A day between countries

I have a few minutes before we launch out onto Tokyo to find a washing machine and fridge. Most shops don't open until 10am and our bodies are still on Australian time, which means that we're up a little early - it is 8.30am here, not 9.30am like our bodies are telling us. So I'll give you a little insight into yesterday.

We were up at 4.45am. The boys leapt out of bed and were ready to go by 5.15 (the plane didn't leave until 8.45 and we didn't need to leave home until 6). That was to set the tone for the rest of the morning until we got on the plane. They really didn't understand all the adults sitting around and waiting, the lines etc. "Why don't we just go?" At check-in we discovered we could have brought 11 more kilograms. Darn! That is another whole AU$100+ box that we posted. Oh well. There was no line at check-in, we began to wonder if the flight wasn't fully booked.

Once we got on the plane, we first were delighted to see the individual screens in front of us. 8 1/2 hours of square-eyed peace for parents! Then our earlier suspicions were confirmed - the flight was less than half-booked. All my toilet-lining-up fears were alleviated.

The day went on forever, though. I'd packed my watch, so I had no idea of time. Confused by the fact that all the meals were out too. I'd eaten an apple on the way to the airport at 6.30. Had coffee with Mum and Dad at 7.15 at the airport then after take-off we were given a main meal (not breakfast!) at about 10am. After that it was mostly drinks with only one snack until about 3pm when we had sandwiches! We were met and driven to OMF guest house, arriving about 6.30 (7.30pm Australian time) and as soon as we could, we headed off to the nearest convenience store for a Japanese staple - onigiri - Japanese rice balls. Yum. The boys inhaled them!

Other amazing things about the day are best listed:

• Our plane was directly in front of the viewing area where Mum and Dad could stand (though we could only see them not talk or touch). So they watched us walk onto the plane.
• We lost a pair of scissors. Try as we did, we didn't manage to banish all the scissors from boys' backpacks to their check-in luggage and we lost a pair. It seemed like they were training people at that section of the airport, so I had a feeling they enjoyed actually finding something which they could take off us! 5 y.o. cried, however. Another loss (after weeks of saying goodbyes the smallest thing can be traumatic).
• We barely slowed down at customs in Tokyo! They weren't really interested in our luggage at all.
• The weather isn't too hot today. Overcast and moist, but I'm not uncomfortable. It is apparently 24 degrees (Celsius) and occasionally dribbling. Hanging up washing inside like I've done it all my life.

The weirdest thing is that it feels like we've woken from a dream. Actually it hardly seems that we've been away. Very strange feeling - that we've got a life here and a life in Australia which only seem barely connected!

We're back in Tokyo

After an amazingly smooth trip we're headed for bed in Tokyo. Modern travel is amazing really!

Funnily enough it seems as though we've hardly left, the city seems very familiar and not shocking at all. For dinner we ate onigiri - Japanese rice balls. Yum!

Now for bed. More details tomorrow.

What have you enjoyed most about your year in Australia?

For my last post on Australian soil this time around I want to reflect on this thoughtful question I've been asked a couple of times recently:
 What have you enjoyed most about your year in Australia?

There are many things enjoyable about being in the country I grew up in. Here's a just few!

• Reconnecting with friends and family who've known me longer than ten years has to be one of the biggies. 
• Relaxing in a country where I both speak the language and understand a lot of the whys behind what goes on.
• Regaining confidence in my ability to do simple things like deal with bureaucracy, banks, fill the car etc. (mostly related to language ability)
• Working in partnership with my husband and having him home a lot of the time.
• With all the boys at school for the first time and David and I both working from home, we've enjoyed a lot more couple time than we have had for eleven years.
• Shopping has been fun.
• Medical stuff - actually having appointments, understanding the system, having a fantastic GP
• Aussie food
• Libraries and bookstores
• Cricket and various other TV
• Wide open spaces (my husband calls this "space therapy")
• More privacy (no one can see my washing)
• More anonymity (I don't stick out)
• Church in English

I'm sad to say goodbye to most of this. Others I'm just used to being without and can get by. I keep reminding myself that I've survived without it all for eight years already and it'll be fine.

