May Showers

It's crazy to me that it's been over a year since we found out that we'd be relocating to Okinawa. Here in the next couple months will mark our 1 year on the island! After that, we still have 2 more years here! To be honest, I'm ready to go home, at least to visit! Don't get me wrong, I like it here, but there's just something about being home. The weather is starting to warm up here and getting more and more humid. Rainy season actually started about a week ago. It will pretty much constantly rain for a month straight. I don't like it! Since we arrived in July last year, we know what's to come. I'm not ready to be soaking wet as soon as I walk out the door due to the humidity! I'm also not ready for typhoon season again!

Ok, enough complaining for now! For some good news... Chad and I will be flying home to stay for a whole month in December! We'll be home for Christmas! I'm so excited! I don't want to wish the summer away, but I can't wait until the end of the year! The plane tickets were far from cheap, but they'll be worth every single penny! I will never complain about domestic airline ticket prices again, anything under $1,000 will forever be "cheap" to me!

Nothing much has been going on. I'm going to end this post by adding some pictures from my phone that I have accumulated over the past month since my last post.

At the end of April, we went to see the Kaiensai Firework Display. They shot off fireworks at a beach over the ocean to the sound of music. We didn't want to pay $30 a person to go to the actual beach so we watched from a distance. There fireworks are a lot like the ones you see in America. There were a couple cool ones that we had never seen before.

 

A couple weekends ago, we went to watch the Naha Dragon Boat Races. It was a fun experience but it wasn't as cool as I thought it was going to be. They had several different boat race teams go every 15 minutes or so. 3 boats would race down to one end of the pier, make a turn and head back to the finish line. There were even some Americans who had put together teams for the races including those from the Army, Air Force, and Navy. I think it would be cool to be part of the team but at the same time it would be intense to paddle that boat! I'm sure lots of physical training is required!

Chad had a PT test in April and scored a 95.2% on it! Since he got such a high score, he was recognized by his squadron's Commander and receives a comp day. I'm proud of him!

At work, we had our Annual Air Force Inspection in April. The front desk staff was recognized as doing an outstanding job, so we all got awards. Even though it's something little, it's always great to be recognized for a job well done!

One night after work, Chad took me to Round 1, which is like a big sports complex. They have a ton of different things to do from a video arcade, batting cages, roller skating, darts, ping pong, tennis, boxing, soccer, basketball, etc. You just pay an admission price depending on how long you want to stay and then you get to do whatever you want for no extra charge! It's pretty neat, Chad and I talk about how we need to open a place like that up in America!

 All the rest of the pictures on my phone are of Myah. She is doing something daily that cracks me up, so I'm always snapping pictures of her!

Our First Visitors!

On Saturday, March 30th, Chad and I picked up our first visitors from the airport! My Mom and Greg arrived all the way from Michigan! They were suppose to fly in on Friday night but unfortunately they had a set back on their flight to Tokyo. They left Chicago, flew for an hour and half and then were told they had to turn around and fly back to Chicago because of maintenance issues. Ugh, how upsetting! Fortunately, they were still able to fly to Tokyo on Friday night, but they would have to wait until Saturday morning to catch their final flight to Okinawa.

We did so much sight seeing while they were here that this blog post would be a book if I described every day. I'm pretty sure they saw more stuff in the week that they were here than some people see in the 2-3 years they are stationed on this island. The weather wasn't the best when they were here. We didn't ever have one beautiful Okinawa day, but we made the best of what we were given.

My Mom wanted to go see the big Shisa dog

My Mom & Greg on one of the many beaches we visited

We spent the afternoon at Okinawa World, where we went to a snake museum and walked through a cave.

After watching a Snake Show, we got to hold a snake

My Mom and Greg at Cape Kyan, the southern most point of the Island

Chad & me at Cape Manzamo

My Mom at the aquarium in front of the huge fish tank

We went to the seawall to watch the sunset over the ocean one night

My Mom & Greg at Shuri Castle

My Mom & Greg at the Katsuren Castle

All of us on a beach we stopped at to check out the huge waves on Sunday

We went to check out the waves at Cape Zanpa on Sunday; they were huge!

There's just a short collection of pictures from throughout their trip. We took so many pictures, that if you want to see more, you'll have to check out my Facebook! It was a wonderful week. We got to spend Easter with family this year, which was one of my favorite things! I hate being so far away from home because we never get to spend holidays with family anymore! We also took them to so many different restaurants to try all the local food. I was sad to see them leave on Monday morning. It was hard going back to reality. Now, it's just waiting for July to get here for Chad's parents to visit!

Catchin' up on February

It's been about a month since I have updated! Lets see what has been going on...

