Another crazy week: but I'm thankful

I'm starting to realise that having a few less responsibilities means I'm more flexible! So I'm able to take up short-term opportunities more easily and have the space to recover from them.

This last week I've done a few not-usual things and it's been crazy busy. In fact this is the first time in seven days that I've actually sat at my desk.

David's office where we spent several hours on
Friday sorting wrestlers into weight classes,
recording their names, and setting up the
 initial bouts.

Friday and Saturday were crazy busy, but fun. David and I did the admin side of the school's wrestling tournament. We had 250 wrestlers on campus (a large number for our league). The gym was packed to the rafters. We held a middle school tournament, as well as a full raft of male and female weight brackets for the high schoolers. It's very hard to easily describe what we did because it included so many moving pieces and a lot of copying of names. As bouts happened we had to add those results to the tree diagram (called a bracket) and then create the scoring sheet for the new matches with the relevant wrestlers. We problem solved and answered many questions. One of the most satisfying things personally was solving problems by tracking down wrestlers whose bouts had slipped through the cracks somehow. We've benefited from others doing this for our sons over the last 13 years, so it was great to be able to serve others in this way. I'm thankful it was just those two days, though!

The busyness didn't stop after Saturday...but here are some photos to show you something of the weekend (see more about my week after the photos).

CAJ campus was stunning over the weekend...
but I spent most of my time inside!

No filter here (or in the one above)!

Wrestlers, coaches, and supporters everywhere!
The noise level was very loud...for 12 hours.

I got 20 minutes out of the gym
at lunchtime and I went for a short 
walk around campus. This
ginko tree was stunning.

This was admin central: where we spent about 12 hrs on
Saturday. We had several helpers, including the veteran
coach (Dan Rudd) who did announcements
until he ran out of energy mid afternoon. Coach Rudd
is the one who taught our eldest son in the earliest
days of his wrestling career (and answered so many
of our early questions).

I didn't see much wrestling...we didn't have the 
best seats in the house! Past all the people in
this photo is a CAJ wrestler getting his gold medal, he's
a former long-time teammate of our youngest son.

And the days moved onwards: Sunday morning was our usual time at church with lunch afterwards, then chatting to our sons over an hour or two. 

We had overnight guests on Sunday night, but due to their short stay (34 hrs) in Japan they had limited data on their phones to communicate with us as they travelled from the airport and a lack of on-hand cash meant they had difficulty buying train tickets. We live 1 ½ hrs from the airport, so it isn't an easy drop-in, but they were determined. We waited an hour for them at the train station. Thankfully we could pop into the cafe there for some warmth as the temperature was around 5C. It turned into a late night! The next day I showed them around the school and our neighbourhood and they treated us to lunch. We've had very few supporters visit us in recent years, so it was a delight to have this couple visit.

Another great Japan Harvest issue completed!

On Tuesday I went into the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association (JEMA) office to help pack magazines. A friend from CAJ-parent era met me there and we caught up while stuffing magazines into packets. That was an excellent use of time and I felt refreshed afterwards. I left a little early to get back to school for (you guessed it): more wrestling! Just an hour as a spectator, this time.

Yesterday I had another new thing going on: I'm hosting a short term worker and I met her for coffee and to talk about her involvement with social media, her weekly schedule, etc. I then took her to meet a Japanese friend of mine at the JEMA office, we ate lunch and packed more magazines. Another really good use of time because while doing a manual job like that there is much time for conversation.

It's been a lot. I ended up on my bed before dinner on both Monday and Wednesday. I'm really tired! Today is an office day (and a short grocery run). I'm grateful for the peace here at home and that while I've been gone things have been chugging along in the two teams I work with.

Thankfully it looks like the coming weeks aren't quite so hectic. It's just under three weeks till we travel to Australia for our son's wedding, so hopefully we'll be a bit more rested and able to enjoy that time.

Seasonal confusion

The shadow of me at the beach on Saturday

Over the years I’ve mentioned that I get confused about seasons…

Here’s an example: we’re in the middle of school starting in Australia. Everyone is posting “first/second/third/last-first day of school” photos. I didn’t think it would really be that big a deal for us, who have no one starting school (not even as a teacher), but there’s no avoiding it all around us. 

