onigiri is and how we did in the video below.


As a reference, onigiri you might get at a restaurant looks like this. So judge as you will.

Anyway, so for our excursion this weekend we went on a field trip with Christian's "Japanese Head Start" class he's been attending this week. We took a three hour bus trip to Hakone, Japan, where we visited Owakudani, an active volcanic valley where you can eat legendary..... black eggs! (More about that, and the story behind the legend, in the video!)

Then we went to a samurai museum, and ate at a ramen restaurant (no, not Top Ramen... real Japanese ramen is a lot better quality and has lots of delicious other things thrown into it!)

All in all a very interesting day, with a surprise ending 5 minutes before we arrived back at home! Watch the video below to find out more!



We are loving being here! Sadly, the recent solar eclipse was not visible from Japan, so we don't have any photos or videos of that. But we have been very happy and doing well!

Love you all! Stay tuned for more next week!

Brittany and Christian

Week 2: The Mealeys Ride the Train, Visit a Flea Market, and Other Adventures

Hey all! So this week we decided to get on the train and go... wherever the train took us. We decided on a stop (Yamato Station) and took the train there. When we got off there was a cool looking flea market that we investigated. Here is a video detailing the adventure.



After we left the flea market and went back to Sobudai-mae Station (the one closest to home), we ate out at the restaurant we attempted to eat at last week, Nakau. Then we were brave enough to attempt buying a few groceries and eating an unknown Japanese treat from a Japanese grocery store! Here is a video of those things:


All in all, we had a great week! We are getting more used to saying "Arigato" or "Arigato gozaimasu" (thank you, or thank you very much), "Ohaiou" (good morning), "Konnichiwa" (good afternoon), and "Konbanwa" (good evening) to people. Other than that, we still don't understand or say much in Japanese.

Next week Christian will be attending the "Japanese Head Start" class, which is supposed to teach you the basics of Japanese culture, language, and customs. I would attend as well, but you aren't supposed to bring children with you, and Jordan hasn't been enrolled in the army's daycare system yet, so we have no one to watch him at the moment. So he says he will take good notes for me.

We are still waiting on availability for on-post housing, so we're still in our hotel for now. But it's serving us well and we are fairly comfortable here.

Christian got put in the brass band in his unit, and his first gigs in this band may very well not be on the French horn... his first sergeant (1SG) found out Christian can also play the trombone, and apparently that's in higher demand right now. No idea when his first gig is going to be, but the band is very busy right now so it probably won't take very long!

We love and miss you all! We look forward to bringing you more adventures next week -- we've got some awesome stuff planned for next Saturday! No spoilers! Stay tuned!

Week 1, Part 2: Weather, Culture, and First Excursion Off Post

Hello from Camp Zama, Japan!

For this post I wanted to start with the first things we noticed about being in Japan.

First, it is very humid! Right now we are sitting at 94% humidity. As a comparison for our friends in the United States, also right now Houston, TX is at 79% humidity; Fayetteville, NC is at 82%; and Provo, UT is at 51%. Walking outside feels like you walked into the bathroom after someone just took a hot shower without the fan on. And as we are walking everywhere (we have no car at the moment), we are drenched in sweat by the time we get back home! Not to mention my poor hair. I have always had a problem with frizz, even in dry environments, but so far, ultra-hold hair gel on a slicked back ponytail is the only thing that has even come close to working for any period of time outside.

Second, clothing style is very different here. T-shirts with writing or pictures on them are not common, and if they are worn, the writing is almost always in English, not Japanese. Jeans are also uncommon as far as I have seen (so far, 95% of my wardrobe is not fashionable here). Women wear dresses, or loose, button-down blouses, along with either a long flowing skirt or long flowing, very loose pants or capris. Most men wear polo shirts or other button-down shirts, usually with khaki pants or very loose, flowing pants. And no, I have not seen anyone in a kimono.

Third, the Japanese keep their public establishments very clean -- much cleaner than Americans do. At the Tokyo Narita airport in the middle of the day during high traffic, there was a worker going around and cleaning the handrails of the escalators and sweeping at the bottom of them. (Do handrails in US airports ever get cleaned? Who knows?) On post at the convenience store (again, during the day while people shopped), the Japanese workers were pushing around a large floor cleaner and stopping just short of following people around and cleaning up footprints after them. Outside the convenience store, there was a worker standing outside sweeping pine needles off the sidewalk. (Again, has this ever happened outside convenience stores in the US? Not that I've seen...) At the dining facility on post (which employs mostly Japanese workers), there was a worker standing to the side of the cafeteria, watching everyone eat. When Jordan dropped any piece of food, this worker would rush over and clean it up and go back to his post and continue watching everyone eat. (Whereas in the US you are lucky if they wipe the table after you finish, never mind the floor).

