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!
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!
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
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!
