Settling In... or trying to!

So the last week we have made some progress on trying to settle into our new home and our new schedule here in Japan. I successfully painted our living room a nice yellow and our entry way wall (which technically is part of the living room, but I'm hoping the paint helps distinguish it as another area) is a great shade of grayish blue. The two colors look really nice together and complement our furniture well. I will post pictures once we finish hanging pictures on the walls. We also are getting more stuff organized after finally getting all the boxes unpacked. We bought a small (cheap!) bookcase to stick inside our closet so now most of the clothes are off the closet floor and our master bedroom is looking a bit better. Just have to get around to painting it sometime soon so I can be "done" with that room too... though our whole place will be a work in progress while we update things like curtains, lamps, side tables, a new desk, etc. I'll probably be updating and improving until the month before we pack it all up again to move in a few years! But I'm so glad I painted and we are taking the time to customize and make this place feel like ours. With everybody living in the same few styles of on-base housing I didn't want to feel like I was the same as everyone else. Plus all the cream walls make me feel so....institutionalized! There is a bazaar next weekend on base and I've seen a few nice pieces of furniture people purchased there in years prior, so I am hoping we can pick up at least one nice piece. I'm crossing my fingers for a desk!

We are also hoping to get some yard work done in the next week or two. Our yard is a good size (as far as on base housing goes...) but it needs some TLC. There are some worn out areas that need some re-seeding and filling in the low spots to help the puddles on form. There is also an area that has a "path" where grass wont grow and it leads from the patio out to the pine trees. We decided to not fight it and bought some fun paver stones and will help make it look like a real path instead. We also hope this helps keep the mud off the doggy paws! We want to get our flower baskets up on the side of the fence soon and hopefully get our garden started. The weather has been so random here (today was upper 60s and sunny, while friday night it sleeted/snowed...) that waiting another week or two to plant the garden probably won't set us back too far.

We didn't go on any big ventures into Tokyo this weekend but next weekend we are going on another tour so we'll be busy! We hope that if we make an effort to do one or two day long trips around the area every month we'll still be able to see stuff while also having a schedule back home (not to mention not going broke- Japan is expensive!). I've heard a lot of comments of people in their last year here that realized they haven't done nearly as much as they had wanted to by then, so hopefully we won't be one of those couples. I think we might be the opposite, trying to do too much too fast! So having one weekend entirely within a 5 mile radius of our house was nice :-)

Dereck and I also were able to sign up to attend a 10 week Japanese Culture Course offered on base. Its free of charge and once a week we meet with some local Japanese who volunteer their time to teach us about traditional Japanese things. Last week we did tea-ceremony and this week we are doing Calligraphy. So far it's pretty cool! I also am attending a "survival Japanese" course (also free!) which is for 6 or 8 weeks I believe. Again, native Japanese volunteers are teaching us the basics of asking directions, ordering at a restaurant, etc. Its a great course and I've already learned a lot in my first 40 minute class!

So that's it for now. I'll try to update again soon.
Till next time- Jane