csmccreary

You know where it's almost a holiday weekend already?

The trip home to see family was nice. First get together of all my siblings and their SOs in several years. Got to meet my Bro's new girlfriend, who is certainly a keeper. Of course, somehow seeing family is never as relaxing as it should be, and as no one cooks anymore not the healthiest either.

Then we did the car ride north a day after arriving back in Japan. Somehow despite jet lag we made it. It wasn't a horrible drive and would have been nice had it not rained the whole time. The oddest event was one of the circle expressways through Tokyo was underground. We spiraled down for several stories, then were in a large underground highway. Very bizarre.

Dog and cat did fine. Then, especially cat, charmed everyone at the kennel in Misawa.

Housing was more of a pain then I thought. The choices were bad or bad. We picked the 2 bedroom upstairs townhouse style over the 3 bedroom on the 5th floor of a tower apartment building. I hate that everything is more linked to how much you've procreated verses how much your housing allowance off base would be. If we had 3 kids (or 2 older ones) we'd have gotten a fenced yard.

In general living with the Air Force is going to take some getting used to. There's lots they do slightly different and ways they shift their money around differently. There is Navy on the base, but it seems a rather small amount.

Our stuff is coming next week. Meaning I can stop living out of suitcases and start setting it up. The stuff is here, but this is the busy move time for the Air Force so movers weren't available right away.

Plans this weekend are to finally see a bit more of off base and farther away sights. Does seems like there's a lot to do here, even if it takes more work to find, is more nature than city, and involves snow for half the year.