Camping trip to the beach

On Friday we came home from a two-night camping trip to the beach near Yokohama. It's the first time we've camped in Kanagawa Prefecture and only the third time next to the ocean (the other two were on the east coast of Hokkaido and on an island on the west coast of Japan). It's the fourth time we've been camping with our friends the Van Druffs.

People have asked us how we find campsites. Our general strategy is to use Google maps, look at an area we're interested in going to and type "camping". Then we seek out the campsites that have websites with sufficient information to make decisions. It generally works a treat.

This time we thought about what might be the warmest place we could go: we thought next to the sea might be more temperate than the mountains at this time of year. And then we looked for a sheltered campsite, knowing that it can be very windy at this time of year.

Well, we're very glad we thought about that last aspect because when we arrived on Wednesday the wind was strong, something like 35-40km/hr. The campsite, however, was sheltered from the ocean breezes by a hill and lots of trees. It was quite calm, although our friends' tent was partially collapsed by the wind in the early hours of our first night. Our tent and "annex" was fine, for which we're very grateful. 

This was the free-camping site. Fun trees and lovely pine-needle covered ground for pitching tents on. Definitely the most tree-ed campsite we've ever camped on.
Great for hammocks!

Tent with annex and the usual array of camping chairs, tables, and boxes containing food plus kitchen and other gear.

Our new second-hand tent.

It was our first time camping in this new tent. It was considerably smaller than our previous tent. Our previous tent died after six years (we'd used it on nearly 30 separate occasions), so last year we bought a new one. We didn't want to buy another 10-man tent because we're already down to two boys at home, but it's also warmer and appears quite sturdy.

It was a pretty simple camp. We left on Wednesday morning, bought lunch at a convenience store on our way there. The campsite was only 52 km from our house, but took nearly two hours to get there (heading south from our house involves going past millions of people).

Most of the afternoon was spent in setting up camp and then getting dinner underway. We finished eating pretty early and our whole family was in bed by around 8.30! Unbelievable. Certainly a great way to relax.

Strolling with some of our nine-person crew. 

Lots of concrete to protect the shoreline.

The river mouth. We believe on a good day you can see Mt Fuji from here.

The sole cherry blossom tree near the campsite!

A curious pigeon.

We had a lot of fun with the hammocks.

We tried to see the sunset on Thursday, but this was as good as it got!

On Thursday we were very slow in getting moving and breakfast morphed into brunch. Our camping companions were tired, having had a broken night with their tent issues and the rest of us were happy to sleep in. After we'd finished the meal and cleaning up, we went for a stroll westwards along the coast. Thankfully sometime before we got up the wind had died down. The temperate was in the high teens and quite comfortable. 

The campsite is on a river mouth and sandwiched between a small park, the beach, and—believe it or not—a sewerage treatment plant! No, it wasn't smelly! But the area wasn't particularly pretty either. (We're Australian, beach-snobs, any beach that isn't as pure-looking as our beaches doesn't rate highly.) However, the kids spent much time playing with the sand and rocks. It was too cold to tempt anyone to get into the water, but we spent a lot of time looking at it.

After lunch everyone gravitated to a hammock or chair or bed and a natural siesta happened. After that David and I went for a stroll the other way along the coast—down to where a number of surfers in full wetsuits were waiting for waves. There weren't many waves, so there seemed to be a lot of waiting!

This is the "beach" adjacent to the campsite. The boys enjoyed playing around in this protected area.

The small fireplace where we cooked (we had two of these).

Walking east, away from the river mouth we found this surfing beach. A bit further along is a famous swimming beach and 10 km away is a touristy island called Enoshima.
This area is known for its connections with Hawaii and is even billed as
Japan's birthplace of surfing.

Dinner on Thursday involved a lot of fire and intensive work by a number of people cooking over 2 kg of meat on two small fireplaces, with root veggies in foil packets, followed by my favourite camp dessert: Choco marshmallow banana boats. The one drawback of this campsite was that we couldn't cook with our own gear near our tents. We had to book camp kitchens. They weren't far from our campsite, maybe 50m, but still it was annoying and didn't encourage lingering over the fire after dinner.

The "cooking area". We booked two of these, which included a table, benches,
and small fireplace each.

The two tents with the "annex" or common area in the middle.

