We had a small town house type to live in, but it wan't as nice as the town houses we have here in the states. This is the picture of the back of it. I didn't care that we had hardships, as we were a family again after being apart for one year. We did have electricity there but it wasn't much. We had an ice box so had to get ice for that all the time. Our hot water was non exiistent, but we did have a tank outside that you could build a fire under with wood. Only problem with that was the inside of the tank was rusty, so I just heated the water on our 2 burner karosene stove which is what we used to heat the place and cook on. Eventually we bought a Westinghouse roaster and I could finally start roasting and baking things again, as it worked good for that.
In the winter we closed off the upstairs and just heated it downstairs during the day. It got cold there in the winter too, as we had snow quite a few times. Baths were a chore as had to heat a wash tub on the stove with the water in it and then bathe in the living area in that tub. We did have a bathroom and a tub but no hot water to it. In the summer it was OK, as it was so hot and humid that we just took cold showers. I did use the tub to wash cloths in on a old fashion wash board. Rub a dub dub!!!! It was hard work and hard to get Navy whites clean. We did send the navy cloths out sometimes and even tried the underwear also but the underwear came back starched like a board. Not cool!! I wouldn't trade my experience there for anything, and after we got back to the states I wanted to go again.
It was a lot of fun learning the customs and trying to learn at least enough of the language to communicate with the locals. I sure used my hands a lot trying to talk with them. It was in the country, so people dressed and lived different than in the big cities. In the summers Mama-san walked around with just a wrap around skirt. and papa-san had a loin on to cover positive. We rode around in rickshaws when we wanted to go somewhere or rode our bikes. I had a seat on the front of mine for David to sit in. The rickshaws were bike powared. Our streets were very narrow and atually more like a wide path, plus in the rainy season it was very muddy. Eventually Dad got a motorcycle which helped him a lot get to work and we took some trips into the countryside. Our little street crossed a benjo ditch which was a an experience in itself. Along the ditch which must have been at least a half mile long you would see people washing cloths, their veggies, bathing, peeing and doing their buisness once in awhile. We had to go a long that ditch to get to the base or town, so it was an everyday trip.
It was fun to go to the shops which were open air stores and not very big. I got pretty good at bargaining there. Much of the Japanese food I loved and was learning to eat many things I never thought I would eat. It was really cheap at that time for most of the things we needed, so that was great, as we weren't paid a lot by the Navy. When I first got there the commissary didn't have a lot, as the base had belonged to the Austrailans, and they didn't have a lot of supplys yet from the states. They had to bag up stuff from the galley to put on the shelves for us. It was challeging for a good while but we didn't starve.
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