Gettin it Back Together!

Welp, ever since school started I've neglected the blog. I've been doing pretty good nutritionally, but I'm having a hard time working in the exercise I need to accomplish my goal. I've decided to put in place a little bit of a challenge. There's a couple elements to the challenge so I'll just explain it from it's most basic one.

I love Japan. Before I met my husband my goal was to study International Relations and Linguistics and work for the State Department pushing papers in Embassy's all over the world. Right off the bat I wanted to go to Japan and teach English to junior high and high school students. As I married a true American who could never live outside the US unless it was a private island in the Caribbean, I kind of gave up on that dream when I walked down the aisle. So since I'm missing out on that part of my dreams to live a different part I've decided to implement certain aspects of Japanese culture and lifestyle into my own life, namely diet and daily exercise.

A recent export from Japan is the "bento"; good, healthy, balanced homemade lunches made every morning that are not only good for you but pretty. I ordered bento boxes from a company in Japan as well as other little accessories like reusable food cups, and there is currently a bento cookbook sitting on my front porch from Amazon.com and the blogger at justbento.com. I plan to start homemaking mine and G's lunches everyday and using our really cool bento boxes :)

The second import into my life is using almost exclusively fresh ingredients. Japanese refrigerators are nowhere near as large as ones in the US because they do not stockpile like we do. So rather than fill our fridge to bursting with groceries I'm only going to purchase what I need in fresh ingredients to last 2-3 days. This will have me going to the grocery store more often meaning I'll be using fresher ingredients and getting the added benefits of activity.

The third Japanese import into my life is daily exercise in the form of walking. Rather than jockey for the closest parking spot to the door I'm actively parking as far as I can safely park and walking the added difference when I go to the college or to the grocery store, as well as everywhere else I go. We live too far out of town to actually walk from our home to these places, but it's a step, well several more steps at least.

The fourth and probably not final Japanese import into my life will be work ethic. Studying for a stereotypical Japanese student is on the same level as eating, sleeping, and breathing. So I'm gonna get a move on my study skills.

I'm sure my cousin Sara, who is currently doing the JET program could correct me on a couple of these but since Japan is one of the smartest and thinest countries in the world they gotta be doing something right!