Liberty Card Granted!

It took nearly a week, but Mick was granted a yellow, we like to think of it as gold, liberty card.  As I said before, they stress the importance of being a good ambassador and the Marines are not allowed to leave the base until they have a liberty card.  Even with the liberty card, all Marines need to be out of bars by midnight and any "legitimate" eating establishments by 2:00 a.m.  Not that this will affect us, as we aren't known as the night owls, but it is super interesting to me that your average Corporal, a 20-something young man, can't be out in town as he pleases.  ☺  The clubs on base are open and you can drink later than 12 here....since the danger of you causing an international incident is contained.

Anyway, there's the background, so where was I?  Oh!  Mick got his liberty card and we left base on our own, in our groovy minivan, after we had been here about 9 days.

This is Mick's favorite sign and he wants to be the pedestrian walkway, fedora-wearing  man for Halloween. 

 Can you believe we headed out without a map?  Even so, with Mick's excellent directional ability, we made it to the 7, or is it 6, floor shopping mall called the Fuji Grand.

The girls and I went here on our tour and we were anxious to show our Daddy the different floors.  We took the escalator up, up, up and explored each floor.  We only bought things on the 100 yen floor.

I had bought the big girls nice fans on our tour and Claire really wanted one.  They are kind of expensive though for a 3 year old, so I bought her one on the 100 yen floor.  And it promptly got broken about 3 hours later.  ☺  This picture kind of describes Claire's personality perfectly!  ☺

We went to the top where there is a McDonald's and other Japanese fast food places and we got the girls a snow cone looking thing that they L-O-V-E-D.  It had a little vanilla on top so tasted sweet yet cool and refreshing!  ☺ The name escapes me at the moment.

Claire had to go to the bathroom, but totally balked at the squatty potties.  They aren't air-conditioned so it's stuffy and smells a bit like pee pee and it's just plain weird anyway, for us Westerners....but especially over-whelming for a fairly new potty trained girl who has to choose a Western public potty very carefully, after examining all the open ones.  I demonstrated, I tried to reason, offered bribes ("I'll buy you a lollipop!")  brought Olivia in to try to reason and demonstrate for her (Olivia declined to demonstrate) and then Olivia went out and brought back one of Gigi's diapers.  I put it on Claire, she got a look of pure bliss, promptly peed in it and we threw it away.  Squatty potty problem solved. 

We took the escalator down, down, down and explored the grocery store on the bottom floor.  The meat is quite confusing, but they try to help you by showing you a picture of a cow and the different parts. 

Of course the captions aren't in English, but if you know your cow (which we need to get to know our cow if we want to shop out in town) they have a number assigned to each part and then the corresponding number on the packages.

Then a quick family picture before we go in the parking garage

and then, considering Claire's obvious mood, against our better judgment, we stopped at Mike's Tex Mex. 

They are obviously catering to the base personnel and it was good!  Prices are a bit high, but that's why we get our Cost of Living Allowance (COLA).  However, COLA or no COLA, I am not paying 320 yen or around $3.75 for a kid's drink.  Water for everyone! 

We are enjoying our Japanese adventure!  Sayonara!