You're blushing then flushing

Japanese toilets. An interesting subject that I could wax eloquent on a number of fronts. But here I want to mention the "sound machine".

A few years ago someone figured out that Japanese women were wasting water. In public facilities they flushed while they did their business to cover up the sounds. Then, of course, they flushed again. 

So, this innovative person created the flushing sound recording that you can play if you're feeling bashful. Now technology has improved so that these units often include movement sensors. So, you might just be hanging your bag on the back of the door or adjusting your clothes and suddenly the sound of flushing emanates from your very own speaker.


It can be disconcerting if you aren't ready for it. And as it is not in every toilet (not even in most), you usually aren't. This one was a Amlux yesterday.

Our latest adventure

Today we found yet another adventure that we discovered last time we lived in Tokyo. Today we had no sport or swimming classes to attend so we'd planned to go exploring - preferably in a big park. However the weather has turned horrible. Cold and wet. I'm told there is a typhoon, but the temperatures seem about 10 degrees too cold for a typhoon!

So instead we took the train into Ikebukuro, the hub from which our train-line extends. It is one of the large city-hubs that exist in Tokyo.

Having taken a long time getting moving this morning (can't imagine why!), we arrived in time for an early lunch. Subway is one of our favourite take-away joints. It reminds us of the days when we were a couple. In Australia they are on every street corner and small town, now, it seems. There are very few in the part of Japan we inhabit. So this is a rare treat, though ordering sandwiches for three boys plus ourselves is not quite as easy as doing it for a couple.

Subway is in a large complex called "Sunshine 60". (It is a building with 60 floors, though not all of them are shopping). On a couple of floors below Subway was a fountain and an intriguing string quartet making beautiful music on see-through instruments, even if we only heard their warm-up. No idea how it all worked, but there were heaps of wires around. It can't have been easy to play with the loud fountain behind them.

Then we went to the object of our trip - Amlux. The name is a composite word for Automobile and Luxe combined. The English brochure says, "It represents to have cars looked at comfortably in a luxurious atmosphere."


And indeed it is a luxurious atmosphere. Unlike any car display place I've ever been in. It is like a museum of current auto locomotion. There are more than 70 current model cars in this 5 storey place. You and your kids are free to get in and out of almost all of them. The staff are very relaxed. Not at all trying to sell you anything. If you want to know something, though, they'll gladly tell you. If you don't they leave you alone. Oh, and they have nice toilets (if you're American read "bathrooms") too!

Addition to that is a number of exhibits. Safety displays, driving simulators etc. And in the basement there is a kid-orientated display that changes regularly, like a museum. Today there was a robot with a trumpet (though we didn't see it at work), a golf putting area, Wii-like golf area, a safety-story being told for littlies and some kami-nendo (paper play dough) that the kids could use to make models.

The picture with the driving seats and small screens it is a driving simulator. It is very patient as you drive around a city course, trying not to have lots of crashes! After a crash though, it simply displays a single screen ad and then you are back on the course ready to go again (no dents).

Needless to say the boys love it! They were 'driving' in one of these cars that had a navigation computer (what kind of place lets kids play with these?) when I think I heard them say, as they pointed at the map, "That's where the bad guys are, let's go this way so we can get them."


In another car, one boy was 'driving' another was in the front passenger seat and the eldest was in the back seat. I suggested to them that we had a "mummy, daddy and boy" scenario. Vehement denials all round on that one!

After Amlux we headed home, via a bakery for a snack. I have to say I am slightly bemused at the Halloween fever that seems to have taken over Japan. I'd say most Japanese haven't a clue about what it is, except that various commercial venues display decorations like this one. There also seems to be a pumpkin theme running through it, especially for eateries. At my gym the other day I was surprised to see the trainers wearing comical Halloween headgear - bright orange hats or hair bands. 


I cannot say I've enjoyed the day, however delightful our destinations were. Our boys were terrible. Their behaviour was deplorable at times. Especially on the trains and at home. They just couldn't stop niggling, wrestling, annoying and disobeying, especially our 11 y.o.; which was very disappointing. But at least we didn't lose him like we did last time we went to Amlux! 


David and I finished the day on our own with ice-cream and warm brownies and a hilarious episode of M*A*S*H. That helps repair some of the emotional damage done by ungrateful children, that's for sure.

Flash-backs to my past

I started my Occupational Therapy career in a sole position in the country. I was almost the only OT within a couple of hundred kilometres. The job entailed seeing people from young children right up to nursing home patients. Seeing them as inpatients as well as in their homes and in my department at the hospital. I even was involved in health promotion and patient education. Very much a GP (General Practitioner).