Entertainment on Thursday night was provided by a team of about 16 small boys, staying overnight with their soccer coach. There were only three showers for us all, and they were unisex, opening onto the walkway between our tents and the cooking area. So we had to walk past repeatedly while the coaches tried to get all these boys showered—two at a time! It was entertaining ;-).

The next morning we had to be up early, as we were supposed to be out of there by 10am, and we actually managed to do that and got back home by early afternoon.

These are all the places we've camped in Japan: 26 separate
campsite, representing 32 times we've put up a tent!

Overall it was a great camping trip. Only the third in 18 months (we only managed to camp once in 2018). After only two nights away we came back feeling relaxed. It was good to go with friends too, as that helped us all to be on "good behaviour" and also, we all had people to hang out with who weren't family (especially helpful for the kids).

Cute Tokyo apple pie cafe

We moved to Tokyo fourteen years ago with three little boys . . . anyone who's ever had multiple little boys knows that little cafes aren't great places (nor were the trains to get there). Then they got bigger and discovered a liking for cafes, but by then they ate too much and it was something that was an occasional special treat. 

Tokyo is a crowded city in a land fond of cute everything. There are thousands of tiny places to eat and hang out in this city, but we've not visited many of them as a family. Somehow it isn't so kind to other customers to drag our "large" family into a little cafe. Over the years I've been to some with friends, but often I look with longing at little places I walk past when I'm traversing the city and wonder what they'd be like to try.

So last night, when I walked past an eatery I've seen a few times in recent weeks—Granny Smith Apple Pie and Coffee—I decided to indulge. I had about 20 minutes spare as I waited for an appointment and, why not, Granny Smith apples are an Australian export after all!

Granny Smith Apple Pie and Coffee is a homey little shop, you feel almost like you're in someone's country kitchen. 

Turns out there are several of them in Tokyo and one in Yokohama too. This year is the first time I've ever seen one. Their apple pies are divine, if a little pricey! I'm tempted now to make another one of my own...

Why not go seasonal: sakura apple pie, with vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce. Yum!

Spring in my garden

I got an article through my Facebook feed today saying that the cherry blossom season has been declared open today, one day earlier than predicted. I haven't been out and about today, but I can say spring is happening in my own scrappy little garden.

Here's proof.

Can anyone tell me what this is? I presume it's a bulb, it's come up of its own accord.

Our hydrangea is getting all "leafed up".

And my wonderful, hardy geraniums. This one is outside and there's one upstairs on our only sunny windowsill.

We've got birds moving into our birdhouse and the Dogwood tree that it's hanging on is getting ready to sprout leaves too. I'm no gardener, but I'm happy to appreciate God's handiwork and the work of others more talented. 

This is our little garden, it's scrappy, but we love it all the same.

Can you serve overseas when your family isn't 100% healthy?

Last year an article arrived in my inbox about thriving overseas when your child has special needs. We know missionaries with kids with special needs and, without invading my own family's privacy, there's been times that we've also had to access the care of professionals. 

I took this photo on our last camping trip in Japan: October 2017. It's
been too long! But we're going camping again next week for a couple
of nights. Stay tuned all you virtual campers :-)

The article above is about a family whose son was diagnosed with diabetes and has managed, nonetheless, to transition to life in Russia. That was a bit close to home when we saw a child in our boys' school here diagnosed with diabetes just last month.

The instant assumption you can make is that you need to be 100% healthy and have 0% special needs to serve overseas, but that is quite untrue. Of course it does depend on where you are working and what support you have around you. When we first came to Japan we met a couple who were going to Cambodia. The situation at the time was pretty much evacuation if you had anything barring a simple cold. Medical treatment was not available in-country. That's a completely different scenario to Japan and many other countries where missionaries serve.

We're thankful to be in the capital city of a country that has good medical care and to be a part of a large mission that provides a lot of support. Just in the last few weeks, two members of our family have had phone conversations with our in-country medical advisor and I emailed him this morning about a third matter. The two of these matters weren't large ones, but the third is going to have an impact on our lives in the years to come.

We're also thankful that our boys can be educated at a supportive Christian international school. I can't say enough about the way we've been supported through various struggles our boys have experienced.

Whether or not you can serve overseas does also depend on the nature of your ill health or special needs. For example, intellectual disability is something that is much more difficult to accommodate, though we have a couple of expat friends who have experienced good things with Japanese special education.

