The Bisson's: Yay for wheels!

On Tuesday Joe and I went to the safety course for both driving and scuba diving. It was only about an hour and a half long and the test to get our international driver's license was only 15 questions long. Joe and I both got 100% and we got our licenses that afternoon.

We also met up with the person selling my car and it took about an hour or so to transfer over the title and sign-up for insurance. The Japanese do things differently here. You pay for driver's insurance upfront and it lasts one year. You also pay for automobile insurance and it is good for two years. Fortunatley the car we bought just had the automobile insurance renewed so we don't have to worry about paying for it until 2011. Here's my car... nothing amazing, but then again no one buys anything really special here. It's a 1997 Toyota Celica.

Joe will buy his car today. It's some silver boxy looking car that he really wanted. He said "where else except here in Japan can I get away with driving one of these things?!" and it's true. You see them everywhere here, but in the states you'd be ridiculed forever if you drove one. I'll post pictures when he gets it. Here are some other pictures I've taken, nothing too exciting because we've spent most of our time so far on base in briefings.

This is us sitting business class for the 15 hour trip. It was so comfy!

This is what everyone refers to as the "ferris wheel". It's very similiar to the Eye in London and I guess it overlooks the island! We can't wait to go on it!

This is us driving through the gate to our base. There are 5 gates to our base. It's HUGE!

This is the toilet in our hotel room. I have NO idea what all the buttons say or do, but all I know is that it's heated and keeps tushy's warm... which I don't know why you need it since it's already in the 70's here.

This is the hotel we are staying at. It's called the Costa Vista and the people are so friendly and the views are amazing. It's located at the top of a really high hill!

We walked down the really big hill from our hotel to go to this little trolley that sold pizza (before we had a car). It was YUMMY. The stinky part was walking back UP the hill afterwards.

It's a little hard to tell, but across the street from where we ate, we could see the people running the Okinawa Marathon! It was pretty neat to watch. Oh and that white boxy looking car is pretty similiar to the one Joe is getting ha :)