Of course I also see this on social media when I'm in Japan, but it makes less of an impact when we're there. Driving around at 3pm this week has been different to the preceding six weeks, with all the school speed zones activate again (the rule here is you have to drive 40 km/hr in designated and signed school zones between certain hours, the hours that kids are arriving and leaving school). Shops and TV ads are full of "back to school" stuff.

At our local supermarket...one
 of many signs of the season

But our youngest is starting uni next month and various preparations for that are taking place. So in some ways, we're in "starting the new education year" mode, but not as intensely as when we had kids at school.

All of that has overflowed into my thinking. The other day, I was idly pondering CAJ in Japan (where our kids went to school) and wondering about how the cross-country season was starting up—something that happens at the start of the school year there. Only trouble is that though cross-country season starts at the start of the school year, that is September! Yep, I’m confused. I'm sitting here in summer clothing, seeing many of my northern hemisphere friends in the depths of winter, and watching cricket (a summer sport). And it messes with my brain. 

But to confuse things even more we watched some live wrestling the other day too, a live stream from CAJ where they were holding the Kanto finals tournament. Something that definitely happens in winter, and in January!

This is all a bit like when there’s a public holiday and you’ve got no clear idea what day of the week it is and have to think carefully if you’re pressed for an answer. It's not quite as bad the mind fog between Christmas and New Year, but similar.

So, once again, I look and sound like I belong in Australia, but inside my head it isn't quite the same. The other day I mentioned to a long-term friend that, though we've here six months, I still feel only partly here and still partly there. She wasn't surprised; she thought that after 23 years of this life it was to be expected!

If you encounter me in the wild . . . be gentle :-D

Exciting and scary

I think I'm pleased to report that we booked more plane tickets on Saturday. I have to say that after our journeys last year, I wasn't keen, but I'm also glad that it's done. At least this time there are no passport or visa dramas, and no Covid regulations either! I've also booked accommodation in three different locations (one in Japan and two in Australia) that will help us have places to lay our heads between July 10 and August 2. After that, only God knows!

This transition represents the next stage in our journey: the start of our 5th (!) home assignment. It's also a significant journey as we take our sons back to Australia for good. As I keep saying, we're not bringing them back to Japan next year.

I'm also pleased to say that this week I was able to submit the 4,500-word project I'd been working on since November last year. That felt both very good, but also nerve-racking even though it was something that I'd been commissioned to write. I'm glad to have gotten it to this point and to shove it into someone else's hands for the time being. I think all editors should periodically take a turn at being writers whose work is submitted to editors, I think it would help us all to have a good deal of insight into what writers feel.

Then on Wednesday, I found enough free space in my schedule to ride to the park—my usual haunt—to spend time with the blooming sakura (alongside hundreds of others). Last Friday we sent the latest magazine to the printer, and this week I only had one meeting on my calendar and no out-of-the-office responsibilities during work hours. So, from several years of experience, I knew that this week I'd have a little extra time and that a ride to the park was viable. It was a shock to realise I haven't done that in five months! It was definitely time and yesterday everything lined up: time to spare, beautiful weather, and sakura blooming. Ah, it was a blessed couple of hours. I relaxed enough to even lie down and read a book under one of the pink trees!

This week it's been delightful to have more time to think about home assignment preparation . . . though I need to stop writing now! I've probably already got sufficient "story modules" written for our rounds of speaking. Noting that we're often only given 10 minutes between us to talk about Japan and our ministry over the last 4 ½ years, and we rarely speak to the same audience, it's not too hard. Because I love to write and "stories" are my hobby horse, it's the easier part of HA preparation for me. The hard work of upending our lives and moving will be much worse.

So, now, I think, a story is warranted. Smile! Writing for publication can be a scary thing, but it's also an exciting thing. For the same reason: you never know where your words are going to end up. Editing and publishing are the same. I feel a little like a midwife, sometimes, in the various publishing that I'm involved in. 

A couple of weeks ago at the women's retreat I went to I saw one of my "babies" on a table. I think it was for sale. "Beneath the Surface" is a prayer guide I spent several months working on in 2019 and 2020. I wasn't a writer, but I laboured over the editing! Oh, I did write the initial draft of the "From the editors" at the beginning, but it was heavily worked over in one of the most intense "team editing" sessions I've ever been part of.

I've just done some intense searching, and I can't believe that I never wrote here about this big "baby". It was a huge project (that involved a lot of collaboration across organisations) to undertake on top of the other day-to-day responsibilities I have at work. Probably one reason that I never wrote here about it was that it happened in the middle of the pandemic, at least the end part did. We had planned a post-publication party for the three of us editors who conceived and worked together on the project, but we never ended up being able to do anything. In the end, in November 2020, the only thing that marked this going out into the world was an online launch party for the contributors. 