We've seen several colleagues and their kids treated for serious illnesses like cancer in Japan, and numerous other diseases and injuries. One of our boys was born here and two boys have been in hospital here for infections. I regularly see a doctor to treat my asthma.

In the above mentioned article, the author lists some important questions to ask, if you are heading overseas with special needs—but also points us to God, reminding us that he provides what we need. Sometimes the way he does that is in our home country, at other times it is in our country of service. 

She also has this advice: give your child and yourself grace. This is what I'm trying to do at the moment, give myself grace to relax a bit. Turns out what happened last Monday (see here) was more a stress reaction than just a headache. I've been keeping a lot of balls in the air and I need to give myself (and my family) grace.

Mabodofu: one of the meals I cook in Japan

It's been ages since I wrote about the sort of food we eat here regularly (2011, before we had any teens, I did two posts—1 and 2—about a whole week of meals). Our meals aren't vastly different from what I'd cook in Australia. Generally, the biggest difference is that we have fewer cuts of meat to choose from and a few limitations on the ingredients that we can find or afford. I don't cook many Japanese dishes, mostly because I find they're often a bit fiddly and I struggle with the ingredient lists (poor excuse, I know). If you want to eat good Japanese food, my feeling is that you should go out and get the experts to do it. However, the upside of making Japanese food at home is that it's often very cheap, because, of course, you're using readily available ingredients that are cheaper.

But here is a meal I cooked recently—mabodofu—that is a fairly new addition to my repertoire. I call it a Japanese dish because it's common here, but it actually is Chinese.

Apparently, there are packet mixes readily available in the shops, but we are not fans of packet mixes, primarily because they are often too salty for us, but also, it's often cheaper and healthier to do it from scratch. And the below recipe is so fast, you might almost be making a packet mix! It took me about 20 minutes.

Someone gave me this recipe when I shared about finding one on my Facebook page a year or so ago:

Mabodofu

4 tablespoons of oil
4 tablespoons of chopped shallots (green onions)—I use much more than this
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon hot bean paste (pictured, for those in Japan looking for it, it's called トウバンジャンtoubanjan）
4 tablespoons low-salt soy sauce
dash sugar, pepper
2 tablespoons of wine or mirin
220g or more of tofu
300g or more of mince (US=ground meat)
1 tablespoon cornstarch, water

1. Heat four tablespoons of oil. 
2. Stir fry shallots, garlic, and hot bean paste until fragrant. 
3. Add meat and stir fry until cooked. 
4. Add soy sauce, sugar, pepper, wine, and tofu then bring to boil. 
5. Reduce heat to low and cook for three minutes.
6. If desired, add cornstarch to thicken. 
7. Remove and sprinkle with more green onions if desired.
8. Eat over rice.

Mine cooked for a little too long when I made it last week, I think. It was a little dry, but tasted just fine (except it was too hot for our tastes, but then I used double the amount of hot bean paste mentioned above). Because tofu is so cheap here, it is a good meal for the budget too!

Some joys and struggles of the last 10 days

I've been busy this last week since I last wrote. Here's what's been going on in my on the edge of ordinary life:

But first a photo. Plum blossoms are just coming out. Next week the
Cherry blossoms are forecast to show themselves in Tokyo. Spring
is taking off and it's wonderful!

Monday 4th I did my usual grocery run and spent some time at the gym too. Aside from that, it was a home office day as I tried to get ahead before the rest of the week.

Tuesday 5th Was another home office day, alas a beautiful warm blue-sky day outside. I got a lot done, but it was heads-down all the way. Late in the day I rode to a new giant home store near us, especially to buy a couple of laundry accessories, but had a look around for a few other needs also. 

At 5pm I had a Skype meeting with a colleague in the UK who was just starting her workday. The meeting ran later than I'd planned and dinner ended up late (and me with a headache). Both boys had track and field training until nearly dinner time on Monday and Tuesday.

Love, love, love these missionary-women retreats!

Wednesday 6th I did some uncharacteristic baking mid-morning (usually I do this on weekends, or, at a pinch, late afternoon). It was in preparation for the Women in Ministry retreat that I left for after lunch, I'd volunteered to take some home-baked goodies for snack times.

After lunch, I met four other ladies at school and I drove us all out to far-western Tokyo for the two-night retreat, about a two-hour drive.

