Mini cars

Slightly random topic here. No, I'm not especially interested in cars, but have enjoyed learning more in recent months about this (possibly) unique aspect of Japanese culture. Up till this year we've owned larger cars in Japan, in fact we'd driven eight-seater vans here since 2010! If you could see the size of many roads here in Tokyo you would think that that is an act of bravery!

But now it's just the two of us we've not just downsized our living space, we've downsized our car. We now own a four-seater car of the type that is called a "Kei car". It's the smallest category of expressway-legal motor vehicles in Japan. Literally "light automobile", it's a category of car created by Japan in 1949 to stimulate (according to Wikipedia) car ownership and the growth of Japan's car industry. The government specifies the maximum dimensions of the vehicles (3.4 m long x 1.48 m wide x 2 m tall) and the the size of the engine (less than 660 cc). The engine size number doesn't mean that much to me but a little research tells me that 660 CCs is the same as a mid-weight motorcycle and around 44% of cars in Australia are 1400 to 2000 CCs. Just a little more powerful!

However, as you might have read back here, we loaded our little blue car up for a camping trip in October and not just drove on 120 km/h expressway, but also up mountains, and the engine size didn't seem to be a problem!

What's intriguing is that the manufacturers took those dimensions and built cars to suit: making cars that just fit inside the maximums.

Driving around in Japan you see a lot of Kei cars. They are easy to spot: they have yellow or black number plates. In 2018 seven of the top 10 selling models were Kei Cars. Our car, the Honda N-box, has been the top selling mini for nine consecutive years, many times in those nine years it's also been the top car overall.

Other benefits from owning a Kei car, aside from fitting better through narrow spaces and making parking a breeze, are the financial incentives. It's cheaper to register them, to get the two-yearly roadworthy certificate, and even cheaper on road tolls. It was much faster to get our parking permit from the police too (required whenever you buy a car in Japan—they confirm that you actually have a place to park it regularly).

Many Japanese people who live in the city don't use their car for regular commutes to work or to take their kids to school. This (small) 2000 survey said around 60% of students and workers use public transport for their daily commute. Among the students surveyed (I presume university-aged students) 18% ride their bikes and 7% walk. Elementary-aged school children in Japan almost all walk to school.

It's a very different scenario to Australia, where the top 10 cars are mostly SUVs of varying sizes and where more than 50% of people drive to work and more than 50% of kids get driven to school. From experience very few people use bikes to do daily stuff like commuting or shopping.

I'm still learning about this country I live in. It's good to stay curious!

Letting go makes room for new opportunities

I was chatting to a colleague the other day on a Zoom call. He noticed the piles of boxes behind me and asked about them, a little concerned that we still hadn't finished unpacking. I assured him that that wasn't the case and that these boxes were destined for the school's secondhand sale that was happening the next week. He knew about our quest to sell our oven, washing machine, and fridge, and commented that there was a significant theme in our lives recently: letting go.

It's true. We've had to let a lot of things go. In the last 18 months we've literally downsized from a three-bedroom house equipped for a five-person household, to an apartment equipped for two people. We've also moved countries twice in the last 16 months. Our move out of Australia included letting go of a number of things, as we also downsized there. When our two younger sons moved out in February we gave them a number of things that would be useful to them, but no longer useful to us. When we packed up in July this year we had to put away things that we enjoy, but can't take to Japan, and now might not see for a decade or more. Most of that stuff hasn't been hard to let go of. I think the hardest was the oven. Much of the rest of it was old and well-used, or had passed its "useful to us" date.

We had to say goodbye to two houses. One of which we'd lived in for 13 years and contained many memories—though we were happy to leave it in many ways as it was hard to heat and cool, and broken in various ways. The other one we only lived in for 12 months, but we were very fond of (we especially loved the deck).

Saying goodbye to stuff, though, has an upside: you get to say yes to other things. Like less stuff to look after. We're now able to live in a small apartment that requires less up-keep and takes a fraction of the time to clean and a fraction of the budget to heat and cool. And we now have a cute car that is easier to manoeuvre in the narrow streets of Japan.

Moving between countries means letting go of relationships too. Not as in ending relationships (at least not the closer friendships), but letting go of the intimacy that you get from attending the same church, living in the same community, or living only a few hours drive away. This has been an ongoing theme of our lives, ever since we first moved to Japan in 2000. This time we also had to let go of hosting our sons in person on Sunday afternoons/evenings.

