It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

A friend of ours introduced us to the most amazing park ever.  We only visited the children's forest, which had amazing , unique ares for kids to play in.  Not sure why we don't have any amazing parks like this in the states, but this one was reall amazing.   We'll have to revisit this park later and experience some of the other areas of this massive park.

Grant conquers a dragon

Roller slides are fun....yes that's me trying it out

Misty Forest, apparently on more humid days it's even better

This sun is on top of a huge pyramid

Giant trampoline pillows?  Haha, I do not know how to describe this area.

On our walk back to a car we found a bamboo forest

A few weeks after Jake started his job he got to take a helicopter into Tokyo for a meeting with the Japanese government.  Needless to say, I was a bit jealous.  It was probably a fun way to see the city we live near for the first time.  At the moment downtown Tokyo is off limits for all military personel and dependants because of COVID restrictions.  SO here are a couple of his pictures of the city.

Tokyo

The runway at Yokota

Tokyo is a huge city in population and size

We also went and checked out a Buddist temple near us, Shikano Daibutsu.  It was very peaceful and beautiful.

I was also able to join a culture group here on base.  Our culture group is a group of about 14 american and 14 japanese ladies.  We take turns hosting activities that represent our culture.  My first activity we were dressed in Kimonos and served a tempura lunch.  Yum!  Not sure I would have experienced anything like this without our culture group.  It was a really fun day.

We did wear masks, just took them off to eat and briefly for pictures.

Jake also had the opportunity to go to Okinawa for work.  He mostly toured some military bases, but he got to see some of it.

So far we love it here and glad we have gotten opportunities to see more of our neighborhood.  This country seems to have a lot of new experiences in store for us.