back to regular programming soon.

hi.  remember me? i write this blog.  but i’ve been in the states for almost two months, packing, and driving, and unpacking, and living, and packing  again, and eating, eating, eating.  (seriously, what’s with all the eating? i miss my pre-states food portions.) and (let’s be honest) buying, buying, buying.  it’s these things that make me think i don’t like it here.

but i’ve also been talking with a lot of friends, seeing their faces, sitting in their chairs, hearing good stories and drinking good drinks, discussing deep things in my own language and buying tahini at the grocery store, leaving my boys with grandma and grandpa on a whim to go buy the most amazing (decaf) lattes from the mill.  these things remind me why i missed this life so much when we moved.

nevertheless, japan feels more and more like home, although it makes for a strange home when you still feel out-of-place and stared at.  but we miss our house and our routines and our eating habits.  we miss our ofuro and our big tub.  we miss our family baths (gasp!) and singing together in the mornings.  in some ways, we are still adjusting to our life there and trying to figure out how to stay refreshed and how to get our cups filled when everything looks so different. and given that we moved to our current house just four months before our trip to the states, with a few other trips and life changes in between, i still have a lot of settling to do in that home.  about two weeks into our stay here, i started being inspired by what i was seeing in the homes we were visiting, and i wanted to go back and get organized, make that apron, paint that table, give that box of stuff away.

we are ready.  i’m not plane-flight ready yet, but i’m otherwise ready.