The Trees Are Here!

I don't know if you remember my post last Christmas about Christmas trees here on Okinawa, but the short version is that back in July, the Exchange orders a bunch of live Christmas trees from a farm in Oregon, they get cut, stuck in a shipping containers, toted across the Pacific, stored in a warehouse in Japan until the Japanese agricultural authorities inspect them and give them the ok to be released.  It's not exactly the storybook way of going to a Christmas tree farm on a snowy winter day and cutting down your own, but you go with what you have here.

Nor was Saturday morning (the designated "release" date) the storybook way of buying a Christmas tree.  It was really more like Black Friday at Walmart.  You see, word spreads fast in this tight military community and when there are only 300 live trees being released to 50,000 military people, people get cut throat.  Our neighbors, Krimp and Dima, were panicking about getting a tree as they had heard rumors that they sell out within the first half hour - truthfully, I think the only thing that stopped her from sleeping out in front of the tree lot is that she's 8 months pregnant.  Anyways, they took off on Saturday morning, with Cannon in tow, to get our spot in line.  Shortly after, I was able to rally my crew and we arrived to find Dima and Cannon wrapping their arms around two trees.  I was told that one of these was our tree.  Fair enough, it looked good enough and since most of the trees that had been pulled out of the truck were already in other people's carts, I figured this was a good option.

The problem is when 300 people all show up at the same time to buy a tree, the line for check out is enormous!  Of course, it didn't help that the folks at the Exchange only set up ONE register!

But after 45 minutes in line someone figured out you could also go inside the Exchange to pay which speeded up the process immensely.

We took it home and set it up and it looks - and smells - beautiful!

Have sun roof, will travel - with trees sticking out!