Okinawa: First Week

My first full week here on the island has been packed full of things I had to do. Besides the mandatory things I had to do for work, I did a few other memorable things.

First was the housing brief. I, like most people, want a house as soon as possible. After living out of luggage and hotels for a few months, I want to settle down in my own home with my own stuff. I have a unique situation in that housing is only authorized to let you move in when your dependents (spouse and children) are 30 days out. I have about 50 days until they get here. I was required to show proof of their arrival date (copy of their airline tickets). It takes about 7-10 days to process your housing application and receive a call from housing with your offers. How it works here is they will give you 2 offers at the same time. You have 24 hours to decide on which one you want. You cannot decline both, you cannot request another housing development, you cannot ask them to alter those 2 offers in any way. If housing is less than 98% full for your rank and bedroom size, you are required to live on base. If you arrive and on the day of your housing brief your housing is over 98% full (for your main base and your two secondary bases) then you are given the option to reside off base. You will get an authorization letter from housing and then will be required to attend the off base housing briefing. For those assigned to Kadena; Kadena is our primary with Foster and Lester being our secondary locations. This means that I could get my 2 offers on Foster and/or Lester and/or Kadena. When I went to the housing brief my rank and bedroom size was 99% on Kadena and 100% on Foster and Lester. I was asked if I wanted off base. In addition, because my family is more than 30 days out from arrival I was asked if I wanted off base. I do not want off base. Therefore, I requested to be on the waitlist for on base housing. Now it's just waiting for housing to call me with my 2 housing offers.

Another exciting occurrence this week was picking out my car. The car buying process if very different here on the island. You have 2 options: buying privately or buying from a dealership. Each has pros and cons. I looked at the Lemon Lot a few times and researched available cars on Bookoo. Nothing really caught my eye as they were mostly larger sized vehicles. I'm on a tiny island with tiny roads and a tiny family; I want a tiny car. I went to 3 dealerships: BC Motors, Payless Motors, and US Auto Sales.

Each dealership had outstanding workers and outstanding cars. It was a pleasure going to each lot. The workers are very nice, they will come up and introduce themselves and ask you what you are interested in. They will then point out what they have available. There was no hovering and no pressure to buy a car from them. All of them were beyond helpful in helping me find the best car to fit my needs. You are allowed to look at each car, sit in each car, and turn on the engine in each car. It is illegal to test drive in Japan. BC Motors had a lot of tiny cars but nothing caught my eye. Payless Motors had one car I was very interested in. Before making a purchase I wanted to check out one more dealership and one car I had been eyeing on their website. We headed to US Auto Sales and as we turned into the lot "my car" was right there. Have you ever felt drawn to a car, like you were meant to have it? That's what this felt like. Loved the car, it was exactly what I was looking for. Turned the engine on, the AC was quick and super cold, the car was simple without many extras...in a nutshell, this is the exact car I had imagined driving around this island. The dealerships offer financing, usually 0% over 24 months. If you don't finance and pay cash you can get a discount off the price of the vehicle. This is what I chose to do. The car was listed at $3995. I got it for $3300 (and included in that cost was 2 year JCI, 2015 road tax, 3 month warranty, 9 month free labor and parts). On top of the cost I had to pay $230 for my year of American Insurance (this cost is based on rank, married/single, and age). Another plus is this dealership set up the JCI, road tax, and military stickers all for me. This saved me from driving here and there to get it all done. I picked out the car on Tuesday, got my driver's license on Wednesday, got the mandatory LOA from legal on Thursday morning. I was driving away with my car Thursday afternoon.

My 2 cats are housed at the kennel, since I am in non-pet friendly lodging. They offer visiting hours during the week. Now that I had my own car, it was very easy to go visit them. They have a nice cat playroom where I could take them, let them stretch their legs, and meow to their hearts content while I scratched all their itchy spots. Spent about an hour with them in the cat playroom. I'm looking forward to visiting them a few times a week!