First Assignment, Japan

We taught for a year on Misawa Airbase, northern Honshu, Japan. It was our first overseas assignment, and in many ways , our best. We lived in a very small house on a one lane dirt road, just outside of the base. We had no phone and an old salvaged drip oil stove for heat. The winter was bitter cold. Gale wore two sets of thermals and a robe to bed. Snow fell October through May. The "garrison under siege" attitude made for much partying and close friends.
The Japanese were wonderful. Misawa was rather isolated and  relatively poor. Across our one lane road was a small nursery. When I shoveled snow from our walk I would also shovel their porch and walk. The teachers would line up those beautiful children, with their black eyes and hair, most dressed in vivid red coats, and they would bow and thank me. I would also bow and tell them they were welcome. Those days were special.
Our garbage man was intrigued by Gale. When he came by to collect his fee, he would wait in the mud room while Gale walked down the hall to get money. On more than one occasion we caught him length ways in the hall, but with his feet still in the mud room, watching Gale walk down the hall. I would shake my finger at him and he would grin.
On the evening of October 30, a Japanese boy, perhaps 13, came to our door in his school uniform. He kept repeating "gandy, gandy." Gale finally figured out that he was trying to say candy and that he had some way found out that Americans would give kids candy on Halloween. We brought him in and showed him the calendar, indicating for him to return the next night, which he did, and we bestowed him with much "gandy."
We left transferred to Okinawa the next year, where our daughter, London, was born. She was a blue eyed, blond baby who smiled at everyone. Older Japanese or Okinawan women would often ask if she was a boy, and when told that she was a girl, would tell us they were sorry, and maybe next time we would have a boy. 
That always confused us, as we thought we had done quite well.