For Valentines Day, we decided to cook dinner at home instead of going out with all the crowds at a restaurant. We made steak, broccoli, and mashed cauliflower, which was suppose to be a healthy version of mashed potatoes. I think I'd try a different recipe next time because I wasn't too fond of just mashed cauliflower, it needed sour cream or something to give it some consistency! We've been experiencing with all sorts of healthy versions of recipes lately since we're trying to live a healthier lifestyle. We made homemade pizza one night with a cauliflower crust and turkey pepperoni. It was actually very delicious! If cauliflower wasn't so dang expensive here, I would eat it a lot more often! It cost me $7.22 for a head of cauliflower. I couldn't believe it!

Since we didn't go out to eat on Valentine's Day, we decided to go out the following Sunday to sort of celebrate. We went to one of our favorite "American" restaurant on the island, the Seaside Restaurant. It has an amazing view of the ocean and the food is delicious!

Chad bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers for Valentine's day. It's the biggest most beautiful flowers that I've ever gotten! They lasted for a couple weeks too, I just threw them away yesterday!

One day after work, I went with some of my coworkers to try sushi for the first time. As soon as they found out I had never tried sushi, they were determined to take me out to try it. We went to a place called Sushi-go-round. The sushi goes around the restaurant on a conveyor belt and you can just choose what you'd like. I liked it because it allowed me to try all sort of things. I didn't even know what I was eating half the time! I was surprised that I actually liked it. I don't like fishy food but this didn't taste like seafood at all. It's definitely not something that I'll crave but I'm glad to say that I tried it! Chad had never had real sushi before either, so I took him the following weekend to try it. He also liked it!

Last weekend, Chad went hiking with some guys from work. They just drove up north, found a mountain and started climbing. He enjoyed himself! I'm not too fond of going off the beaten path. There's too many creatures on this island that could be stumbled upon! Chad said they didn't see any snakes or spiders though! While he was doing that, I went out to lunch and a movie with my friend, Krista. I hadn't talked to her in awhile so it was fun to catch up!

This weekend has been pretty boring! Chad's squadron is doing an exercise this week, so he's working 12 hour night shifts. Those started yesterday (Saturday) night, so that pretty much ruined the whole weekend! Even though I talked about eating out a lot in this post, we're still doing pretty good on our healthier lifestyle. I will be finishing up my 60 day Body Combat program in a few days. I'm happy to say that I have dropped a pant size since January. It makes me feel good! Chad is also doing really well, he is so skinny! He has a PT test in April, so he's been training for that so he can get an outstanding score on it!

My Mom and Greg will be here in just 26 days! I can't believe it's so close! I need to make a list of everywhere we need to eat and do while they are here. I hope the weather is nice for their visit! It has been pretty nice lately. I can tell that it's starting to get warmer. I do have to say, I love the weather here! This winter was awesome without any snow. It was still cold enough some days to wear a hoodie, so that's nice. I am not looking forward to the hot HUMID summer here though! I will never forget when we first got here, walking outside and immediately sweating. It's horrible! Thankfully there are a lot of beaches around here to cool off at :)


I'm sure I won't update until after my Mom comes and goes unless something exciting happens between now and then, so have a good month all! :)

My Birthday!

On January 1, Chad and I made a goal to not eat out for the whole month of January (except our anniversary). As you can see by my previous blog posts, we eat out quite frequently. At least twice a week if not more. We could tell that we were getting fat and unhealthy. Trying to break a bad habit is hard! We were so used to ordering pizza on Friday or Saturday night, it was difficult to get over that craving. We even had to pack lunches a few days when we were headed out to explore because we weren't sure if we'd be home by lunch or dinner time. I am proud to say that we met our goal! Not only are we not eating out but we are eating healthier at home too. It has made a huge difference in our bodies! Not just the way they look, but how we feel as well :) So that's the major thing that's been going on in January for us!

This past weekend was my 24th birthday. It was the first time we had ate out since our Anniversary! We actually overdid it for my birthday weekend, but that's ok! On my actual birthday we tried out a new steak restaurant called Capitals. It was very similar to the Four Seasons place we went to on our anniversary just cheaper! I liked it a lot. They give you so much food!

Earlier in the day on my Birthday, we were just driving around because we didn't really know what to do. We saw signs pointing toward Katsuren castle ruins, so we decided to follow them. This is probably the coolest castle we've been to so far on the island! It had different layers to it and from the top, the view was amazing. I wish I had brought my good camera with me, but instead all I have is iphone quality photos to share.

Nothing else too exciting has been happening. Myah has been a pretty good dog lately. We've been leaving her out of her crate while we're at work and for the most part she has been good, except the day that she chewed our tv remote up to the point that it doesn't even work anymore. And of course it's taking forever for the replacement remote to get here since we live in Timbuktu. Here is a picture of her currently bugging me because she wants to go outside just to sniff around but I won't take her. I cut my foot pretty badly on a piece of glass yesterday so it hurts to walk around on it!

