Erik:

Hi Family and Friends, this is Erik and as usual, I've taken over a month to contact any of ya'll. Thank goodness Audrey has figured this inter-blog thing out. Well I have been here since the 7th or 8th of march, I can't really remember which, but thats not important. I was immdeiately housed at an off base hotel because the on base hotels were all full due to some goings-on at the base. I was also told not to show up for work for a week because of an inspection (I wouldn't have been able to answer even the most basic questions about what we do). So I found myself at a beachfront hotel with six beds, and a small kitchen in a city north of Kadena called Yomitan-Cho. It was a 20-25 minute drive to get to base and the staff hardly spoke english, so it was quite an experience. I spent the first few weeks looking at possible houses and enjoying some time off. I signed up for Scuba and attached some pictures of my class, it was alot of fun and only cost $230, and audrey is currently in a class that is shorter and less expensive...So if anyone wants to get certified while they are here, we know some people.... We started out in a pool that was around 65 degees (Audrey says 82 is normal for a pool) so luckily we were all wearing 5 millimeter wetsuits or we would have frozen since we were in that pool for six hours working on our skills. Then we did four dives over that weekend. We saw barracuda's, lion fish, poisonous snakes, an eel and a bunch of other colorful fishies.

So Audrey bought her funny little car, and I bought a nissan skyline, its a 2.0 liter NA engine with a 5 speed, and yes, like almost all the cars its left hand drive. Driving here has been interesting. everyone has moments where they flip the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal, and try to pull into oncoming traffic, so everyone here is used to it and cuts you a little extra slack. One interesting thing is how japanese politeness translates into driving, almost no one uses their horn, like I've seen in other countries with similar narrow streets; instead they use the emergency blinkers as a way of saying thank you when you let someone in. The motorcycles and scooters are fearless here and regularly pass between two cars on the highways, although highway is a loose term, since the max speedlimit is 60km/hr which is about 36 miles per hour.

Anyways, more to come later,

Erik