Those are the main things we have noticed that are different immediately about Japan, although there are plenty more in the videos you will find down the page.

Here is a tour of the "temporary housing" (hotel) we have been placed in while we wait for an opening in housing on post. Hopefully we will be placed into an apartment soon. 

We have decided that we will venture off-post at least once a week, shooting for Saturdays, in order to experience the culture around us. We did so for the first time yesterday (Saturday). Here is a video of what you see when you walk through Japan!

Anyway, that's it for now! Next week we will have another post! Stay tuned!

Brittany and Christian

Week 1, Part 1: Flying to Japan with a Toddler... and an Encounter with Bidet Toilets

Hello friends and family! As we are starting a new chapter of our lives here in Japan, we are also starting a new blog so everyone can ride this roller coaster along with us!

We will start with the airport. We left from the Portland Oregon airport on August 8 at 12:30 pm, with a scheduled arrival time of 3:00 pm the next day, August 9, in the Tokyo Japan airport. Factoring in the time change, it was a 10 1/2 hour flight. (Japan is 15 hours ahead of Oregon). So, upon arrival in Japan it felt like 1:00 am.

Now I'm sure you're all wondering how 17-month-old Jordan did with all this. Here's a picture of him at the beginning of the flight. He was doing all right. He was tired from all the traveling we did from Salt Lake to Portland, but he was ok.

Then he slept for about an hour shortly after takeoff. *yay!* Then he didn't sleep. At all. For the entire rest of the flight (about 2:00 pm till arrival at what felt like 1:00 am). So we had a cranky toddler for the majority of the flight.

For those who want tips, here is our arsenal of toddler entertainment we brought, in reverse order of effectiveness (how long it occupied him for), #1 being the most effective.

9) A Water Wow book. It is basically a reusable coloring book that, when colored on with the water pen, changes colors. When it dries it goes back to white. Jordan colored for a few minutes, then lost interest. The little boy in front of us, however (who appeared to be about 2-3 years old), loved it and colored on it for far longer than Jordan did.

8) Sticker books. Jordan spent a few minutes peeling stickers off the book and sticking them on, but again quickly lost interest.

7) Snacks. Goldfish, Cheerios, Gerber puffs, squeeze pouches, and freeze dried yogurt melts. These bought us 10-15 minutes here and there whenever he got hungry.

6) Animal flash cards. He likes sorting through the cards and being told what each animal is (along with the sign language for each one, if we knew it).

5) Mini magna-doodle. Jordan enjoys scribbling on it and erasing, but he also loves to make other people draw things for him. Usually Elly (his favorite character from his favorite TV show, Pocoyo) or kitties.

4) Masking tape. We brought a roll of masking tape and allowed him to pull off as much tape as he wanted and stick it to things. His favorite part of this was pulling off pieces of tape and sticking them to his face and neck. And then giving bunched up pieces of tape as "presents" to people, usually the Japanese teenage schoolgirl sitting directly behind him. This occupied him for quite a while.

3) Finger puppets. We bought a package of 10 different animal finger puppets and stuck them on our fingers and made them do silly things. Jordan rather enjoyed this and would take the puppets off our fingers (or his fingers) and then make us put them back on again, over and over for quite some time. He also made the teenage girl behind us do finger puppets for him.

2) A vibrating light-up back massager. It looks like these, and the feet light up whenever you push the button, which added to the entertainment especially when the lights on the plane were turned off.

This ended up being our go-to toy. Most of the time when he was cranky, we could pull out this massager again and he'd quiet down and play with it. He would turn it on and off again repeatedly, which was entertaining by itself (kids LOVE buttons at this age) or just turn it on and then hold it, put it on his face or body, and try to massage other people's heads with it. We killed probably at least an hour or more total just using this massager alone.

1) the iPad, with a few seasons of Pocoyo downloaded off Netflix. Normally I don't let Jordan watch more than 10-20 minutes of TV a day (it's almost always Pocoyo), but if there was ever a time where I was going to make an exception to this rule, it was a 10 1/2 hour plane flight with an abnormally cranky kid. So he watched a LOT of Pocoyo. It saved our sanity several times.

We would have brought more books if we had them, but we had packed almost all his books into our storage unit already, minus two of his favorites that he had already grown quite tired of by this point in our vacation.

Whenever he started getting super cranky and refused all his favorite toys, we let him walk laps around the plane, smile at the large group of Japanese schoolgirls on the flight with us (who smiled and cooed and squealed at him every time he passed by), and make friends with the little boy sitting in front of us, and that distracted him for a while. Here is a video of Jordan playing with his new friend. (When I figure out how to embed videos, I will try to do so instead of linking them).

