Days 1&2

I really want to tell you all about our 1st couple days, but I really want to sleep, so I'm going to copy and paste the emails I sent my mom and edit it just a bit.

Day 1
Ugh, that flight felt like eternity! They kept waking us up to feed us (3 meals in 10 hours!?!?! I eat a lot, but it's the middle of the night, let me sleep!) The guy who came to pick us up from the airport this morning was not prepared for all the stuff we had with us. We were going to have to leave some of our stuff behind and have someone go get it later in the week but they wouldn't let us leave it there. Luckily, we had met a woman in Seattle who was also headed to Camp Zama and she had tons of extra room in her car so we piled our stuff in and all took off toward CZ (Melissa, I don't know if you'll ever see this, but you are a lifesaver!). We all met back at our temporary lodging a couple hours later and then we had to go take buster to the kennel because he isn't allowed in the hotel. She offered to drive us but Jason wanted to walk him there since he'd been cooped up for so long so she left. Well 10 minutes later we were told we couldn't even keep his cage in our hotel room with us so we had to call her back and ask her to drive us up to the kennel with the cage. She was super nice about it and very helpful. Then we had lunch at the golf course here and got a PO Box (it will be our address the whole time we're here) and got on the housing list. The housing we're supposed to get (2bd 1 bath) has a long wait list of Jr Enlisted so they're putting us on the list for a 3bd ?bath house and we are #2 so it shouldn't be long at all. I'm not holding my breath though but I will be pumped if we get a 3 bdrm! We just had dinner at the community club on post. Mongolian BBQ, YUM! We were able to pretty much walk everywhere we needed to go today which is a big change for us, but it was nice. So far the base seems ok. A little old, but it seems pretty efficient and everyone is super friendly. Now I'm going to go lay down while Jason toughs it out and tries to stay awake a little longer!(he fell asleep before I did!) Tomorrow we will finally meet our sponsor (he's been out doing a field exercise for the past week and a half) and get started on our in processing. We haven't seen much of Japan other than on our drive from Yokota AB where our plane landed to Camp Zama, but we'll tell you more when we get a car and can get out exploring.

Day 2
Walked to the commissary and almost cried! 4 AISLES?!?!?!? You cannot possibly stock everything I want in 4 aisles! I have some serious adjusting to do! Apparently there is another commissary that is a little larger in the other housing area so that should be helpful. We started getting Jason checked in today. The base has a 4 day weekend so we can't get much else accomplished now. And next week, all week, we have an orientation class that teaches us some basic Japanese and their customs and stuff then on the 14th we have the driving test and the 15-16th, another orientation class so we won't be all checked in until the end of the month. We went to visit Mr Puppers today and I cried. He didn't even get up when we walked in, he just laid there with his sad face. It was so hard to leave him there! I really hope we get into a house soon! I can't keep going back to see him like that!  Tonight we finally met our sponsor. He drove us to a town near by where we met his Japanese girlfriend and went to an authentic Japanese Ramen place. Thank God she was with us because EVERYTHING was in Japanese and you just order from a machine and someone brings it to you.

The machine

My meal

(I'm glad those both turned out decent, I have no clue about any of their customs yet and didn't want to be the rude American so I shot without really looking at them! Gah!  I just noticed my chopsticks were sticking in my bowl and I know that is a NO NO...oops!  Guess I am a rude American anyways!)

Since we can't do anything around here for the next 4 days we're going to Tokyo tomorrow. We were able to get a hotel room there tomorrow night for only $55. Hopefully there are some restaurants in English there or we might be in trouble!  Ha, who am I kidding, I hope we can figure out the train system to get us there!

I'm off to get some sleep so I can be functioning on all cylinders in the morning.  Wish us luck/say a prayer for us!  I'll post again when we get back =)