Living the Dream

Anna supervises some of the unpacking activities

Scott was joking that we are living the American dream now (and actually living in America). We now own a home, have two new cars and 2.5 children. The typical American family.

We've also been enjoying some of the "luxuries" of American living again. Now, to be fair, a lot of these things, like the small washer and dryer and dishwasher, wouldn't have been an issue if we lived on base in Okinawa, but we chose to live off base in a Japanese house. It was a great experience, and we would do it all over again, but it really made us appreciate American appliances, among other things. :)

The buttons on our Japanese washer

Doing laundry for the whole household took me no time at all yesterday now that we have our big American washer and dryer again. Our little Japanese washer will fit about half as much as our American one and our dryer will take five hours to dry that amount of clothing (I am not exaggerating). So what used to take 10 hours to dry (two half loads) now takes an hour! It is the best thing ever! We kind of got used to the tedium of constantly doing laundry so getting it done so fast seems like such a luxury. Also our washer in Japan doesn't do warm or hot water so we had to run a hose from the bathroom if we wanted anything washed in warm or hot water. It's so easy to just press a button for that!

Our Japanese dishwasher

Our American dishwasher is another thing we are loving!! After dinner in Okinawa it took us quite a while to get all the dishes washed since our Japanese dishwasher was so small. A dinner plate is the biggest thing you can fit in there and only about four of those will go in at a time. I ran the dishwasher in Japan about four times a day and we still ended up handwashing a ton of things that won't fit in there (big bowls and cutting boards etc). Now I can do one load a day or one every other day and everything gets washed so easily. It seems to take us five minutes to clean up after dinner instead of 30-45. I love it!

Our fridge and freezer are much bigger than our Japanese ones (the new fridge came with the house). We can actually fit a lot of stuff in there! Plus our fridge has an ice maker and ice dispenser (and ice crusher) in the door! I love my ice!! It's my fridge dream come true!!

We have a garbage disposal which I am loving! We've lived in places other than Japan that didn't have garbage disposals, and actually neither of our parents have them at their houses, but having one is very nice!

Our oven in Japan (we bought a small one at the BX since we didn't have one in our house)

We have a big American oven! I wasn't able to make a full batch of anything while we were in Japan. Making muffins took sooo long since I could only bake 6 at a time. 9x13 pans would not fit in the little oven and I couldn't run the oven at the same time as the dishwasher or the circuit would pop, so baking was always an adventure. I'm loving the spacious oven!!

Having a master bath room is nice. And we have a nice tub in there! We had one tub in Japan and it was literally in the farthest spot from our bedroom...downstairs and on the other side of the house. I like to take baths at night sometimes and it's so convenient now! Another little luxury!

Having cable TV. Living off base we only had the seven or so AFN channels, which got old really fast. We couldn't watch hulu or stream netflix off base since we had a foreign IP address, but we managed to download a few shows from other sites on the internet and use a sling box to get some shows on tivo. Tivo was nice but there was a painful delay of about ten seconds for any button press. It's nice to have regular tv again...and no more AFN commercials!!

Our balcony in Japan - our yard equivalent

We've never had a yard - we certainly didn't have one in Japan - and the kids are loving it, even with the cold weather!

Regular American grocery stores. I went grocery shopping yesterday and was able to get every single item on my list! I don't think that's happened to me in three years! It was wonderful. I am really grateful we were able to get American groceries at all in Okinawa, but the old expired food, limitations on what was available, and expensive and limited produce got old in a hurry. It's so nice to have so many options! We are really so lucky to be living in America!

Don't get me wrong, we had a great experience living in Japan, but I am really appreciating a lot of the things about being back in the US!

See a tour of our Japanese house HERE and HERE.