I'm trying to grow lettuce from seed 
for the first time. I think I might have
sown too many seeds!

Other things we haven't so much "let go", but they've changed nonetheless. We're no longer a parents at school or at any sporting event. I'm no longer cooking or shopping for large appetites. But that's getting to be "old news" now, though my soul is still adjusting to it. Christmas is becoming imminent and we're aware that this will be the first time in 25 years that we've celebrated that day without any of our kids, and only the second time in 50+ years that we've celebrated without any family at all (aside from each other)...but again I mentioned that last time I wrote here.

It has been a season of letting go: it's worth continuing to acknowledge that. But also remember that letting go allows new things to happen, like the adventure we took last week to watch wheelchair rugby. We're embarking on a new adventure on Sundays too: a new church. If I look back at the four months since we arrived back in Japan, I can see evidence of all sorts of small opportunities we've been able to take up that were largely absent during the previous years of busy parenting. Only God knows where this new season post-"letting go" will take us.

A bit of couple fun

Every time we go to Australia for home assignment we have a debrief with a psychologist/counsellor. A few years ago they told us we were obviously good at working together, but probably needed to rediscover fun. Missionaries having fun?!? Yes, we need to!

And it was true that we'd fallen out of the habit of having fun as a couple. When the boys were younger we rarely went on dates. We first moved to Japan when we'd been married just three years, and we had a very busy toddler. In Japan we had no family and it was just too much stress to find a babysitter, so we learned to stay home and enjoy what we could do there, like watching a TV episode from a DVD or play Scrabble. We’ve turned into home-bods, even more than we previously were. As our guys got older David and I have slowly gotten out a little more, but still often found going out too tiring when we were already tired from work and parenting. Much of our fun was as a family: supporting our guys at their sporting events as well as camping and holidaying together.

The last 18 months, and especially the last nine (since our younger two moved out), things have been changing. David and I went to several cricket matches in Australia (our shared love). Obviously (if you've been reading my blog this year) we went away for two months! Living on a budget, though, we rarely ate out in Australia—though it’s easier to do so now that we don’t have to cater to enormous sporty teenage boy appetites.

This is the first time we've ever been to a live
match of any sport between our two countries.
Japan and Australia just don't have many team sports
in common. One day we might find a Rugby Sevens
match to go to!

Last night we did something that felt like "playing hooky". We went to an international sports event: Australia played Japan in wheelchair rugby, a sport we’ve come to appreciate via the Paralympics. We actually had tickets to go to a session of this sport for the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021…but Covid…'

It was a lot of fun. I just wish I could have cheered louder…there didn’t seem to be many true Aussie fans around (they handed out Australian flags to Japanese people at the door, in a valiant attempt to support the guests).

Time out for a quick team meeting with the players on the court.

It's called the Shibuya Cup and the teams are playing four matches. Last night was the first. They gave us a booklet that showed the teams, and explained the game and the rules.
If you'd like to take a look at some of the action, it's here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JWRF/streams

Japanese publications are so cute!

 

We also were given these free cartons of coffee milk as we entered!

This little trip yesterday was fairly spontaneous, I only heard about this free event last Monday because I follow the Australian Paralympic Facebook page. I wonder what our next adventure will look like? David's got Christmas holidays coming up...and we have no family to hang out with this year, for only the second time in our lives. We'll see what turns up and what fun we can find.

 

It's still messy, but I think I am growing

I took time out of the house yesterday, mostly with the intention of making more progress in reading the book Awe and intentionally following up on thinking about some of things I wrote about in this blog post in September "It's messier than I like to admit". In that post I wrote that I was planning a followup...I've not managed that till now (and I'm just pondering where the last seven weeks have gone!).

Autumn colours in the park

I've been trying to come to terms with a less busy life. A life without boys at home is less busy. Both the ministry roles I've returned to this year are less intense now. A lot of what I've done in the past has been spread out amongst others, which is a good thing, but leaves me with wondering how to best use my time. But I'm also aware that, though I am not "old" yet, I am "less young" than I was 25 years ago when I started having the responsibility of children, and the reality of that is that I have less energy and take longer to recover.