Other than that, we're just gearing up for my Mom & Greg to be here at the end of March! Only 52 more days; we're pretty excited to have family around! I can't wait!

Anniversary Weekend & More!

I finally have enough to write about to compose a blog post! It's actually pretty overdue as I haven't updated since before Christmas. We had a very nice Christmas, despite being so far away from home! I got to skype with my family on Christmas morning as they opened their gifts and Chad got to do the same with his family. It was pretty nice. It would have been nicer to be home though!

We celebrated our 1 year anniversary on January 6th. We started off the day by going to the breakfast buffet at the Officer's Club on base. Ever since we've came to the island, people have been telling us that we need to go to the Sunday brunch at the Officer's Club. It's $20 a person so we haven't really had the urge to go until we decided to splurge on our anniversary. They had quite the variety of food. They had all the typical breakfast foods but they also had lunch food like brisket, mashed potatoes, chicken, etc. They even had sushi and crab legs! Chad and I aren't seafood people but we decided that we would try it. After trying it, I'm still not a fan! Chad didn't really like it too much either.

After brunch, we went to a place called Okinawa World. Here, we got to go to a Habu museum where we saw a bunch of different creepy snakes. They even had a Habu show but we showed up right before it was going to start and it was super crowded in there so we didn't stick around for it. I bet it was pretty cool though. Our favorite part about Okinawa World was the cave that we got to walk through. It's a 5000 meter long cave that was formed over 300,000 years ago. It was pretty neat to see!

Later that night we went to dinner at a steak restaurant called Four Seasons. This is another one of those places that we've heard really good things about but have neglected to go up until now since it is pretty expensive! We both ordered steaks, which came with a bunch of different side dishes. We had lots of food! They cook the food all right in front of you. That was pretty cool! Chad said it was the best steak he has ever had. It was good! It did come with a hefty price tag though, so we probably won't be back too often! We ended our anniversary by walking around American Village and stopping to get ice cream at Blue Seal. It was the perfect way to spend our first anniversary!

This weekend, we did some more exploring. Chad wanted to see some more caves so he looked up a couple more caves to see. I found directions and we started heading south. We reached one place but we couldn't find a cave there. It was actually pretty creepy! The place we were looking for was called Kin Kannon-do Temple, well the directions I had took us to Koshi Kannon-do Temple. Who knew there was a difference? lol Soo we go to see a creepy temple.

Go to find out, we had already passed the other temple that we were looking for so we started to head back. We found the right place but when we walked up to it, it was kind of awkward. There were not really any signs pointing to where to go or anything. I had read there was an admission fee to go in the cave, but we really didn't see anywhere to pay. The cave was off to side with no one around, so Chad walked down in it a little ways. I said "Oh hell no" when I looked down in the cave, it was dark and creepy! So I let him go by himself lol. After he went down just a little way, we left. Maybe one day we'll have to go back and see the whole thing.

Today, we went to the Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters. It's a series of underground tunnels where the Japanese camped out during the Battle of Okinawa. Apparently the commanding officer and 175 of his staff committed suicide in the tunnels. It was pretty neat to see; they had all the rooms marked with Japanese and English signs. They even had a room where the commanding officer wrote his last telegraph.

On our way to the Underground Headquarters, we saw an outlet mall off in the distance. It looked pretty neat so we decided to find it on our way home. I'm glad we did! There are no "malls" like we're used to here. This is the first one that we've found that actually reminded me of a mall back home. It had a lot of high end stores, like Gucci, Coach, Michael Kors, Armani, etc. That kind of surprised me! We looked around in a few stores and just looked what the mall had to offer. It was raining, so we'll probably go back another day to see some more.

That's all I have for my blog for now. What an exhausting post! Hope all is well with all my readers! If you have any questions about Japan, let me know! I'd love to write a blog post answering some questions that people may have!

Christmas Time

December has been a pretty uneventful month for us! Chad's squadron was put on lock down for about a week and half because a couple Airman in his squadron got in trouble for an alcohol related incident. Since tensions are so high between the Americans and the Japanese right now, anything alcohol related gets your squadron put on lock down. This means that nobody in the squadron was allowed off base unless you were going to eat. I thought it was pretty nice of them to even allow them to go off base and eat. That made the lock down less painful! We've been under all sorts of crazy restrictions lately. Well I guess I shouldn't say we, really it only applies to the service members but I still feel like I'm being restricted! For awhile there they weren't allowed to purchase alcohol after 10PM on or off base. That just got lifted this last week though. They still have a 11PM curfew and are not allowed to drink in off base establishments. The purpose of these restrictions is to show the Japanese that we can be responsible. There are always going to be a few bad apples in a bunch though!

