NAF sale

Today morning, I got a message from my husband about NAF sale. I've heard about it few times through 35FSS facebook. I haven't planed on going there, I was going to go to yoga instead. I heard they have reduced price for snowboard and boots. So I decided to go, I packed my workout clothes just because to drop by the gym after sale.

I got snowboard for $5 and boots for $5. It was successful and very fun to see the items! Japaneses workers were very helpful finding right size and right number for the items. I wouldn't get this great customer service at another place. :)

Article about NAF sale

http://www.21fss.com/about/naf-finance/naf-sales/

Phada's Authentic Thai Food

The first place that we ate out was this thai food place. this place only opens at lunch time(ends at 2:30pm) or dinner time (starts at 5pm). located next to the Chinese restaurant near max value (grocery store). we parked at max value and walk to thai food place. we ate the most delicious thai food there when lady cook cooked our food.  I will definitely find out her name and will have second trip to the place again. very delicious thai food. I totally recommend. 

check their facebook

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Phadas-Authentic-Thai-Food/103566736379191

Buy Clothes at Uniqlo

Uniqlo is the clothing store which is like H&M. this store has lots of comfortable clothes with various colors too. uniqlo's size of clothing is not like any other kinds of Japaneses clothing. The Japanese clothes comes with small size with lots of graphics or prints but uniqlo doesn't have that size or prints problems. You can check the websites here.

U.S version
http://www.uniqlo.com/us

Japan Version
http://www.uniqlo.com/jp/

I recommend you to check the Japan version website too just because they do lots of sales year around. I have several pairs of 'Ultra Stretch Jeans". this jeans are awesome and fits like a gloves. As you see from their name, this jeans stretches great, sometimes it gets little too big for skinny jeans. when it happens I wash it and naturally dry over night. then the jeans comes back to the original size. First wash needs to be washed separately with other laundry and machine dry is not recommended.

near Misawa the shops at

ユニクロ シンフォニープラザ八戸沼館店
Japan, Aomori Prefecture, Hachinohe, Numadate, ４丁目４−８ ‎
シンフォニープラザ沼館
+81 178-71-2666 ‎ · uniqlo.com

ジュエリーマキ十和田イオン店
Japan, Aomori Prefecture, Towada, Osaka, Muikamachiyama１６６−１ ‎
+81 176-24-0033 ‎

check the map at
https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&q=uniqlo+misawa&fb=1&hq=uniqlo&hnear=0x5f9c9e15d6a6af33:0x47ad9465cf39c203,Misawa,+Aomori+Prefecture,+Japan&view=text&ei=dFqlUfLmBqagywGXlYCADg&ved=0CD8QtQM

Cool puzzles

I found there are lots of cool puzzles here in Japan. This is the example.

Trip to shimoda mall - Part 2

Shimoda mall is a department store with lots of stores in it. They have clothing, home goods, groceries, accessories, or sports goods stores.

Kids T-shirts. Hang eleven!

Cool figures.

Lego costs twice the price than a U.S one.

Cool Puzzles.

Trip to Shimodamall

To get to shimoda mall

Go straight out from POL gate untill you see Universe on the left side. Turn left at Universe and keep going.

Turn left here

Keep going straight until you see ESSO gas station on the left side, turn Right at the signal

Keep going straight this farm road about 10 minutes.

When you get to this point, you will see the gambling place on the left side. At the signal, Turn right.

 you will see this place on the left and the sign for shimoda mall is displayed on the signal.

Now here is shimoda mall. Turn left at the second road when you turn right at the signal. follow the pink sign saying AEON. the handicap sign on the parking sign means "drive slow for handicap persons"

shopping bag situation

We went to Japanese Grocery store yesterday and got potatoes and some snacks. When we checked out the stuffs we got, the lady at the registration asked us if we need a plastic bag. Since we had no place to put the stuffs, we said we want a bag. the lady immediately charged us 196 yen (2dollar) for plastic bag!

