Ohayo Gozaimasu :]

The weekend has come but my work week is not over yet!  I am working an event tomorrow for families to come and play games and just hang out with their kids and friends.  But since I work Saturday, I get Monday off.  My schedule is pretty flexible, as long as I'm working 40 hours a week.  Then on Sunday, I'm taking my first MWR trip out to the city of Hirado.  There's a lot of history associated with this Island that I'm looking forward to learning.  There's a castle and some shrines we will tour and at the end of the day we get to soak our feet in the onsen, or the hot springs.  I want to take advantage of as many MWR trips as possible.  They are just one solid base price that includes transportation, and gear (for the hiking/rock climbing trips) and are super cheap!  Kelsie and I have scheduled something for every single weekend of October!

The cafe next door to my building has a cute little Japanese style garden with lots of turtles and koi fish swimming around.  A peaceful place to sip my morning coffee.



Caught this little guy sunning himself this morning.



and then this dude comes flying out of nowhere...




Where can I get one of these?!



Some Mario sized plant I thought was cool.



For a second there, I thought I was about to meet R2.  I got really excited.



My life force.



USS Germantown LSD 42






I got to take a tour of this ship.  Pretty neat!



This ship is in the Japanese ship yard which is located right next to base. 
There are dozens of these ginormous industrial cranes everywhere and big scary buildings where they work on ships,
it's always empty and quiet.  It has the feel of a zombie town.  I rode my bike through here tonight.
This picture doesn't do it justice but this ship was Titanic size. 



And in the middle of all this metal are some pretty flowers.





We had our first lunch at this Sushi-go-round restaurant.  YUM YUM :]



"The Westerner" where Kelsie and I are enjoying some warm Japanese sake.
We asked the bartender to take our picture and she made us put on Cowboy hats. 



And then this guy sang us some Karaoke. 



I don't know why these guys had painted on mustaches but they were cracking me up.



I think they got Mexican and Western mixed up a little. 



I still can't get over the natural beauty I step out to every day.  I don't think I can ever live anywhere without mountains ever again.  Or the sea. 

I am loving the Japanese culture.  Everyone is so nice and very happy to help.  You are always greeted and thanked and served food with a bow.  I want to learn more Japanese so I can be just as polite in return.  The writing style intrigues me as well but it is so complicated to learn, even for the Japanese.  Some characters are just letters from the Japanese alphabet and are more simple while others are symbols that mean a whole idea and appear very difficult and detailed (this is from what I've been told, I'm still confused so please correct me if I'm wrong!).  There's a free Japanese course they offer here but it's during the middle of the day so I'm not sure if I can make it with my work schedule.  Today we were trying to find a Sushi place we were told we should check out, so we stopped this boy and asked him, "Sushi?" but he had no idea what we were talking about.  Is that not the same word in Japanese?!?