Thursday 7th and Friday 8th Yep, at the retreat. Times of worship, fellowship, eating, resting, and even crafting. On Thursday evening we also go to try out some Scottish highland dancing, a lot like Australian bush dancing.

More blossoms!

I had several retreat highlights:

• great Biblical teaching
• time spent one-on-one with a couple of good listeners telling about the challenges we faced at the end of November, early December last year
• a practical grief workshop
• feeling at home with other missionaries who don't need you to explain much between the lines to "get me"
• Scottish dancing
• worshipping in song and in English
• an enjoyable walk

Of particular note from the Bible teaching was:

• being reminded of the love of God, especially that God dwells in perfect love in the Trinity and his compassion towards us is constant.
• the Father-son relationship between Jesus and the Father is worth exploring in the Bible, it's a strong theme
• ministry is about serving (it's not a badge or a status) and it is just as valid to be called to be a faithful follower of Christ in the midst of the chaos or suffering of life as it is to have a recognised "ministry" role
• 2 Corinthians 4:1 tells us that ministry is a gift of God's mercy—what a remarkable way to view whatever it is that God's calling us to do right now
• there's an ongoing challenge to persevere through hardship and not lose heart 2 Cor. 1:7-12

On Thursday night, I sat for about an hour while the two worship leaders continued to sing after the formal session had finished. I just sat and soaked in the music, sometimes singing, sometimes not. It was a wonderful way to end the day.

Friday 8th Thursday was a rainy, cold day, but Friday was sunny and invited me outside. After lunch we were free to go home, but I asked leave of the six other people riding in my van, to take an hour for a stroll down to the river the retreat centre is located next to. It was a lovely bit of breathing space before diving back into the concrete jungle.

Saturday 9th Didn't end up being the day off that I'd envisioned. I spent the morning doing groceries and at the gym and the afternoon working on urgent office matters. David spent a couple of hours at school supervising a robotics team and then he and our youngest went to an end of wrestling season party.

This was me on the train on Monday morning.
Four people in this photo! Tokyo trains are
wonderful, but are also tiring. I've been on them
at least 1 1/2 hrs each day this week so far.

Sunday 10th This was also busier than I'd hoped. Church in the morning, and, though we're not responsible for anything at the church, Japanese worship still makes me tired. We had lunch with OMF colleagues and also a meeting to plan for a missions prayer meeting we're leading at church this coming Sunday. It was a lovely time together, especially seeing our children, who are very un-alike (they are two lower-elementary girls), interact so well.

Mid-afternoon after we got home we had a short (planned) conversation answering questions from a couple who are applying to come to Japan with OMF. Mostly it was about kids education.

Then we rested.

Monday 11th I jumped on a train not long after 8am to head to our monthly Kanto OMF prayer and fellowship day. I didn't know it, but I wasn't going to return home until nearly lunchtime the next day. Around lunchtime I became unwell. It seems now that I developed a rather nasty headache/stomach migraine. It would have been nice to jump in a car and sleep all the way home, but the idea of spending 90 minutes trains getting home was too much, so I ended up staying the night there, in OMF's guesthome. First time that's ever happened to me: not being able to return home because of illness.

This cuppa helped me get home on Tuesday after
a nasty headache the day before kept me from
travelling the 1 1/2 hrs home on trains.

Tuesday 12th I gingerly returned home and, after a bit of a midday rest, had a great afternoon trying to catch up on computer work that had been neglected for several days.

Wednesday 13th I worked at home in the morning and then met a friend for coffee (about an hour away by train). It was a delightful afternoon, but I have to admit that I'm still struggling under a bit of a headache cloud. Not so bad as Monday, but it's lurking, and sometimes clouding my thinking.

Well, that is already a lot and if I don't publish this soon, you'll just be getting an elaborate version of my daily schedule, which isn't my intention (I started this on Tuesday and now it's Thursday)!

This photo doesn't show well this cute little
building. One room upstairs and one downstairs.
It's a coffee shop. The sort that asks you which
coffee beans you'd like your coffee crafted from!

Ten year anniversary post

I've been blogging now for ten years and one day! Well, I didn't really get to this yesterday! I was probably subconsciously waiting for more people to respond to my plea for input, but it didn't happen. Nevertheless, I press on. 

Here's what a couple of people sent:

Reader 1
"Congratulations on your faithful blogging for 10 years.