In states we never worried about carrying personal bag to carry stuffs. the plastic bag is so expensive here in Japan! We have to carry personal bag to grocery store otherwise they charge 2 dollar for a bag. 

Base beach - Misawa AFB

Since we're living on north area of housing. we can see this nice beach & recreation area on jogging track. this is right around the corner of housing area. the sand is not like super fine one in san diego. That's why people are not walking on the beach. walkers need to watch out for broken glasses or seashells hanging on the ground. I wore flip flop and that was not very nice experience when the sand got into my feet. Anyways, Jet Ski is popular here! I saw there's a class for Jet Ski certification here for free but I don't know If the certificate is required to ride it.

Horoyoi - fruit flavored alcohol

pretty good flavored alcohol. 

You can get this from any convenience store. price can be different depends on the stores.

New flowers

After typical sakura, we have these beauful flower trees at the north housing area. These flower trees are also same sakura but a different type. I like these flowers have several layers keep the middle part of the flower. It is Good to see some different colors in here because I have been in vegas for 2and half years (only sand colors). It's kind of gloomy days with gray shades all day long and chilly weather, the flowers glare the street around base housing area.

Hachinohe Tour

As a part of new comer tour, My husband and I went to hachinohe tour yesterday. We went to misawa tour the day before and check the museum and the mall (yes, the mall is always final place to go). yesterday was a lot better day with nice sunshine. We first went to some temple and saw how Japanese people take care of dead people and how the tombstones look like. the tombstones has their unique design so those become pretty expensive. the picture i took, i believe it's not a tombstone, is taken at the entrance of the exhibit of tombstones.

Buddha's feat

If someone can't afford to family graves, then you send the human ash to this type of place. the higher place is cheaper because it's hard to Japaneses people to reach up that high. they are short.

cool kite

purify hands and inside the body

the shrine we went

Taxi in Japan

  We happen to need to ride a taxi today so we rode a taxi from the main base gas station to north housing area where we live.The base fee of the taxi starts from 640 yen which is about $6.50. then the price goes up really quickly after starting the taxi. It took about 5 minutes to come from the gas station to the housing area but the price for the taxi was 1650 yen which is about $17~$18. and YES, they accept the tip. I don't think it is unnecessary to give the taxi driver the tip either on base or off base. I asked if they accept the tip because my husband asked me to do so. Of course, who doesn't like free money for their service? Anyways, OK we appreciate their service, So I gave them about $5 as yen (coins).

  Taxi is very very expensive. 

Finally internet is here!

  We finally got internet! since verizon is only option that we can get on base, we had to pay $69.99 for internet. on the top of the internet fee, we forced to get phone because that's how It works. we needed to get phone service for $29.99 or something and needed to get home phone for $12 at BX. We never had home phone before, why would us need home phone when we have cell phone?? anyways, from home phone, making a phone call to base is free so that's the good side of having home phone.

  After verifying ring tone from home phone, we headed to BX to get verizon internet installation package which is several lines and connectors. we came back home (kind of long driving from main base to north side), we install the lines on the wall and found out they didn't give us the line for the home phone. now we can't use home phone! when you get the installation package from verizon, please check to see if you have TWO white lines. they gave us one white line and one blue line. we found out we need two white lines because one goes to modem and the other one goes to home phone. 

  Anyways, we finally got internet and home phone. Even if we paid almost $70 for internet. the speed of internet is horrible! my husband couldn't make his computer game work well. the image he can see is the image that people saw few seconds ago. Just expect the internet is super slow here. Misawa INN was much better than housing area. : ( Now I have internet, I can post more blog so that my blog is back on the track! 

Super small things in Japan

No wonder why people here is so skinny! There normal size is a lot smaller than american size, and their small size is even  smaller than kid size in America. We went to some grocery stores to check the stuffs there. Look at the size of a beverage (Kids' size?) That is same as my palm size! 

Bag is Back!