In any case, I'm still very happy with this amazing booklet and feel a little possessive whenever I see it around somewhere. I'm unsure how many copies have been sold around the world, but it's many thousand. And it's been translated into a few other languages as well. The Japanese version is currently being worked on.

I think the unique thing about the booklet is not only that it is not about the work of any one mission, but also that it delves into some really deep and difficult topics, but makes them accessible to many people because as much as we could we tried to utilise stories. Oh, and you can buy it here.

But that actually wasn't the story I was planning to tell you. I've got another one. I received an email early in March from someone in the UK. He's a Christian student worker (IFES), and specifically, he works with music students. One of the authors in the Winter issue of the magazine that I manage Japan Harvest happened to be in the UK and gave a copy of the magazine to this man. (This issue was themed "Arts in Ministry.") This man in the UK read the whole thing and wrote: 

"I found [it] fascinating—I've known for quite a while that using the arts in mission is something that is done to particularly good effect in Japan, and so it was eye-opening, encouraging, and inspiring to read so many articles documenting the thought and practice of so many missionaries in Japan."

He was particularly taken by one of the articles and wanted to reprint it on this website. https://musicnetwork.uk/.

The website is the "chief online resource for equipping music students here in the UK to live for Christ in the world of music. We are always trying to give them deep theological foundations for their musical practice, as well as actively trying to encourage them to think globally and missionally, and the article certainly did both of those things I feel."

You can check out the article that's now been republished here.

I was so encouraged by this little exchange. The magazine is primarily for people ministering to Japanese people, so to think that this went halfway around the world into the hands of someone working with quite a different audience is pretty cool.

I like my job. It is indeed both scary and exciting. Who knows what God's going to do with my words or the words I help into publication?

I'm also excited because we've got a camping trip planned for next week! So my next blog post might be a camping one!

Spring 2021 camping trip

It's about time that I got to this post, it's been nearly a week since we got back from our camping trip! We went to another prefecture (Ibaraki) we've never been to before, that makes 21 prefectures out of 47 that we've stayed at least one night in over the last 20 years (we've camped in 16, see my post from last year about our big goal).

This campsite was a complete contrast to last time, in that in October we camped in the middle of the mountains north-west of Tokyo. It was like camping in the middle of a complicated origami piece. This time we camped next to a large lake and not far from the ocean. We had a lot of horizon and almost no mountains. It was our first time in Ibaraki and we were surprised at how flat it was, at least the southern bit that we travelled through. We were also surprised at how easy it was to get there. Just over two hours from our house, most of that distance on expressways. Our campsite in October was closer, as the crow flies, but took about the same time due to weaving in-between mountains. We're far more used to camping on mountains in Japan (after all around 80% of Japan is mountains).

The Japanese tradition at this time of year is to have picnics under sakura (cherry blossom trees) when they are blooming. We went one better: we camped for three nights under one!

Campsites in Japan vary with how structured they are. Many have set spaces that you have to fit within, this one was nicely free of that and it felt like we were in a park. It also meant we could spread out. With ten of us camping, we had three tents and our usual tarp for a living area. We had four adults, and five teens and a pre-teen. This stage of camping with friends of our kids is different and really fun!

We've camped beside several lakes in the last ten years, but never as close as this. I could have thrown a tennis ball from my airbed into the lake (and I don't have a long throw).

Weather makes a big difference to any camping trip. We had quite a variety. After rain most of the first night, the next morning looked like this:

This is a clam fisherman. It was intriguing to watch him work, though he didn't seem to get much for his efforts. This lake, Lake Hinuma, is brackish. Our campsite was only 10km from the sea and the lake is somewhat tidal. Apparently it is a special environment where there are plants and wildlife that aren't so common in other parts of Japan, these clams included.

There were a couple of fearless swans that seemed to be very local. While we were cooking dinner on the second night, our friends got some lovely sunset photos with these swans around the other side of the campsite.

What a great looking kitchen! Cooking dinner: traditional yakisoba (stir-fried pork and noodles). Unfortunately one of these slipped and fell into the dirt just before serving, so we didn't get to eat it all and had to make do with filling up on dessert instead (marshmallows and chocolate banana boats).