I cannot pick one blog out that’s completely memorable  (not a reflection on your writing – more my memory) but I recall being challenged after reading your blog to by what you write:

             a) to pray for you and your family more regularly

             b) be more intentional in my dealings with those around me – in my conversations and my actions.

I've also been encouraged when I read your answers to prayer – (like being able to go back to Japan after this  Home assignment) – God is faithful, He answers prayers in His own way – whether it’s a ‘Yes’, a ‘No’ or a ‘Not yet’

Thank you for your blogs and for keeping ministry real in the humdrum of life. Here’s to the next 10 years!

Reader 2

It has been wonderful following your journey! 

God’s great faithfulness is what shines through all the cultural and distance from home issues that affect you!

So...as I'm not satisfied to celebrate this milestone with just two responses, I guess you get my thoughts after all.

Looking back on ten years

I look back at when I started this blog and I was in a very different spot. I had three boys under 10, and only one at school. I had very little going on outside the home. We were heading back to Australia on home assignment that year and I was quite stressed about it. Our middle son was about to graduate from Japanese kindergarten and I was about to embark on three months of full-time home-schooling our him to prepare him to start in the middle of grade one in Australia.

Since I started this blog we've made six international moves (= three home assignments), had three sons graduate from elementary school, two from middle school, and one from high school. One has moved out of home and started university in Australia. 

I've moved from being a stay at home mum with almost no ministry outside our home, to holding down two demanding part-time jobs. I've moved from being a fledgling writer to one who has been editing a magazine with an audience of over 1,000 for 8 1/2 years now.

Two years and nine days after I started this blog, Japan experienced one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded. We were in Tokyo at the time and experienced one of the craziest times of our lives. Blogging at that time was both a great release and a help to others as they sought news about our safety and wellbeing.

We've said hellos and goodbye to dozens of friends in these last ten years. Some of our colleagues and one of our family members have passed away.

What hasn't changed

One of the reasons I started this blog was that I had a desire to write about life here, but didn't have a venue or an audience. I really wanted to tell others what it was like to live our ordinary lives in a rather non-ordinary job. I gave the blog the title—on the edge of ordinary— because it seemed to encapsulate the life we were called to. That's still true. 

Life has changed, yet remained remarkably the same for us.

We're still serving the Lord in Japan with OMF. We're still living in Tokyo. My husband is still serving at CAJ on the teaching/admin staff and feeling as though that is what the Lord's called him to long-term. My roles have changed more remarkably: from a full-time mum of little ones to a mum who juggles a lot more, including the tricky role of mum-of-teens. But I'm still committed to serving the missionary community here, I've just been given more freedom to do so as my boys have become more independent.

What have I learned by blogging for ten years?
I've learnt how to write quickly. I've learnt a lot about editing quickly too, to get my words into decent shape in a reasonable amount of time. For the first eight or so years of this blog I was writing here almost every day. To do that, and still do everything else in my life, I had to write and edit fast. Much of my writing and idea formation happens in my head before I even sit down. I usually sit down to write a blog post with a formative idea or topic in my head, something that I've found as I've gone about whatever that day has held.

My blog-writing pace has slowed since mid-2017 when I took on greater responsibilities with OMF Japan for their website content, especially in the form of editing a weekly blog post written by OMF Japan missionaries.

I've met new friends and been able to network with people through my blog. Though I often don't know who reads this as usually people don't comment, periodically I've met people through this. I know that people have been helped by it because they've told me.

I have done a lot of processing of my own life here. It helps me to be able to write things down, to think an issue through to a point that I'm able to put it into words. By doing so, I've often found that other people have appreciated my thoughts on whatever it was that the Lord had been putting on my heart.

I have a lot more words in my head that I can possibly load upon my family or friends. Here has been a safe place to put them. 

I also continue to learn the subtle art of writing in such a way that I'm not violating other people's privacy: my own family's or other people who I encounter in my life. I'm happy to say that I don't think those around me are worried that their private thoughts will end up here on my blog.

At this point I think I've run out of things to say, which is always a good point to finish a blog post. I have no plans to stop blogging. I'm not sure if I'll last another ten years. Only God knows what we'll be doing in ten years and where we'll be. But if my writing here continues to help me and to help others—and it fits into whatever else I'm called to do in the future, then it's a pretty good bet that I'll be continuing for a while yet.