My husband and I were very frustrated when he lost his bag AGAIN! He never could find his back when he lost one in Korea. Now he lost his bag again in Japan. We spent almost 1 hour to explain how bag looks like and where we've been with a bag. We got a phone from the front desk saying that our bag is here!!!! AMAZINGly! We found a bag!!! Whoooohooo~~~~

Rain Rain

  It has been rained all day long. cherry blossom leaves are everywhere, some sticks to the sign on the street. glooooommmmyyyy!! Soooo cold to be in rain, and windy weather doesn't help me to like to go outside and walk. I just feel like being at home and watch shows or movies whole time.

APO shipping issues

  Before I come to misawa, I thought online shopping will be as easy as I used to shop in the states. such a small base like misawa, BX and commissary can be hard to find the items that I like and can be expensive which I wouldn't want to pay for that much. We went to BX here today to get sheet for the bed which FMO/PMO will provide (queen sized bed). Queen sized sheet was $19.99 for the cheapest one, usually priced as $32 something. As we can't use queen sized sheet for our real bed due to the differences of the sized of the bed, We don't even want to get a nice sheet. This is pretty discouraging shopper like us to find the decent stuffs in oversea base. 

  

  Online shopping is pretty hard for us as well. Lots of online stores doesn't even ship to APO address at all. Frustrating!

the online stores ship to APO that I found so far

Amazon

Macy

Dillard

Popeyes for dinner

We ordered popeyes for dinner since it's rainy outside. They didn't got us ketchup for fries!! If you're going to order Popeyes on base in misawa, make sure they got you ketchup otherwise you will get honey and whatever sauce wish your orders.

Flight to Japan from the states

Trip to Misawa.

  Trip to here was pretty crazy and at the same time pretty awful. We started out trip from spokane,WA where we spent 2 weeks vacation at husband's parents house. our flight was from spokane to salt lake city then LA. military got us ticket from LA since our station was Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. So we were all the way back to LA to get on the air plane to Japan. we got the ticket at Delta. Usually trip by delta airline goes by pretty smooth. this time was difference. It went by super rough. I had air plane sick feeling whole time while I was on the air plane. that was just start of the long trip. Anyway, We got to LA finally and head to the Travelodge the motel that we booked already. the hotel around the airport was expensive. the travelodge, only 1 or 2 star motel was $70 something, with tax and everything it ends up charged us almost $90. military only paid partially so we thought one night won't matter too much. we found the one night matters a lot before a day of long trip.

Travelodge near LAX - Pros
1. Only 1 mile away from the airport - taxi fee saver
2. Easy to reach to the places, restaurant/subway(sandwich)/ starbucks / gas station
3. Free shuttle bus to the airport next morning

Cons
1. No soundproof at all - hear everything from next door, even can hear every steps the upper stair makes
2. Bathroom fan hardly working
3. ambulance or police car siren all night long

  We didn't expect much about traveledge but hope the next day comes quick. then the next day, we went to starbucks, since there is Boeing right around, in the morning starbucks got very very crowded. the taste of coffee was awful but tolerable. after starbucks we went to subway to get sandwich. everyone knows that they can't expect much about the food in the flight much. moreover, the flight to Japan in San fransisco was at 7pm. we got a foot long sandwich and came back to travelodge to head to LAX. We got on the air plane to LAX to head SFO.

  At the air port, we had hard time to get a ticket because the name on my passport has not changed to husband's las name but in the order, my name was husband's last name. we had helped a lot about name thing, we showed every docs and made the airline crew understand the circumstances about me. and we finally could got the air ticket. As a military person who is PCSing, we needed to go to priority section for ticketing which saved lots of time on the customs which saves lots of times on the line. we were on the official trip to Japan.