We might have missed the sunset (the next day was too cloudy), but we did get a nice moon-rise:

Below are some pretty blossoms next to the tents. There was room to play frisbee and other sports, but this campsite lacked a little in the area of "things to do". We made our own fun, with lots of reading, walking, and riding (two campers brought bikes).

Flowering plum:

Spring starflower:

Daffodil:

Camellia tree just coming to the end of its best season.

Breakfast on the last morning was essentially leftovers. But we didn't do badly at all (we and our camping friends) have a long history of feeding teens, so we weren't found lacking.

The campsite had three main negatives:

1. Camping close to water is beautiful, but can backfire. The wind blew strongly off the lake almost all of our second day. It was like a giant air conditioner, but not in a nice way, because it wasn't warm enough for an air conditioner. Many of us got a lot of reading done in our tents this day. I started and finished a long novel on this trip, I think that's a first (for a short trip like this).

The "rubber ducky" onsen. Literally
dozens of rubber duckies decorated
the common areas of this bath.

2. No shower. Showers seem to be a hard thing to find in reasonably priced campsites close to built-up areas in Japan. The compensation was a trip to a local onsen (hot springs) on the second night. The kids loved it so much they begged to go back on the third night. Three of the adults didn't go again (it was an hour round-trip).

3. Though we'd been told it was okay to camp where we did, a local photographer came before sunrise each morning and set up close to one of our tents, waking some of our campers. Not nice.

One good thing about camping with teens is not having to supervise the kids all the time. On the first full day the four adults went for a walk to a local park. Alas the one who suggested the walk (me) didn't checked if the park was open. It's not uncommon to find attractions shut on a Monday in Japan and this park certainly wasn't open. Not the most scenic of walks, but it was good to stretch our legs. This little roadside garden bed was worth capturing, though.

And a teenager, who will not be named, was climbing in this tree on the first afternoon when a rather large branch broken and deposited him on the ground, about six feet below. Thankfully he'd been imitating a sloth by hanging below the branch, so landed flat on his back, rather than in a more awkward position. Still, it was rather nasty to watch him try to recover his breath. Over a week later he's still suffering some generalised pain, though, so he'll probably see a doctor tomorrow.

The first three months of this year have been very stressful for me—you've probably picked that up if you've read between the lines of my few blog posts. I was frustrated by the wind on our second day at camp, but it did force me to "stay still" and rest, which is probably exactly what I needed. As it turns out,  this is also something of a metaphor for our current situation. David and I have been limited in many ways at the moment (by the pandemic and other personal matters), and in many respects just have to be still and live one day at a time. So I am very grateful for this short getaway, it was a very necessary break in the stress that we've been facing.

We've also decided that three-night camps are a more efficient use of time. It means that we get two whole days of "chilling". We certainly came home from this trip feeling relaxed. I had to get back to work at my desk the day after we returned home (while everyone else in the house was still on holidays), and I can't say that that was very easy, or that I did a good job of it!

So now Spring Break is over for CAJ and we've got only nine weeks left of the school year. We're not sure what camping adventures we'll get up to this summer. We've got ideas . . . but no firm plans. So stay tuned (to get to any new prefectures we'll have to drive a fair bit further, so that might not be on the cards until all our boys have left home).

Gunma Prefecture camp

On Sunday we went on another camping trip, our third and final one for 2020. From here on it gets too cold to comfortably camp without more expensive gear, so even though we've camped in November in the past, we've decided those days are over...and our kids are older and not so interested!

So, we left with our camping buddies around 11.30, after we'd been to church, and got to the campsite around mid afternoon. We drove about 55 km on the expressway, and then over an hour was spent on slow roads, many of them "spaghetti" roads (on the map, looks like someone's thrown noodles down).

Monday we got up late and meandered through the day. The chief theme of our camping is "low key". We generally have no major agenda on the "whole days" we are at a campsite. 

I was talking with Japanese friends about our trip the other day and said that for the days we were away we didn't wear masks (except when buying lunch on the way there and back) and didn't really have to think about COVID at all—although of course it came up in conversation sometimes. My friends were amazed. Camping in more remote places during non-Japanese school-holiday weeks is indeed a great way to escape this pandemic in Japan.

Our house is the blue dot. The green flag in the top left corner is where we've been for longer holidays in the last couple of years (and will be heading there just before Christmas). The yellow star near the middle is where we camped the other two times in 2020. It's only about 50km from the Noguri campsite, but on mountain roads would take at least an hour.

