Jazz Festival And Such

Yeah - still no fun seeing gorgeous sunsets every night. This was outside the restaurant after dinner & before we went to the jazz festival. The moon rise was even cooler (full and huge) but the camera never would've captured it with no tripod.
Some gas stations here (like this Esso station) have the pumps coming out of the overhang. You pull them down to put gas in the car. (which we NEVER do in town because it costs about 4x as much as on base) The gas on base here has fluctuated between $2.89-$3.00 since we've been here. It's mid-grade (the only choice) and off base it's almost 300 yen per liter (a liter is a little more than 1/4 of a gallon, and right now it's 199 yen to the $1. When we got here it was 124 yen to the $1.) Welcome to my math world.
Mia at the top of a big jumpie thing - this was a wave, and at the bottom there were "sharks". At the jazz festival off to the side near the beach there was a park full of jumpies, 4 of them. And the kids were going nuts in there. Mine was sweating like crazy, but happy as ever to be among dozens of other kids. She came to me, crying that she'd fallen & bitten her lip - wanted water, and then wanted to go right back in there! The energy & stamina is astounding.
The jazz festival was fantastic. It was warm and humid, but breezy and not totally uncomfortable. This time I had bug spray on to protect my already mosquito-eaten legs and arms. It's really warm & humid here, but without the haze of the states- it's why all the pictures are so clear, you can always see for miles, even on the most hot & humid day. The beauty makes the discomfort level more bearable. I was only disappointed that we attended at night because we didn't get to see the beautiful beach it was being held on.

Mia also danced on the dance floor in front of the stage where several Japanese jazz ensembles and even the III MEF jazz band performed (though we missed the USMC band unfortunately). We heard everything from "Take 5" to big band stuff, it was fantastic. Mia danced very happily ("interpretively") and I took a bit of video but the upload will have to wait until we have a better Internet connection.

Today we're packing up and moving some things over to the new place- and we'll hit Jusco to get some things for the apartment too. (Picture giant Target meets sushi restaurant....pictures to come)