One week check-in

** This was written on the June 30th but just now getting around to posting it**

Well after one week I am happy to announce that this place is a blast. Everywhere I go I meet new people and make new friends. For example, I walked into Jamaican restaurant for a jerk chicken sandwich and noticed a group of people wearing badges and asked them what event they were attending. It turned out they were actors in a play that was going on later that afternoon. They told me that the play started at 5 and if you were late that we would not be allowed to enter. We showed up 30 minutes early and saw a bunch of young Japanese Okinawan (some of them don't like being called Japanese)  workers at the entrance. We told them we were there for the play and they asked for a ticket. We said we didn't have any and asked how much they were. They said 1800 yen (about 24 dollars). I said that we were invited to the play by one of the two actors. When I said this they signaled for us to wait at the entrance and one of them ran upstairs. He came back and said he was sorry but we would need to buy tickets. We said ok, and started taking out money to buy a ticket and he then explained to us that we couldn't buy tickets till 15 minutes before the show. We were getting a little frustrated but walked down the sidewalk out of the way to hang out till we could purchase the tickets. My buddy and I finally decided to not go when and as we started walking down the road, the ticket master came running down the stairs and motioned for us to wait. He approached us and said the actress we had met had given a couple of her personal tickets to us. So after all that we ended up going to the play which was pretty interesting, very contemporary, Katherine (Dede) would have liked it. It was in Japanese, but some parts were in German, and French as well, so they had subtitles, which was a very big help obviously.

I've fallen in love with the neighborhood of Chatan-cho. Specifically the neighborhood of Sunabe. It's less than a mile from the main gate of base, it's very close to the East China Sea. Sunabe, has great restaurants, good night life, and lots of scuba and surf shops. Almost every place you go you end up meeting the owner and eventually get to know them. So my house hunting has been concentrated on that area. That's all for now, I'm going to drive up North in my new (well, new to me) Toyota Surf (basically a 4Runner in the states). Pictures will come soon.