So yesterday I rode to my favourite large park, but was very distracted by how chilly it was (around 18C). I'd neglected to put on appropriately warm clothing as the day before had been quite warm (25C inside). The weather and the seasons are messing with me! Last Friday I had a conversation with some American friends and it became clear how messed up I was. 

This calendar year started with a Queensland summer. We accelerated our descent into winter by heading south in mid-March and our month (April) in Tasmania in an unheated motorhome was quite chilly. Then we drove back north to a more moderate Queensland winter! In July we accelerated into summer by flying north, going from around 2 degrees Celsius to 30 C in just one day. The next two months were full-on summer and since mid September we've gradually been descending into winter again. 

Add to that that we're just still figuring out how to weather the seasons in our new apartment, which has both more sunlight and more insulation than our previous abode. So we often have difficulty accurately judging how outside will feel before we get there. This is made worse by the structure of a Japanese home: in that, to properly go outside, you have to put shoes on, at which point the inside of the house (and clothing) is no longer accessible to you...unless you take your shoes off (or take other measures, that you might have seen illustrated in OMF Japan's social media post a few weeks back, if not, then I recommend checking it out here). 

But I digress. The problem with my conversation was that if I started using seasons to anchor my story, I was instantly in trouble. For example, "We came back [to Tokyo] in the summer, but will be heading back [to Australia] to a summer wedding in January." followed by "We're also planning to go back to Australia next summer (but it will be winter there)." Americans tend to call the middle of the year "the summer" as an overall term for "long school holidays", whereas Australias call our long summer holiday period "Christmas" or "Chrissy holidays" or "Christmas and New Year" or "End of the year." And so it's all a confused mess. So, in the conversation, I started using calendar anchors, rather than seasons!

Anyway, back to trying to read my book in the park: I spent ages trying to make up my mind about what I'd do about feeling too cold. I ended up eating lunch and riding to a coffee shop in a familiar shopping centre on my way back home. It wasn't ideal as it was much noisier than the park, but at least it wasn't home where there are so many other distractions.

I tend to process things better when I write (or talk), but I didn't take my computer or any people with me. Only the book, my phone, and a pencil and notebook. So I'm going to do some processing here.

The book is full of thought provoking stuff. It's key point is that human beings are hardwired for "awe". The problem is we were created to be in awe of God, but because of sin find it impossible, and the awe of God is very quickly replaced by awe of self. He's saying that "awe lies at the bottom of a whole range of human struggles". Nothing else satisfies our awe-wired existence, and thus we end up angry, lonely, disappointed, addicted, bitter, etc. We are self-centred, feel entitled, or experience relational dysfunction, seek to control people, live in fear or envy or drivenness or exhaustion. Tripp traces all these things back to our "awe problem".

In relation to the purpose of my ministry now that life is running at a slower pace, I was struck (in September) by: "Ministry is meant to be something bigger than completing a list of tasks" (p. 49. Ouch. He continues, "You have been called to the high position of making the invisible glory of God visible to people who quickly lose sight of God's glory and begin to look for glories elsewhere (Psalm 145:4).

In many ways he's writing to himself, but also to us all. All Christians are "in ministry" whether paid or not. We are all called to point others to God's glory. If we were all doing this for each other, we would be a more effective community.

It's easy to get very discouraged by all of this, because Tripp goes to great lengths to tell us that we can't help ourselves. On our own we can't fix this. However, God can.

Only when the awe of God rules your heart will you have joy even when people disappoint you and life gets hard. Awe means your heart will be filled more with a sense of blessing than with a sense of want. . . remember that he [God] is so rich in grace that he will never turn a deaf ear to your cries (p 105-106).

We all question God's character, and, despite the theology that we say we believe, we struggle to live that way "at street level". We wonder if God is good, if he is in control, does he have the power to help us, does he even care? Yep, I have these thoughts too (witness it in this blog post from this time last year). Therefore it was reassuring to read this:

God alone will never leave you...he never sends you without going with you. He is your protector, guide, defender, teacher, savior, and healer. He never mocks your weakness but gives you strength...His care is so awesome and so complete that nothing in your life's experience in any way compares." p 105

None of this is new to me. But I keep forgetting, so it is good to be reading a book that reminds me (and of course the Bible is riddled with such reassurances). Not remembering these things leads to discontent and complaints. And it's so easy for complaints to slip into our thoughts and conversation.

