Preview 'my' magazine

Well that title is a bit presumptive, but it is true that you can see the cover and first seven pages of the upcoming Japan Harvest. Go and have a look at this website.

Japan photo #14 solved

 On Saturday I gave you this puzzle.

What is it? In this case context means an lot. Yes, it is from a grocery store. You find it at the cash register. As well as encouraging you to not use plastic bags, it smooths communication between the customer and the person serving you. If you have brought your own bag and don't need a plastic one from the register operator you grab this little tag and drop it into your shopping basket. It eliminates that little conversation - "Do you want a plastic bag?" "No." 

I appreciate this because there is another shop where we buy our milk that doesn't have this system. They assume you want plastic bags. If you are off your game or just distracted and don't inform them upfront, they just give you bags anyway. And then it just gets awkward - do you hand them back or take them and leave them on the packing counter? Or even if you aren't off your game they feel awkward using my bags and apologise before they put anything in my pre-offered bag. All terribly awkward!

Packing bench (counter). Where the customer puts their already-paid-for groceries  into whatever bag they have. Different to Australia!

But apart from that I just think this little tag is very cute!

Cross-cultural sporting experience

Yesterday we spent all day at our 11 y.o.'s track meet. Throughout the day I couldn't help remember...those years when I was a participant, not a spectator at such events. And also on the differences between the way Americans seem to do school sport and the Australian way.

Australian schools, in my experience, generally have three different streams of sport going at school. 

1. They have PE classes during school time, the number of which varies from school to school. This is compulsory for much of one's school career, or it was for me.
2. Once a week they have an afternoon dedicated to sport or some other non-curricular activity. There is a mixture of interschool team sports as well as within-school options like Ten Pin bowling, cricket, netball, soccer etc. During that time I even participated in activities like chess, film appreciation (really - that is the first and last time I saw "Psycho"!) and Tai Chi. These options generally change every term, four times a year.
3. Our high school had four different annual events that directly related in interschool events. They were the swimming carnival, athletics carnival (which involved track and field), cross country and ball games (the latter comprising of team events like captain ball, tunnel ball etc.). Each of these were all-school events where classes were cancelled, the first two being all day or day-and-a-half events. They were conducted as competitions between school "houses". A great deal of school spirit was involved in each these events, though many fellow teenagers chose to just be physically present, rather than spirited! These events, especially the first three, were primarily concerned with choosing the best athletes to represent the school in later regional events.

Our experience here within the international school arena in Japan is quite different. I don't know about other schools, but this is my understanding of CAJ's system.

1. PE classes extend from Kindergarten through to Year 12. And more frequently than we (that is my husband and I) had in state schools in Australia.
2. The elementary school has an annual Field Day. This is relatively non-competitive and encouraging event. It has no long-term goal such as selecting the fastest or highest or strongest for inter-school competition. Middle and high school have no such event. No swimming carnivals or all-school cross country events.
3. The international schools have interschool competitions in various sports organised during out-of-school hours. These sports include basketball, volleyball, soccer, cross-country, track, field hockey and wrestling. They have three seasons - "fall", winter and spring. 

Here are some things I find strange about the system we find ourselves in:

• The number three (above) competitions are totally extra curricular. You only "go out" for them if you want. The teams are selected from those who try out. I find this particularly strange for athletics - how do you know that you have the best athletes representing your school? How do you even know if you have your athletes doing their best events. 
• No weekly sports afternoons. If you want to pursue a sport you do it in your own time. This makes it hard if you are struggling to achieve academically or struggling to get homework completed. Though I do remember that my high school inter school sports teams did sometimes have after school training.
• They train very hard. High school teams train five days a week for two to three hours each day during their season. Middle school teams at CAJ are limited to three times a week. Even that was a lot when it was basketball training and it started at 6.30am! Consider that a number of students travel for over half an hour or an hour to get to or from school and there is a lot expected of those who take on sport.
• It has taken a while, but early on terms like "Varsity" and "Junior varsity" were very confusing. For those who don't know. Varsity is the school's best team. Junior varsity is like the B team.
• There are no age levels in the cross-country and athletics events. So our 11 y.o. was competing against all middle schoolers - some of whom are 14 or 15 years old (and looked it). Same for high school.
• Finally on the comparison front, I don't ever remember driving for two and a half hours to go to a simple inter-school event. We did that yesterday to watch our son run and throw. It was only 36 km, but very orderly Tokyo traffic includes hundreds of traffic lights in that short distance.

Whoa, this is already a long post. My thoughts yesterday didn't just encompass the above. You see, I was a runner. I even was a part of Little Athletics club for a few years.