Last night, Chad and I attended his work's Holiday Party. It was a pretty fun time! They served us a delicious dinner and even had money on the bar, so the free drinks were nice! They were playing all sorts of entertaining games. Chad and I didn't partake in any but it was fun to watch! One game was like the show Fear Factor. They had to drink squid ink and eat nasty stuff. One thing they ate was an egg with an undeveloped bird inside. Disgusting! I'm glad I wasn't up there but it was fun to see the people who were brave enough to try it! Haha! They also gave away lots of prizes. It would have been nice to have won of the door prizes, maybe next year! :) The party was Las Vegas theme so they had Roulette, Black Jack, and Poker tables set up to play at. That was pretty cool. Overall, it was a fun night out of the house!

Today is Christmas Eve here in Japan! Usually I would be attending Christmas at my Grandma Cogswell's, but instead Chad and I are just hanging out. I am going to miss all the traditional things that we usually do with family. Tonight, at 10PM our time, we're going to Skype with my family and open all the presents that my Mom sent. I think I am more excited for them to open what we sent them! I can't wait :) I also can't wait to open all the presents that have been sitting under my tree for oh so long! Even though I won't be there on Christmas morning to open presents, I'm happy that technology allows us to still enjoy the time together in a sense. Tomorrow morning, we'll wake up and open presents via Skype with Chad's family. We bought all the fixings to make a Christmas dinner, so I look forward to that as well!

Merry Christmas all! I hope your holiday is filled with family, gifts, and happiness! :)

Snapshots 2

Now that we've been here for a few months, I don't have as much fun stuff to blog about. So I think more and more of my posts will be of random pictures that I find on my phone that I have a story to tell about. I think those posts are more fun anyways!

Last Wednesday was my first day of my new job. So far, I am really enjoying it! I am starting to catch on to all the different processes, so that's good. Plus, all the people that I have worked with are super nice! I'll be working every week day now, so that will keep me busy! It'll be nice to have extra money in the bank too! I'm excited! We started off leaving Myah out of her cage while we were away. She was good for the first couple days but on Friday, I came home and saw that she had unwrapped several of the presents that my Mom had sent us. I was very upset! So now, she'll just have to stay in her cage all day everyday! I feel bad, but I can't have her destroying my place because she's bored!

Myah has started to sit on the back of our futon in our spare bedroom and just stare out the window. She loves the outdoors! She has even started laying on the back of our couch like she's a cat, a BIG one!

The bases around here have been having several concerts lately. There was a Hoobastank concert at the bowling alley on our base a few weeks ago. Chad and I aren't really Hoobastank fans, but we took a walk up to the bowling alley to check it out. We took Myah with us too! She liked staring at all the people.

Our neighbors went to Toyko and brought us back these little treats as a token of thanks for helping them out while they were on vacation the week prior. I thought they were so cute with the giraffe print! They are banana carmel custard cream filled or something like that. I didn't think I would be a fan but they were actually really good! Chad and I hope to go to Toyko sometime while we're here, so we'll have to look for these to send home!

Ever since we've gotten to Japan, Chad has been obsessed with Dragon Ball Z. They have these Dragon Ball Z drinks in some of the vending machines around here. Whenever we see one, he has to get one! Not only do they taste good, it's like an orange energy drink but he also is trying to collect all the different cans. I tease him and say "gotta catch 'em all" ... but I'm like oh wait, that's Pokemon lol. We started collecting them when we first got here, but Chad had drank them so now he's trying to collect the unopened cans. A full set actually goes for a lot of money on Ebay! Some of the cans are harder to get than others. I think we're missing 2 or 3 to make a complete set. We also found a Dragon Ball Z puzzle in one of the local stores, so we spent a few nights putting that together. It was fun!

It's not everyday you see one of these in the mall! There was some performance going on in a shopping center that we were in one day. This thing like came out of nowhere and was like prancing around. It even like tried to bite Chad's crotch, lol I don't know what that was all about but it was pretty funny!

It rained all last weekend, which was a bummer! Trace Adkins came to town to put on a show for the military bases. He was on Kadena on Saturday night. It was an outside concert, unfortunately it was raining! That didn't stop Chad and I from attending though. I am glad we did because it was a lot of fun and a great concert. We enjoyed it! The best part is that it was free, can't beat that!

We're getting ready for Christmas around here, only 21 more days! I've only been staring at the presents my Mom sent us for 40 some days! Half way there :) She also sent this door cling to hang up on our door, so we put that up this last weekend. I really like it! :) We sent out our families' gifts last week, so they should be getting those hopefully this week! I can't wait for them to open them. I am horrible with surprises!


That's about all the fun that I've had in the past few weeks. Hope you enjoyed! :)