You can't do that work of awe reclamation on your own. You desperately need grace—but you and I are called to treasure that work and to pursue and participate in it any way we can. And we are called to humbly admit our need and again and again run to the grace that stands as our only hope of personal growth and change. (p. 129)

So I guess yesterday was partly about me running back to my saviour and admitting my need for his help. Help to grow, to know how to walk with him in this new season, and to fix eyes on him so that my awe is directed towards him again, instead of my own "kingdom of one".

God sent me to Japan again in July. He came with me and he has a purpose for me here in this new season, with all my weaknesses and foibles. I need to trust him . . . still and again! Possibly I'll look back at some time in the future and know what that purpose is (though I suspect it won't be one simple thing). Right now my job is to do my best each day, with God's grace, to point others towards his glory, however that looks in my life and with the strengths and skills that he gave me.

I hope this makes sense to you. I am not sure I can make it any better at this time! I am planning to finish the last three chapters of the book before the end of the year. Maybe I'll write again after I read those, maybe I won't. Perhaps you'll see the outworking of God in my life and writing without me consciously trying to pry it out of my head?

A very encouraging week

Last week was very full. I was looking forward to it, as well as wondering how I would fare. I'm thankful to be past it, but also see that I managed to make it through without falling in a heap, which is really encouraging.

On Monday we had our monthly regional gathering for our mission. Around 50 people joined together to sing, pray, fellowship, and eat together. We heard, and prayed thoroughly, about some business matters. 

After a short break mid afternoon, five of us (plus a facilitator) jumped into our social media team retreat in the same location. We had a formal time of getting to know you, and then went out to dinner together. I was pretty "whacked". I struggled with a headache all afternoon and by dinner time it was making me feel woozy, but I managed to do all that I needed to do. I did head to bed at 8.30, though.

The next day we gathered after breakfast and spent the whole day thinking about things like decision making, team characteristics, some big picture questions about what we do and how we do it, and spent time growing in creativity. It was a big day that we followed with dinner out together, and an evening of creativity.

I knew this team was much younger than me, but it was confronting to spend significant time together and feel very middle-aged (the next youngest person is 13 years younger than me and three of our team are in their 20s or early 30s)! However it was a really good time. We are a remote team and most of us don't know one another well. I've learned over the 14 years I've worked in remote teams that trust is a huge component. If you don't trust one another, it makes your job far more difficult. This was a great time for building trust.

It's also a team that has undergone much change recently, and there is more change and uncertainty in the upcoming months. This level of team change is very challenging. I'm so thankful we had an experienced "team builder" help us as I'm certain I wouldn't have had the knowledge to do what he did, and certainly having someone outside the team to run it was a good move too. This retreat is something we've been talking about doing for a few years now, but the pandemic put a stop to a lot of that kind of initiative (and how often have I heard "but the pandemic..." uttered recently when people are reflecting on the last five years!?).

I got home from the retreat on Wednesday, in time for my usual mid-afternoon coffee. I unpacked, did a couple of "time sensitive" work things, and then collapsed on the lounge for the rest of the evening.

Thursday was a day I had carefully kept clear of other responsibilities. I didn't have high hopes for my capacity for work that day, but surprised myself and others by ticking off (US Eng: checking off) quite a number of editing jobs.

Our table

Friday was entirely taken up by an event we've been anticipating for over 12 months. Last year as we finalised our packing and moving, we realised we had a number of things that others could find useful. So we didn't throw them all out, we kept a few boxes of stuff and stored them, planning to try to sell them at Friday's school bazaar. At the bazaar we rented a table and filled it with stuff we were trying to get rid of. Between 10am and 4pm we sold quite a few things! We also sold all 200 pieces of fudge that I'd made. But it was also a great ruse for having our own "quiet" spot in the school gym where we could sit and greet friends who wandered past. I had so many conversations with friends, many of whom I've known for a number of years. It was a great encouragement to my soul.

It was fantastic to see the school community coming to life again "post pandemic" (yep, that word again). In October 2019, for various reasons, CAJ ended its long tradition of "Thrift Shop". That tradition had, twice a year, filled the gym with donated goods and provided us with not only many cheap household goods, toys, clothes, camping gear, and other miscellaneous items, but many hours of volunteering there over the years provided me with community and friends. That October was supposed to be the start of a new tradition, but any forward momentum got interrupted just six months later by a pandemic, and no more school bazaars happened until October 2022. It's taken a while to get back to a sense of wider community at the school, at least from my outsider position as a mum and teacher's spouse. So Friday was wonderful to behold.