Walking laps around the plane was his favorite activity by far. He probably would have walked laps around the plane for most of the entire flight if we'd let him. He LOVES walking and exploring. But we were restricted from doing it many times, by either the seatbelt sign being turned on, or by the flight attendants being in the aisles with drink or meal carts.

Around 7:30 pm (his normal bedtime) we put him in pajamas and tried to do his bedtime routine as best we could while buckled in plane seats, but to no avail. He just screamed and was plenty tired, but wouldn't fall asleep. So he was just super cranky and we spent a lot of time walking laps around the plane and watching Pocoyo.

By 10 pm he was ALMOST asleep in Christian's arms, but then the crew turned on the cabin lights and started bringing around the meal cart (between dinner and breakfast they offered us each a small container of ice cream). So he woke up completely and was very cranky. He didn't fall asleep at all for the rest of the flight. By the time we arrived in Tokyo, he was so tired that he was just hysterical and wouldn't stop crying. Pocoyo was the only thing that saved us as we were getting off the plane.

Whenever you arrive to a new duty station, you are assigned a "sponsor" whose duty it is to pick you up from the airport, make sure you get to your lodging area okay, and kind of show you around and be there for you if you need something. So we planned on meeting Christian's sponsor at the airport upon picking up all our bags, and then heading straight for the shuttle that went from the airport to Camp Zama (the army post we'd been stationed at). We arrived at 3 pm local time and the shuttle was supposed to leave for Camp Zama at 4. Then we were crossing our fingers that Jordan would fall asleep on the bus ride (2-3 hours to Camp Zama).

So we picked up all our bags, met his sponsor, and headed out to wait for the shuttle. Here is a picture of Jordan while we waited for the shuttle.

Score! Finally asleep!

4:00 came and went. No shuttle appeared. Christian's sponsor called, and was told that the shuttle had arrived on time and didn't see anyone waiting. So the shuttle left and would return again for its next scheduled pickup at 7:00 pm. They told us they wouldn't call the bus driver to turn around to get us (even though we would have been the only ones on it and it had only been 5 minutes since it left), so we'd just have to wait at the airport till 7. Apparently we'd been waiting at the wrong place, and all the US government shuttles came to a different pickup location.

Awesome.

So we turned around and found some chairs to chill in at the airport. We found a quiet corner, unpacked the mattress from Jordan's pack and play, transferred him quietly from the stroller to the mattress, and let him sleep there.

He got a lot of double and triple takes from people going up and down the escalators.

Meanwhile, I tried out the bathrooms. I went into a stall and was faced with this contraption:

Whoa.

It has a CONTROL PANEL.

This toilet... has a SPEAKER. Apparently, the Japanese are so private about their bathroom habits that whenever you go in to do your business, you are supposed to press the "flushing sound" button and turn up the volume as you deem necessary to mask any bodily function sounds you might make.

(I have even heard that some fancier bidet toilets have an option to play music while you go. I am unsure whether this music is supposed to be to mask sounds, or for your own entertainment during toileting...? And will people outside the stall judge you on whether or not you decide to play the music? Fortunately, the toilet I used didn't have this option, so I didn't have to worry about that).

I was terrified that I'd press the wrong button at the wrong time and get sprayed in the face with toilet water. Or that the bidet function would be more like.... SUDDEN ENEMA! And then I would yelp and everyone outside the stalls would laugh their heads off about that stupid American inside the stall using the bidet for the first time. But I was pleasantly surprised. You sit down, you do your business, you press the button to spray yourself off. And guys, bidets are actually pretty cool. You feel so much cleaner at the end than you do if you just use toilet paper. The water is warm, and the water pressure is just enough to spray you clean. Nothing scary. And at the end I assume you are supposed to pat dry with toilet paper (although when I went into the stall none of the toilet paper was even unwrapped... leaving me to wonder how everyone else dried off... do the Japanese just walk around with wet butts and air dry? Or was the toilet paper just very recently replaced?)

Anyway, after my adventure with the bidet toilet, we were hungry. So we told Christian's sponsor to keep an eye on Jordan (still sleeping) while we went to the McDonald's in the airport (the only familiar American food we could find). Everything on the menu was in Japanese. We walked in and walked up to the counter and the cashier said something to us in Japanese. I looked at Christian and said hesitantly to the cashier, "Do you speak English?" She replied "A little," and flipped the menu over to reveal that the back of the menu had English on it. We pointed and used simple words to communicate our order, and were finally able to get our burgers and eat.

We woke Jordan up and fed him right before the shuttle arrived at 7, we went to the right location this time and got on the shuttle, and ended up getting to our hotel ("temporary housing") on Camp Zama at 10 pm (or what felt like 8:00 am to us). We were tired and zonked out!

More to come soon! Keep an eye out for our next blog post! Love you all!

Christian and Brittany