My wife and I recently signed up for a monthly Japanese snack subscription box called Bokksu, after reading about its creator’s experience with Japanese snack foods while living abroad. We’re pretty big foodies, and the chance to sample snacks from the other side of the world that would never be available to us any other way was something we couldn’t pass up.

My wife and I recently made the decision to get rid of our mattress and bedframe, and switch to sleeping on Japanese futons (called shikibutons) full-time. If you don’t know what a Japanese futon is, it’s basically a bed made by folding layers of brushed cotton over and over again and covering it with a layer of fabric. They sit right against the ground – no boxspring, bed frame, nothing. It was a decision that took time to come to grips with, and we did a ton of research before getting to that point. So what made us choose to sleep on the floor?