These brand new size 28 slides didn't sell, would you like them?

We also are looking for a runner to sell these "spikes" to.
They've been used a couple of times (also a pandemic casualty).

Friends catching up! Such joy.

A little bit against what I thought was wise, social interaction continued through the weekend. On Friday night we watched a movie with our camping friends at their house. On Saturday, David helped rearrange one of our mission's storage places and had lunch with his two co-workers. I had a haircut and finally did some grocery shopping. That evening we met a couple visiting from the US, a couple who have listened to us and helped us through some tough times in the last few years.

On Sunday we visited another new church and to our surprise knew many people there. It was an English-speaking service and our various English-speaking networks in Japan all were represented. We also ran into an OMF colleague and gave her a lift back to ours for coffee before her next appointment. Straight after that we chatted with our sons for over an hour. 

Phew! I am really surprised that I am not more exhausted than I am today (Monday). Perhaps I'm getting back to some kind of new normal level of energy?

Whenever the topic of leaving Japan comes up, I'm reminded of this wide group of people I only know because I've lived my life here. When the time comes to move on, it will be a sad day, though I know that this is a mobile group of people who I will probably gradually say goodbye to as they move on over the coming years anyway. 

But for now I'm just thankful for a full heart from all this wonderful interaction over the last week.

Why did the chicken cross the road? and other linguistic challenges

Why did the chicken cross the road is a classic joke, but we recently found out that it's very much an English-speaking-culture joke. We had dinner last week with two colleagues, one Australian and one German. After dinner we served our Australian guest tea in a mug that had a version of the chicken-road joke. It was a "Far Side" comic. She loved it, but confusion took over as we tried to explain to our German guest the meaning of the joke. She's fluent in English, but didn't understand why that version (or the original) made us smile. (The joke turns out to have quite a history, check it out here.) Humour is so much more about culture than it is about language.

We continued talking about humour and I brought up the example of Mr Bean. I'd thought he was pretty clever with his non-verbal humour that seems to be appreciated across cultures, but our friend tells us that in Germany, Mr Bean is seen as "British humour"!

Most of our colleagues and friends are not Australia, many are not native English speakers either. Sometimes people in Australia notice that our English isn't quite as Australian as it used to be and it's because we've spent nearly 24 years living and working outside of Australia in multicultural environments. It means some of our word choices are different, for example, I tend to say "bathroom" more often than "toilet" these days, simply because it's less likely to cause confusion or offence. I used "rush hour" just this morning and found out that "peak hour" is more often used in Australia. Probably "gas station" comes out more often than "petrol station". I tend not to use colloquial words like "arvo" or "footy" and geographically-tied words like "ute" (pickup truck) and "regional" (yes, this word is used differently in Australia to other parts of the world). Our accent has become more "international" and we probably don't lengthen our vowels as much as many Aussies do.

My work as an editor and writer means that words are on my mind a lot. Almost all I write is for an international audience. Both my jobs are with international teams who speak different kinds of English, or have English as their second, or third language. Linguistic challenges are often on the table for discussion, hence my apparently well-known "Wednesday Words" Facebook statuses. The other day I tried to set up an online meeting with a British colleague and American colleague. Communication went a little bit awry with what I suspect was a hastily written email by our British colleague that confused my American colleague. Each of us had a slightly different understanding of what had been written. No big deal, as far as I know. But it could easily have been.

Working in an environment like this can make you think more carefully about the words you use and how you say them. A good communicator thinks more about their audience than they might have in their own country. For example, if I'm talking to an American, I would tend to say "ketchup" not "tomato sauce" or "candy" not "lolly". If I'm talking to a friend who speaks English as their third language I might choose simpler words and sentences than I would when speaking to my Australian or British colleagues, not because my friend is unintelligent, but as a way of respecting them by speaking in a way they understand.

It might be a surprise to you, but the differences between our English go way beyond spelling, word usage is a big difference, and not simple biscuit vs cookie vs scone. Will I stand at the back of the room, or in back? Is it good or bad news if I hear "you lucked out"? Is the chicken walking in the road or on the road? But I think it's time I hopped on my bike and rode on the road to the grocery store.