Another unexpectedly unusual week

It's Friday and I have to say that this has been an odd week. Looking ahead to June last week, I didn't clock this week as being especially unusual, but it has ended up that way. Here's a few bits and pieces:

Music practice

As I mentioned last week, I'm playing the piano for worship at church this Sunday and also at conference next Friday. Hence, practise was needed. On Tuesday I took three trains across Tokyo to meet with others from our mission to practice for an hour...and then took three back again. Three hours of travel! Because it is such a distance, I usually try to combine such a journey with at least one other thing. This time I managed to snag a friend/colleague for lunch. Precious quiet moments in a tiny Tokyo cafe.

Piano: I've been playing since I was 
four...it's like another "first language".

I also spent an hour and a half practising at school yesterday (the easiest piano for me to access). David found a practise room and I had a great time. It took me back many years to my childhood and teenage years when I spent at least an hour a day practising and three hours a week at my teacher's studio, many times playing the piano in one of her two practice rooms. As I've eased back into playing these last few weeks, I've realised that playing the piano (and reading music) is like a first language to me. I still find it very easy to sight read (i.e. play from written notes without first hearing a piece)...much easier than trying to play chords (what guitarists use). And to extend the metaphor...much easier than trying to operate in Japanese.

Being stretched

This week I've had few stretching experiences.

On Wednesday I took seven trains (after six the day before). My day only contained two main things: I took three trains to met a colleague from one of my teams for a catch-up about work and how he's doing. Then I caught another three trains to meet another colleague who is moving back to Australia. She's newer in Japan and needed a hand with driving a larger vehicle to shift some of her furniture to another new family who live about 45 minutes away. My job was driving! Usually it's David who does things like this, but he wasn't available when they were, so I volunteered. The vehicle was a HiAce, a little bigger than our 8-seater vans that we've owned most of our years in Tokyo. But I managed. Between us we also managed to hire it from a Japanese company. This is no small thing when you struggle with Japanese . . . it wasn't pretty, but we did it. And I didn't damage the vehicle in any way, so that was a relief! 

The van we hired to do the moving. 

When we were done, I took one more train to get home. In contrast to the day before I never left western Tokyo, just took a big train circuit, and never more than about 15 km from our house.

Then yesterday I had my annual Japanese medical. It's pretty much funded by the government. It was not very comprehensive, but they did a urine and took some blood and asked me if I had any concerns. The doctor, nurse, and I danced around in two languages, but, I think managed the basics. I really struggle with starving blood test. Breakfast is mandatory for me to have decent brain function and going without my mid-morning coffee is a double blow to my capacity. Then, having to speak Japanese on top of that . . . it's definitely not pretty. I haven't yet managed to explain to a medical professional how difficult I find it to function in my (very second) language without breakfast or coffee.

My big mistake, yesterday, however, was trying to be efficient. I also needed more asthma meds, so I thought combining that with my medical would be a smart move . . . and it was, until I got to the pharmacy next to the doctor. What I should have done was go and have my coffee and then come back, but I didn't. The pharmacy didn't have enough in stock to fill my prescription. This has happened every time I've been recently, so I shouldn't have been surprised. But this time it seems there were greater difficulties that I don't understand . . . the lady appointed to deal with me spoke loud and fast, but didn't seem to have all the information that she needed. Our interactions (entirely in Japanese) were punctuated with something like "chotto matte kudasai" (please excuse me) followed by her rushing back to talk to someone else (the pharmacist?). 

This back and forth went on for some time. 

I was sitting like a blob on the waiting seats, with a pretty massive headache and brain fog so thick that thinking was hard. 

Eventually she agreed that they could sell me two then and they would mail me the rest of the script later. I had to throw more complications into the conversation as I explained that I was going to be in Sapporo from Monday for five days, then back here for four days, then in Australia (I didn't mention Singapore) from the week after for five weeks!

I think we sorted it out, but now I look back, I'm not sure why it was so hard. Brain fog and headache contributed, for sure, but I'm hoping that it wasn't contagious and that she didn't also have compromised brain function!

