Thursday, June 4, 2009

House Hunting Day #1 and #2

On Tuesday Grace and I walked out the door to run a few errands only to find a note taped to the front door. The time has finally come for them to renovate our house. When we moved in we were told we would probably be moving in September (of last year!) Well, that didn't happen so we painted Grace's bedroom pink and got it all set up for her. Now we have a house full of furniture and just a week before we had organized our kitchen cabinets again!

So now we must move. They are giving us until the end of October so we have plenty of time to weigh or choices. Do we want to stay on-base or do we want to live off-base for the rest of our time on Okinawa? We are looking off-base to see what is available and if we find something we just totally love we can move right away. Otherwise we are going to stay put until they give us an option on-post, which could be a couple more months away. We just want to make sure we know all our options so we can get something we really like.

So far we have seen 7 apartments/houses and we are looking at LOTS more this weekend. At least 6 today (3 different agencies), we have appointments with 5 agencies tomorrow and then on Monday are going with 3 agencies and 2 agencies on Tuesday. Whew!

I will leave you some pictures of our house hunting adventures!

The first 4 pictures are of our favorite house so far. It is about 15-20 min. from where Dustin works. A single house in a quiet area with all Japanese neighbors. There is no yard but it has a big deck overlooking a golf course. Very pretty! The downside is the kitchen. Japanese oven (small), no dishwasher, and I don't recall seeing a pantry. But the bathroom is beautiful with a huge tub!



This house was only 2 bedrooms (I don't know why they even showed it to us when we said we needed 3) but it had a huge living area and then off of that was a tatami room. Not quite sure what we would use this for. We said no to this one!
This is the shower/tub in a house we looked at
This next picture shows what I would see waking up every morning.

However, this is what Grace would see. Totally not loving the red tile floors and wood panelled walls! And it only has 1 parking spot so this would definitely not work either.
This is right outside Gate #1 so it would be very close to work for Dustin. However, this is one of the busiest roads on Okinawa!
And this house we wanted to leave before we ever went inside. I could live with the mustard yellow house and it did have a really nice yard. But to get there we went through a grave yard and then turned into an alley and then we had to wind through the alley until we finally saw this. This house looks like a castle compared to everything around it!

So now we are off to meet some more agencies to look at more houses! The first appointment of the day is in 30 min.


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