We fly at 8.45 Monday morning (tomorrow). Leaving at something like 6am. See you later Australia. We'll be back in 2-4 years. Of course I'll be back blogging from Tokyo, probably on Tuesday.

Unexpected day

Today we'd planned nothing. So we ended up with an unexpected day.

To start with I unexpectedly slept in to 9.30! I guess I must have been tired and must be feeling relaxed too. My brain was pretty fuzzy after that, though, so it is good that David took charge and got us all out of the house. While I ate breakfast he made a picnic lunch.

Soon after that he shoved us all out the door on an unexpected adventure. We stopped at the local shopping centre to post three more boxes and then searched for a bookstore. None there, so we drove on. You see we're such book lovers that we find this period of in-between libraries very hard. So we dashed into a second-hand bookstore that we found along the road (much cheaper than our original plan) and found a book for our 11 y.o. to read on the plane.

Then we headed off for New Farm Park, which has become our most favourite park in Brisbane. We parked under this tree that the boys instantly claimed as their own. And had a picnic lunch nearby on the grass. Then we headed over to the location of the most terrific playground we've found in the city, only to find it shut for renovations (same thing at South Bank the other day - didn't anyone tell them that it is school holidays?). Huge disappointment! Nevermind...plenty more trees to climb.

Nearby was a place we knew existed, but weren't sure what it exactly was "The Powerhouse". David had it confused with a museum in Sydney called by the same name and I thought it was a theatre. Turned out I was correct, but I'm glad I went to check it out anyway because they had a free performance for kids starting about seven minutes later. Very cool group called "Clocked Out".  Based around percussion, it was a fabulous and free 30 minute performance, followed by another half and hour of exploratory hands-on music creation for the kids (picture on left is of the boys making waves like sound waves as demonstrated in the performance).

Of course, to get back to our car we had to explore every climbing tree on the way. I doubled back to use the loo (bathroom) and had one of those unexpected encounters I wrote about the other day. Except this one was fairly pleasant, if rushed. Someone who'd gone to my parents church while I was in Brisbane studying in the early 90s. We parted, vowing to catch-up on Facebook. Gotta love Facebook!

The way home was straight past our new favourite second-hand book store. David had got to thinking he'd like a book on the plane too and I wanted one too, so we stopped. I then had to do a very hard thing - chose one book! I'd much rather borrow several from a library, then there is no pressure to read or even enjoy a book. I can choose different genre and pick up the one that suits my mood. BUT be restricted to one choice!?! It took too long and the boys were complaining, but I found something that will have to do. The whole concept of travelling with my children on a plane AND being able to take my own book is quite a foreign one!

Now we're 'home'. The day has been both unexpected and pleasant. The children are watching DVDs prior to some kind of dinner that I have to manufacture out of almost nothing. Oh, we do have 2 minute noodles, that's something I guess.

Retro stress relief

Last month I read the book Honourably Wounded and used it to spring into this blog note a few weeks ago. Yesterday I used something I learned in the book. We'd had a stressful day. The boys were obnoxious, disobedient and hopelessly giggly by dinner-time. David and I almost ended up yelling at each other as a spin-off. Then after the kids were in bed we still had trial-pack to do.

By the time we'd done all that we were wound as tight as a cord on a new vacuum cleaner. We ate some yummy supper together, but then felt too stressed to go straight to bed. As I sat there wondering what to do next, I spotted an unusual sight in a house of boys. This house usually contains both a boy and a girl, so there are plenty of girly things around. One is a doll house with Barbies. Sometime yesterday the Barbies were stripped. (5 y.o. confessed today that he was trying to surprise their owner!) It just didn't seem the right thing to leave all these Barbies (and look alikes) plus Ken starkers (naked) in the living room! So, I sat on the floor, dressed them and combed their hair (David joined me - it took him back to the days he helped his young sister). It was a remarkably soothing activity and I was able to go to bed very easily after that.