This was our first time to camp in Gunma Prefecture. Our 15th prefecture (see our big camping goal here). The writing down the side of this photo says "Gunma Visitor Toilet". The campsite was very cheap (cost us ¥2,500 for two of us for two nights). The campsite had toilets but no shower. The toilets were in reasonable shape (if a bit smelly on the male side!).

We camped next to a fast-flowing stream called the Nogurisawa River. Not far downstream it merges into the Kanna River, which eventually joins the Tone River which is the second longest river in Japan (322 km, for those who want to know).

I've uploaded the photos straight from my phone and they've appeared randomly! So I'm "going with the flow". A big advantage of this campsite was very cheap wood that we could use in an open fire on the ground. Both of these elements are rare in Japan. The wood was a little damp, however, so a good deal of fire-tending was needed. But later I realised that while playing around with a fire like this, you aren't really thinking about other things. Camping in general is a great way to shut off from the world. We come back from a camping trip feeling like we've taken a true break from the mental load that we carry on a daily basis.

The banks of the stream were steep, so we looked down on it, more than saw it up-close.

The view from behind the fire: very easy on the eyes! This large tarp functions as the "living area" for our camps: it's where we cook and hang out.

Beautiful trees everywhere!

Our camp as we set it up (not much under the tarp at this point). Our spot was a "dead end" so we had no close neighbours, yet it was not a long walk to a tap with running water or the toilets.

Thankful our camping buddies insisted on taking this photo. Good memories! It was the first time we've gone camping without any of our kids. The two we have in Japan decided to stay home/visit with a friend instead of coming. This is the foreshadowing of many more couples-only camping!

Tatsugamino Falls. This is only about a minute walk from our campsite and so it was quite
loud at night!

Moss, moss, everywhere!

Landslide prevention is everywhere in the Japanese countryside. When typhoons come through, the two greatest risks are flooding and landslides.

Sometimes people ask us if we see wild animals while camping. Generally we don't, though this time we saw a lot of domestic cats (or maybe multiple appearances of the same cat?). On the first night we heard a deer "scream" three times. It was eerie. We also had some small critters in camp. Our friends accidentally left two loaves of bread out and they were found. Maybe by something like a squirrel or weasel? There were muddy footprints over a lot of our stuff the next morning.

Fern growing out between two stone steps down to the stream.

We went for a short hike up the mountain. It was a pine forest with very little undergrowth, and steep. Hikes in Japan are rarely moderate affairs, you have to have a bit of mountain goat in you.

A poor attempt to show the mountain rising up behind our tent. Not easy to capture. We truly were in a small valley.

Another couple of photos of Tatsugamino Falls. It isn't a huge tourist site. In fact it's rather remote. For anyone who's been to Japan, saying that we were about an hour from the nearest convenience store will help you understand how relatively remote this is. Interestingly, there was no shrine or other religious elements in evidence. That is also pretty rare at a place like this.

I pulled out my fancy camera for almost the first time since this pandemic began. Found me accessing memories about information like "shutter speed" and "aperture". I didn't end up taking too many photos with it, though—it is still far easier to whip out my iPhone from my  pocket! Still, I think I should make more of an effort to put that fancy camera to work in the months to come!

To add to the flowing water noise, this weir was just downstream from us! If you look carefully, in some of these photos you can see evidence that autumn is on its way. It's a bit more obvious in this next photo.

On our way home, as we wound our way through the mountain valleys, we drove alongside this artificial lake, Kanna Lake, for some time. The green colour was amazing. Alas, because I get travel sick, I was driving, so I didn't get to do much looking!

Part of my view while eating breakfast on the last morning. The sun finally broke through and made the trees even prettier.

Cooking rice and chicken shoulders on the fire. The food/fire/cooking challenge of camping remains one of my favourite parts.

Our "blue" ambient light. This is our plate/utensil camping cupboard. I put an LED light on top and it produced quite a nice effect!

Looking away from the waterfall towards our camp (tents hiding up on the righthand side).

One-man tents! We had quite a number of bikers and others who camped in tiny tents like these.

So, it's a wrap for 2020 and camping. We're now starting to think about our spring camp for next year. We're looking at Ibaraki, which is another prefecture we haven't visited. It is north-east of here and borders the Pacific Ocean just above Chiba Prefecture.