My thoughts yesterday roamed into sympathy for the longer distance runners (400m and above). Been there, done that. In sympathy for the hurdles runners who slammed into hurdles. I never did like that form of the sport. I flinched as people jumped over the high jump. I remembered how I used to "eat up" the track when I ran and how that feeling suddenly began to fade at around 14 years of age. That was a strange feeling. I remembered running in a school relay race against Cathy Freeman (famous Australian Olympian now). My claim to reflected fame!

At the end I remind myself that it is just different, not wrong. Another thing to get used to that is not particularly a Japanese cultural difference, but because we're in Japan and have our kids at an international school, that will be what we have to work with for the next X number of years.

Japan photo #14

Pretty tired tonight, I'll tell you tomorrow what we've been up to today. In the meantime, I've been wanting to take a photo of this cute sign for a while. Can you guess what it means? (Please don't answer if you can read Japanese, let's see what people guess.)

Here's the solution.

Coffee shop meetings

The last two days it feels like I've been hanging out at coffee shops. 

Yesterday morning my husband and I finally grabbed some daylight time to ourselves when we met for morning tea (aka 'coffee' - though I'm the only one who drinks the beverage) between classes for him. We met at Tully's an American coffee shop at our local train station.

Yesterday afternoon found me at Starbucks, one station away (or 20 min bike ride). I met with another mum from CAJ to talk about some mutual similarities in our child-rearing experiences. We've got a little plan in the works, but I cannot talk about it here. I'm excited, though.

This morning I wasn't at a coffee shop, but it was like being at one because my friend's husband made us coffee at their house. He works at a coffee shop. The coffee was yum and helped me to get over the early morning fog that I'm battling with this cold that dropped-in uninvited this week.

This afternoon I headed to Tully's again to meet with the Managing Editor of Japan Harvest. We did a kind-of debrief on the spring edition we sent to the printer today. Yay! A low-key celebration too, I guess. Then we jumped into talking about the upcoming summer edition as well as planning to work on some background editing issues that need resolving. 

So, that's it for coffee shops for the time being. Tomorrow I get to forsake a sleep-in and drive with my family to the other side of the metropolis. We'll sit in the rain (60% chance of showers) and cheer at appropriate times at our 11 y.o.'s track meet. Sound like fun? Really, the things you do as a parent! I'll take a thermos of coffee, that should help the journey. 

I do need to point out that I didn't drink any coffee at Starbucks yesterday, nor at Tully's today. I am an addict, but only to a very small amount. I usually only drink two half-caffeinated cups a day. The rest is all decaf. Still, I think that coffee shops are a pretty cool place to meet people. Especially when, like Japan Harvest, we have no office to meet in.

Anyone want to do coffee? I have some time free next week...

Update on our pet turtle

Do you remember we have a pet - a turtle? Read about when we got him here. Tiny, as he's come to be known is not remaining tiny for long. He was about 10g when we bought him just over two months ago. Now he is 25g and you can see he is bigger (though maybe not in the photo?).

The whinging for a pet has ceased, despite the fact that the boys don't "play" with Tiny much. He is a silent presence that they appreciate, I think. 

Tiny "sunbaking" in his typical superman pose. So bold - he didn't dive into the water when I approached with the camera like he used to.

Tiny, not long after we bought him, hiding under the "rock" that he's sunbathing on above.

He's a hungry little guy, hence his huge gain in weight (think about it, nearly tripling in weight in two months). And he's escaped once, from the plastic ice-cream container where we feed him. So we're keeping a closer eye on him these days. I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to keep him in this small aquarium. He's already finding it a little difficult to manoeuvre (now that is a weirdly spelt word!) around in there.

Nachuraru weibu means what?

Yesterday I hinted that buying hair products here isn't easy. Actually no hygiene product is totally easy. It is a lot easier if you can read Katakana - the alphabet reserved almost exclusively for foreign imported words. Though many products have a little bit of English on them too, but sometimes that can be only partly helpful.

Take this one for example:

 I think it is a fancy moisturiser that claims to do a variety of things including whitening - which I definitely don't need! I was thankful that no one fainted at the gym the other day when I wore shorts for the first time in six months!

I bought this next product the other day. When I came home I Googled "Ascience Inner Rich Treatment" and found out it is a post-conditioner treatment for damaged Asian hair. Not really my profile, not sure what I'm going to do with it now.

 This is hairspray, but is a "point" pump spray, which wasn't quite what I wanted.

 Here is the mousse I found yesterday. It says "Nachuraru weibu", Japlish for "Natural Wave". I hope it works. This is what I'm experimenting with at the moment. Less fly-aways today.

Why is she blabbing on about hair products? Through my blog I want you to get a feel for our lives - what the ordinary life of a missionary in Japan is like. Not just what you see in newsletters or hear from the podium at a missionary meeting, but what the day-to-day life is like. Looking after my Caucasian hair in this Asian country is just one of the many things that make up our day-to-day lives.