(At Okuma Beach, beautiful beaches up north of where we live)After canvassing the southern end of the island, and now the northern end of it this weekend, (Okuma), I have to say, island fever hit me pretty badly this weekend. As breathtaking and serene Okinawa is, I feel very closed in. It doesn't take a lot of driving to see water. At every turn, I see water, and it's truly breathtaking-however, I need some fresh city air. School for the kids are starting next week, and so I won't have a lot of time to be going on any trips since they will need to buckle down.
Particularly on the weekends, I feel very "closed in", and this weekend was really heard. Almost weekly, I run to the ATM machine, draw cash and exchange it for yen. However, the last few times I went to the ATM machine to draw out money, it kept denying the transaction, so I didn't have any yen to shop outside the base. Unlike America where credit cards are accepted almost anywhere, this is not the case in Japan. We don't have a bank account here on base, nor can we set one up in Japan either, so I asked my husband why our ATM card wasn't working, and he was perplexed too because we had funds in our account. Well, my son yells out, are you sure the card isn't expired? Sure enough, it expired this month. If I was back in the States, I would go to the nearest bank and pull out cash and renew my card, but in Japan? It is going to take at least 2-3 weeks to get a new ATM card in the mail, and I don't have a bank account here to transfer funds into, so I'm going to have to wait, and in the meantime will be very limited in where I go off base. There are few places that accept credit cards, but I don't have the energy nor the time to figure where those places are.
Well, the other night, my husband was in the mood for some Greek food off base, and he assumed they took dollars since many Americans frequent there, well, he was wrong, when we arrived, we found out they only accept yen, so we combed through our wallets and car seats and coughed up $17 worth of yen (I had a lot of change-which I don't usually take out to pay with, but I should remember too, because even though in the US, the highest coin is only 25 cents, in yen, the quarter is as ubiquitous as 100 yen coin which is around $1.25 now, and they even have a 500 yen in coin format which is around $6.50.) I had forgotten they are worth more here, so we found some, got two dishes and as we walked back to our car, only to be gifted with a parking ticket. ($200 for parking, and if you speed, it's $1000). Seung tried to reason with the officer for 20 minutes, and they wouldn't take back the ticket. In fact, you would have never known it wasn't a no parking zone because all the cars park on that side of the street, and there are NO signs. Seung asked where the sign was, and the officer walked him almost 2 blocks to point to the "No Parking" sign. He told the officer he had no idea, and would never do it again, but there was no consideration of even giving us a warning. Well, under American laws, no parking ticket would be $200, however, I was a bit annoyed at the officer for giving us such a stiff fine considering we made such an innocent mistake.
So this weekend, we didn't leave the base other than hang out at Okuma beach (about 1.5 hours north of us) for company picnic, came back, ate at home all weekend, and now am feeling really stuck here with out having any yen. I will have to call the bank tomorrow evening when it will be Monday morning US time.-Oh the joys of living outside US.
