I know I've been in Japan too long...

It's been almost a year since Martin and I first set foot in Japan and I began to think about how our life has changed and how differently we do things in contrast to this time last year. Here's a few to begin with...

1. I never wear shoes in my apartment or my friends' apartments.
2. When I go to friends' apartments I select my shoes on how easily I can get them on and off.
3. I own a pair of toilet slippers.
4. I prefer to eat noodles with chopsticks.
5. We own chopsticks and actually use them...occasionally.
6. In everyday conversation to English speaking friends I occasionally drop in Japanese vocabulary.
7. When I encourage Martin on the treadmill at the gym, I raise my fist and say "Gambatte Kudasai" with great fervour.
8. I have eaten raw fish, rice and tofu porridge for BREAKFAST and it didn't kill me.
9. I have eaten the poisonous Puffer fish and it didn't kill me either.
10. I buy ridiculously overpriced, individually wrapped carrots, onions and potatoes.
11. I quibble over buying a three sliced loaf of bread or a five sliced loaf of bread.
12. More worrying is that recently I have been thinking that a loaf with eight slices is way too big.
13. I wait patiently for the taxi cab door to swing open and close automatically. Much to the taxi drivers distress in the early days I would always try to open and close them myself.
14. I never, ever cross on the red man and always wait for the green man.
15. I get annoyed with foreign tourists who cross on the red man and eat in public.
16. I smile at every foreigner I see on the street.
17. I assume that every other foreigner I meet can speak English.
18. I ride my little green bicycle everywhere.
19. I even wear short skirts, tight dresses and high heels when I ride my little green bicycle and I do not look out of place.
19b. Unfortunately, I have not yet managed the art of holding an umbrella, texting a mobile message, hanging large shopping bags from the handlebars, carrying a passenger on the back wheel and wearing high heels all at once while riding my bike!
20. When I am thirsty I like iced green tea.
21. I pay an extortionate amount of money to sleep on a straw floor and rest my head on a rice pillow at a Ryokan but I love it.
22. I love onsens even more and don't mind being naked with lots of other Japanese people.
23. At 5'4" I feel tall. (That's the best!)