Sometimes I feel like I have dropped through a wormhole. My life here is so different in almost every way from my life in Japan. We got our new mattress. box spring and bed frame yesterday and for the first time slept upstairs in our bedroom. I slept on Japanese futons (which are completely unlike American futons) on the floor for 7 years in Japan. I like being able to swing my legs over the side of the bed to get up rather than crawling up off the floor every morning. I've been waking up before the other two most days and have been doing a half hour of yoga before they get up. I used to try to do the same thing in Japan, but our apartment was so cramped that it was hard to find a spot where I could fully extend my arms or legs to the side without knocking stuff over or hitting something.
Here I go shopping for food just a couple of times a week and if I have the time and the inclination I can go to Tuttles ("America's oldest family farm. Established 1623") or The Broken Pushcart for fresh local produce, Janetos, a local market with a great butcher shop, for meat, the fish market for fish and then a regular supermarket for everything else. If I don't have time to run around to all those places, I can also just go to the supermarket. In Japan, we bought almost all our food at Super Queen, which was 1.5 blocks away, and shopped there almost everyday.
I suffer lawn guilt here, which is something I never needed to worry about in Japan. Went to Home Depot on Sunday and got lawn care stuff just in time for 3 days of rain. I still need to finish raking up the lawn so I can apply the stuff and I also need to smooth out the spots that got all pushed around by an overzealous snow plow. The crocuses are almost done. The daffodils are blooming and the tulips are on the way. I need to start some seeds for late spring/early summer flowers now. Still in the 40s almost everyday so I think there's time.