  We know it will be pretty chaotic at SFO, but we had about 3 hours lay over there. we got to the SFO, and went to Japanese airline (JAL) and got the ticket. of course I had hard time getting ticket there because of my name. after an hour talking to American airline, JAL finally figure out how to solve the problem. the aircrew was on her training  have no idea how to handle the situation. she went back and forward to get the hold of manage several times which gave us more waiting time at the ticket booth. we were getting nervous about getting on the airplane after all of the time to go through customs and everything. luckily they found out having us hour and half of waiting time at the gate. we really hope to get a coffee before get on the board to airplane. but the hope was totally crushes and we were back to the airplane to Japan (Haneda. aka tokyo)

SFO  to Haneda,Japan
  In the airplane, the seat was much smaller than american airline or Korean airline. my knee reached to front seat and very uncomfortable to be in that position for 12 hours. flight attendant served hot towel, then drinks, and then boom! dinner time! there was 2 options. 1. Alfredo chicken something on the side of raw tuna,  bread, salad (ceasers dressing), a coffee cup, and cold noodle. 2. seafood curry with same side of No.1 The food was pretty good.  we got hargendaz strawberry ice cream at desert. Sweet!  my husband and I watched "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters", "Warm Bodied", partial of "les miserables" together, I watched "silver linings playbook" while my husband watched "django" JAL also had "oz the great and powerful" and "wreck it ralph". After watching all of the movies, breakfast time came. there was only one menu which is ginger chicken rice soup on the side of strawberry yogurt (too sweet for me) and more. If you have a same menu, never stir the soup. the ginger flavor will blast in your mouth! I even bit once and it was horrible.

 Finally we are in Japan! we were pretty excited to get to Japan. almost 12 hours was pretty terrible in the sitting position. i couldn't sleep at all. anyways, we were out of the airplane, wait on the baggage check, and wait, more wait, WE MISSED ONE BAGGAGE! We had such a hard time making the air crew understood details about the baggage. I can understand every Japanese and speak it too so I got my japanese ability out and explained. the work flew much smoother than when we spoke in English. but still frustrating because we LOST BAGGAGE. since we got to haneda at 9pm, the next flight to misawa was at 7am next morning, we decided to stay at the domestic airport where we need to be in the morning. we got on the free shuttle bus to the domestic terminal 2 and just laying down on the chair at the lobby. little while, security came and said there is cabin in airport. cabin? that sounded great to us.

  that cabin was totally bee hive looking little tiny room without having any door. (only curtain) we stay there a night. my room was pretty quiet until snoring lady came. my husband's room was crazy snoring man whole time on the right next door where my husband stayed. since they don't allow woman and man to share room, we needed to get each other's room separately. (mine was 5900 yen, husband's was 4900 yen) we paid with our Americam Visa card. GTC wasn't working there.

  The next day morning, we headed to second floor, and got the ticket. We went to JAL desk but they said the ticket to misawa can be issued only all the way down to the airport (number 10 something to 50 something) so we walk all the way down and finally could get the ticket. after getting ticket, we went up to the customs and went through the process again. In japan, I didn't have to take off shoes. boots needed to be taken off. They put their beverage on the small basket, but didn't see if they allow those to the gate or not.   we moved to the gate, totally exhausted, and waited again with watching japan TV. and we were on board again. and finally WE ARE IN MISAWA!!!

Is the places around misawa walkable?

  My biggest worried about going off base was if they are hard to walk and reachable places I looked around the downtown today and my feeling of walking to places was pretty hard without Map. the places are spread out so it's quite walking down the street. It gets harder. So my answer for the touring off base in misawa is you can walk to go around the base, but your fit will be pretty beat up when you come back to the inn.
  Gate to base is kind of awkward how they set up the entrance. to get out of the base there are two ways, o the right side there is a button gate which only one person is allowed whenever a person push the button. on the left side, there is another gate which has a person is watching. there is pedestrian road so easy to walk out. the awkward part of a gate happens on the entrance. there is a small house saying entrance on the side. that is not the place you are going if you're with valid military ID. that place is for people who have a problem of their ID etc.. so if you need to talk to the person to get temporal pass or something you should go ahead to that place. otherwise, just walk to the gate where every cars head for ID check, as a person approach to the entrance for ID check, a car on the back side slowly stops, then that's the time for a person to walk to the person and show the ID. boom! on the base. I found it awkward that a person and a car share same entrance. at night it might get pretty dangerous.