The "medical" actually only took around 30 minutes, but the end result was that I pretty much was incapacitated for the whole morning. It was only after lunch that I started to be able to do anything much of value. And then I had a piano practice and staff family dinner at school . . . so yesterday I didn't feel like I got much of value done!

End of year feel

At both school (where David works) and OMF JHQ (our mission's national base) I found an "end of year" vibe. Certainly at school, where the school year ended this week, that was the case. I wasn't ready for it at JHQ. It's not the end of the year there, but with our national conference next week, there is a lot of "get this done before conference". And there are cross-overs between the two organisations. One key leader in OMF Japan has kids at the school, so they are heading off straight after conference on a short home assignment, and so she's been handing over jobs to people to take care of during the months she'll be away. Also so there was an edge of tired frantic-ness (overwrought?) there that I wasn't expecting.

Additionally, in both places there are people leaving after serving in each place for a long time. So there's an edge of sadness to it all as well.

Ah, I'd better stop writing here and get back to the things I need to get done "before conference".

June's a big month

June, how can it already be June? My calendar says it's a so, so it must be so!

My calendar also has a lot written on it this month. It's a month that will contain a five-day OMF Japan conference in Hokkaido, a trip to Singapore for work, a couple of days holiday in Singapore, and flying to Australia for a five-week stay.

The day before we head off to conference I'm playing the piano for church. It's been a long time since I did that! David's also leading the service, which is something he's not done for a long time either. It's a great joy to be able to serve our new church in these tangible ways.

Conference starts on the 16th, and there are many preparations going on. The schedule is pretty much 8 am to 9 pm! We've done many of these over the years and they are really good times, but very exhausting at the same time (though not as bad now as when our kids were little). More than 250 adults and kids will meet together at the pictured hotel for the week.

We've been to this venue on
the outskirts of Sapporo multiple
times. It's beautiful. Our boys 
especially loved the all-you-can-eat
buffet for breakfast and dinner
as well as the water park in the 
basement!

My own small parts are:

• I'm part of a worship team as the pianist for one session, which has required creativity to get the music as well as practise (I no longer have a piano at home and live a long way from others on the team). 
• I'm leading a voluntary session that is themed writing. It's unclear what this will look like and completely unknown if anyone will even come to it...and it's on the last evening, by which time I'll probably be staggering around under the influence of too much coffee, just to stay upright! So, some preparation has been necessary (yep, I stopped writing this blog post and actually did some prep!).
• I think the only other thing I'm responsible for requires almost no preparation, but will require concentration. I'm the designated "conference recorder". Which basically means recording the important stuff that happens through the week and providing a report at the end. I've been given a copy of the report from 2023, and it's actually pretty intimidating. I don't think I'll be able to make my report as pretty!

On June 20, after conference, we head back home for the weekend before David heads to Thailand. I get to stay at home for a couple of extra days before I fly to Singapore. I'm planning on meeting others in our organisation who do similar work to me in social media and we're going to "job alike", which is a new term I learnt last year that is mostly used in education circles. It's when people who do similar jobs in different places/organisations get together and talk about common stuff in our jobs. It's the first time I've done this as an in-person thing in another country. I've talked to various people over video calls, but usually just an hour or so, but this will be larger than that and I'm interested to see how it goes. Our organisation is large and spread over multiple countries around the world. It's not easy to get together with others who do similar things. Social media is a newish kind of ministry and there aren't so many of us around.

After that David will meet me in Singapore where we'll rest for a couple of days and catch up with some Singaporean colleagues from Japan who happen to be "at home" at the moment. And then we'll head to Australia on the last day of the month.

When we left Australia last July we told our boys we're planning to come back this year to see them. As it turned out, we saw all of them in January at our son's wedding, but we still wanted to catch up with them and other loved ones, so we've pushed ahead with this plan.

Our five weeks in south-east Queensland will be a combo holiday/work remotely situation. It's much like July would usually look for us in Japan—with David on summer holidays from work and me still working from home, but scaling things back a little (getting some mid-week sleep-ins for example).

We'll fly back to Japan in early August in time for a couple of annual medical checks for David before he starts back at school.

Phew, I'm tired just writing all that (about June, especially).