It was a lonely, yet stimulating job. I had so much freedom to develop the service somewhat as I wished. I wrote the budget (it did have to be approved, of course). I determined what initiatives to take. I also had limited supervision. It spoiled me. No other OT job I had after it seemed as challenging or interesting.

It reminds me a lot of what I'm doing now. I am my own boss. I have no other OTs around. I write the budget (very limited - I'm not spending someone else's money now). I have to take the initiative, make my own decisions. And I'm confronting cases that challenge my experience and knowledge. Just like back then, I'm calling in help from others, seeking advice from people who are less of a GP than me or who are from a different speciality altogether (like Speech Pathology).

So, I'm going to look past the challenges and the uncertainties and self-doubt and enjoy the freedom. I did last time. I can do it again.

Christmas is...the smell of kerosene

If you consider that wearing jackets, using the heater and having freezing hands when outside is winter, then it has arrived in Tokyo, only a month after summer left.

We got our heater out yesterday.

Here is a photo of our hard-working kerosene heater (or stove, as they are called here in Japan). When it starts or finishes it emits a small cloud of kerosene. When one of our boys smelt that this morning his response was, "It smells like Christmas!"

Wow, what an association!

In the past we've smelt that smell a lot, possibly more than others who don't have rowdy boys. The heater has an inbuilt earthquake safety feature. This heater stood to the side of the narrow walkway between our dining/kitchen and tiny lounge room for the last four winters. Do you know how to simulate an earthquake? Run into the heater and it will think there is an earthquake and immediately shut the heater off emitting a cloud of kerosene...you get the picture! Then you have to re-start the thing, which produces more fumes. 

And when Christmas here is in the middle of winter and three weeks holidays from school, you can imagine that there was heaps of "earthquakes" in our house around that time. No wonder the kerosene smell reminds our son of Christmas.

Shocks to the system

Today the temperature has dropped to 15 degrees maximum. Only a month ago we had the air conditioner on and the temperatures were in the mid 30s! It is a bit of a shock to the system. But at least the weather forecast gave us warning.

Mentally, I'm in a little bit of shock too. Contrary to the weather, things are heating up in my little corner. Last week I did an Occupational Therapy assessment and I am preparing for another one this Friday.

Today I had a meeting with the editor of Japan Harvest (see photo of latest cover), a magazine written by and for the missionaries in Japan. Last year I went to Manila at the invitation of this man and I'm looking forward to working with him and his wife. I am just starting to help him as an associate editor, so we're figuring out where to from here. At the present he is working pretty much on his own, editorially speaking, so it is a change for him to have someone to work with. We'll see how it goes. But I did come away with things to do!

Gary Bauman (editor of Japan Harvest) with me in Manila.

Add to that an up and coming prayer letter, an article for our denominational magazine in Australia and ongoing administrative bits and pieces. A key person in the OMF Japan headquarters office is leaving and I've taken on one of her jobs: responding to enquiries through OMF Japan's website. That is a job that is hard to plan for, I think I hardly got anything last week, but then several have arrived in a couple of days this week.

So I've created a chart next to my computer that has all the threads of work that I'm trying to do and the steps that are mine to do. Like multiple lists. Whenever I find myself getting short-of-breath as I consider all that I need to do, I need to write it all down. Even for this multi-tasking mum I need help occasionally.

Tonight we had guests for dinner. Tomorrow night too. Thankfully I threw a meal into the slow cooker this morning and it cooked away without need for me to do much about it. Someone has asked for my favourite slow cooker recipes. I'll have to write a post about that in the near future. Anyone else got some to add too?

Thankfully too, tomorrow I have all day without an appointment on my calendar (aside from the gym and groceries). I should be able to get some things done tomorrow, don't you think?

Eat your veggies, for brekkie!

This morning I actually looked at the back of one of the cereal boxes on the table. I couldn't believe what I saw. Can you see what this is a picture of? 

They are suggesting you put the flakes in the bowl, add salad (pictured are two types of lettuce, capsicum, tomato and something that looks like bacon or fish). Down the bottom there is one with broccoli, prawns and other miscellaneous joys! Oh, and then you add milk.

Breakfast?

 

Not feeling homesick

I realised with a shock today that the contentment I've been feeling recently is not tinged with homesickness. I am not yearning to go back to Australia. In fact, if someone were to force me back there right now (for longer than a visit), I'd grieve for what I'd left behind.

I think this is relatively new. Most of the eight years I've spent in Japan I've had a degree of longing to be back 'home'. 

That doesn't mean that I don't miss my family, that I'd love to be cuddling my new nephew or that my Australian friends are no longer important to me. But it does mean that I'm enjoying the life I have here. I'm content and settled. I'm thriving on the various roles I have rather than enduring them.

This is good. And I'll keep praying that God will provide all the finance we need so that the rug is not pulled out from underneath us.