Get a cell phone in Misawa

The experience of having a new cell phone in misawa,

There are several Japanese companies which have a national broadband. Domoko,au,and softbank. It's important to know if co-workers or the person you expect to often has what kind of cell phone company they use. All most every company provides the option of free talk and text if a recipient is using same company. otherwise the caller needs to pay 42 yen per a minutes which is about 50 cent. 

My husband and I decided to head to on-base and off-base to see what kind of offer that these places have. If someone decides to check off-base, he/she needs to understand and speak in Japanese because the works in off-base doesn't have nice English proficiency. the workers looks like they understand English but kind of hard to deal with the situation since the conversation will be about all the plans and those plans does not easy to pick up.

On BX, there are au and softbank. what I hear about softback is they providing cheap plan without having basic fee. however, they just started to provide service on base, It is hard to get the good connection everywhere on base. on the other hand, au has pretty good connection and it's national wide broadband. and there is pretty kind works is at. she has good English proficiency which makes a lot easier to deal with problems and everything. on base, au provides the discount which was about 1500 yen. As you know, any type of discount can't be discouraged. If there is any problems with phone, plan change or PCSing, they are pretty good at taking care of those stuffs too. which we choose the au on base to get a phone. (galaxy 3, currently about  $100 per month for a year then on the 2 year period the fee is going to be only $57 because at that time the fee charged for the buying galaxy phone itself will be paid off) If we would like to buy different phone after 1 year of paying the unit fee for galaxy 3, we can just go ahead and purchase different unit with having the unit fee on the top of $57.

Before we decided to head back to BX, we wanted to know what kind of option we can get off-base. we went to docomo,the company that few of my husband's co-workers use. At docomo, have break the unit fee down to 12 or 24 months. their basic fee with data plan, talk, and text plan is about 8500yen. on the top of that the unit fee which ever it costs is included. so the price is kind of fixed at about 9000 yen.

the au at off-base, we couldn't get any help from that place. the person tried to call to on base au and kind made us to talk to her in English even though I said I can understand Japanese fine and I just want to know what kind of plan they have. the worker there seemed very uncomfortable doing her job there. when we asked the option for rental phone which i am currently using, she looked panic and in and out of the inventory room quite often. so the au off-base was totally out of the list. even though the lady was not very helpful, we tried to get the prepaid phone there because they have kind of cute style phone. but the cute phone was kind of pretty expensive to just but it one time, so the worker recommend to us to go to "geio" which is the place like "goodwill" on U.S. they sell the used stuffs at cheap price. they have games, CDs, and clothes too. I got refurbished phone at $15 and charger for $5

Back to au on BX, I found out that if I get phone and just put money in, I need to activate at off-base and there will be $3000 yen of activation fee every months. It's better if someone gets rental phone because there is no activation fee every months and don't need to put much money in it. so for me, i will only talk to my husband and no friends here yet. only person that i call will be free phone at text so I decided to get rental phone and phone back to return tomorrow.

this is pretty fantastic day today, these are the recommendations that I found today.

1. If you want to get a phone, Go to AU on BX

 - better service because they speak english

 - easier overall because they deal with military stuffs all the time

2. rental phone is better off than but phone and get a money in

 - cheaper without activation fee every 3 months

 - no need to put bunch of money (prepaid puts 3000 yen no matter what)

We tried to go to tai food place but it was closed at 3pm. (preparation time for dinner)

Misawa day 1

We are finally in Misawa afb in Japan. It took almost a day to travelling to here from LA. It has been long trip with layover and wait wait wait mostly on the airport and in the air plane. Here we start day No.1 in Misawa,Japan. I'm pretty excited to start the life here.  hopefully everything goes well for us.

cappuccino I got from misawa inn, lobby.