This takes me back to the book I mentioned. The author, Marjory Foyle, advocated lots of things for stress. One of them was indulging in a retro-type (or child-like) activity regularly. Like flying kites or swinging. I never had Barbies as a child (for reasons that I fully understand now). But yesterday they were very helpful. I must keep that strategy in mind, not that I'll have Barbies at hand on most occasions, but I'm sure other toys would do equally well.

Awkward encounters

Our whole year has been full of awkward encounters of various kinds, but this just-about-to-go-back point particularly lends itself to experiencing embarrassing social situations. Take the following examples:

Someone you've said an emotional goodbye to some days previous happens to see you at a shopping centre.
Running into a man who used to support you but has cut off his support for unknown reasons.
Someone who hasn't answered your emails about getting together, sees you on a train with your hyperactive kids.
Accidentally seeing someone who was part of a long-time-ago painful church discussion about your missionary call.
Receiving hand-made gifts from a need-to-please-others person that you are expected to take with you in your already bulging luggage.
While having difficult discussions with fractious kids over what to order at a fast-food restaurant, you run into an old acquaintance who wants a deep discussion.
A long-time-ago friend who doesn't know you are a missionary runs into you in a public place.
A shop assistant who wants to know your current postcode for a survey.

These vary in difficulty to manage, of course, but can be stressful, depending on how the other person reacts. The extra factor in here is that our children are more difficult to manage in public (and private too, of course) at the moment - so when we run into a situation that needs particular care, very often I don't have enough brain space left for nice social conversation. It is very tricky. All I can do is pray later that I said the right thing at the right time and didn't say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

5 sleeps left...

With five sleeps left we are cruising, getting a few small important jobs done - like collecting the bond on the house we've lived in this year, sorting out our medical insurance and doing our tax return. But generally taking things fairly easy, thankfully!

We found out this morning that we'll be moving into our Tokyo house next Wednesday - that's only two sleeps after we arrive in the country, truly amazing! And the removalists (movers) will even pick up our Clavinova (electric piano) from the friend who's been looking after it. The cool thing about that is that it is a potentially back-breaking operation as it is heavy and is up a set of very steep and narrow Tokyo-style stairs. We're very thankful not to have to organise that ourselves.

Now the main thing that remains is to fit everything into our suitcases and under the 100kg limit. Excess to that needs to be packed up separately and posted. You may ask, "Why posting? Surely there is a cheaper way?" You wouldn't be the only one. When we took 6 10-12kg boxes to the post office last Friday the guy there nearly had a heart attack and we had to reassure him several times that this was what we wanted to do, that we'd thought about this long and hard.

This is the third time we've moved to Japan from Australia and we've found that posting stuff, while it seems expensive, is the easiest way. It is not the most expensive, either. If we send stuff by boat or unaccompanied baggage, we incur customs costs as well as the expense and inconvenience of going back to the airport (2-4 hours from our house) to collect it all. Posting not only has the advantage of all the expense being up front, but the stuff gets delivered to our door at the other end too.

What are we taking back? Not furniture, that's for sure. Hardly any electrical stuff (different voltage). Very little food stuffs. Mostly our wardrobe plus some resource books, Occupational Therapy resources, medical records (that go everywhere with us), a small number of extra special toys, some medicine and other things that are harder to get (or impossible, like soap-free cleanser) in Japan. Some DVDs, especially ones that have been gifts to the boys in recent months. We've been very selective. Very few toys actually made the cut - mostly what fits in backpacks plus two boxes of Z*O*O*B. Oh, my contour pillow is coming...now I need to stop writing about it and find a place it will fit into my bulging suitcase.