Shopping adventure in Japan

When our boys were younger we got a lot of attention when we were out with them: "Kawaiiiii" (cute) was the cry. Understandably we don't get that any more. Two of them are bigger than me and the other is close behind them. No longer cute, but still worthy of a few polite Japanese stares. Unlike other cultures where people might flock to us, or stroke our

At times we really do feel a bit like aliens
in Japan.

hair, Japanese people are much more subtle.

We rarely go to the shops as a group these days. If we go with one of the guys, it is usually one adult and one or two boys. Today we all ended up at a small local shopping centre. That in itself wouldn't usually get too much attention (it was busy). But today we had one boy whose glasses were about to break. He also needed an eye test for new lenses. But it ended up being a strange situation. I've never had an eye test in Japan, nor accompanied anyone doing so. So I asked for David's linguistic assistance. I'm glad I did, but the whole thing didn't go in a textbook manner.

In my brilliance I also invited our other two boys along because they each had shopping needs that had been put on the back burner recently. One needed new sneakers. I suggested the other boy also come along and see if he could find another pair of shorts in the hopes that spring will arrive soon, and stay. 

Being able to get them to a shop has never been easy, but it is increasingly becoming difficult with two of them not getting home till nearly dinner time many school nights as they train at school for interschool sports competitions.

So we had them all out. The optometrist, shoe store, and clothing store are all very close at this particular shopping centre. Our goal, as usual, was to do this as fast as possible. So my idea was that while the optometrist was working, we could get the other two boys sorted. 

Except that I also wanted to be at the optometrist and see if I could familiarise myself with the language associated with that speciality. Trying to be in two places at the one time didn't work very well and it quickly got worse. At the shoe store every time our son identified a pair he liked the look of and I looked for something in the right size in the piled boxes underneath the display, a worker came over and said something to me that sounded like a polite "Please don't do that" (I was having a fuzzy-brain Japanese day today that didn't help"). I was frustrated. Japanese shopkeepers are usually more helpful than that.

So I slipped across the way to see how David was doing and ask if he could help. They were just looking at frames while they waited for the exam room to be free. I figured picking out frames wasn't beyond my Japanese ability, so I suggested David go and assist our youngest with his shoe shopping. Meanwhile I'd asked our eldest to go over to the clothes store and see if he could locate some acceptable shorts. He came back quickly and said he'd found none! So he stayed and helped me at the optometrist.

Before David returned the exam room became vacant and we were ushered in there. I'm thinking, How bad can this be?

It started fairly well, but soon we were interpreting. Or trying our best to interpret. We were guessing from our previous experiences of optometry and from what we understood. It turns out we were understanding fairly well, but there was that element of doubt that doesn't engender confidence in the native-speaker service provider. I was especially hesitant because glasses are pretty important. They're expensive and if you get it wrong,  and there are consequences beyond the fiscal.

Eventually I sent our eldest son to see if he could fetch his dad, who came and said, "We've got some, you just need to pay for them." So we switched spots. In the shoe store the attendant was digging a bit deeper, trying to use easier Japanese or even fetch up some English. She told me we shouldn't throw these in the washing machine. She also mentioned spray deodorant and something about a waterproofing spray. I'm not sure, but I guess she was probably trying to sell me extra stuff in a roundabout Japanese way. She also tried to sell me some socks and something else . . . but I managed to get away with just shoes.

We touched base at the optometrist and they were fine (reassuring us that we'd be on track), so I took the other two boys to the clothes store to see if my shopping-eye could discern any shorts. It turns out that I did find a whole rack of shorts and even got him to try two pairs on. They left the store as fast as possible (going back to the optometrist), leaving me to buy the suitable shorts. When I got back to the optometrist I found two of the four guys sipping green tea and all the boys were looking at a game on the shop's iPad. Apparently kept by the shop to entertain kids while they waited.

So I shot downstairs to find a small snack to help us get home (it was nearly lunch time and we had a 3 ½-4 ½ km ride home, depending on the route we took).

I returned to the optometrist's shop one more time and found they'd finished. As we straggled off two of the employees lined up and bowed, saying, "Thank you". I didn't look, but I suspect that they watched us for a short while as we walked. I'm certain they don't often have a family of five foreigners in their store.

While we no longer get impassioned "kawaii" exclamations, we still generate attention. It's something you get used to and learn to largely ignore. After all, we still have to get things like this done, even if it is in an ungainly, foreign-like way.

Excellent CAJ video

The Christian Academy in Japan or CAJ is a big part of our lives, as you will know if you've read my blog for a while. It's where four out of five of us go every school day. My husband

teaches high school maths and science and occasionally other things like coaching wresting and Brain Bowl (trivia competition). Our eldest son has been attending there since 2007 and the younger two since 2010.

It is more than a school to us, it is a ministry and a community of likeminded international folk. Our boys love it. It was what they missed most about Japan while we were in Australia for a year.

So it's pretty cool that two of our boys are in this really well put together video about the school (no wrestling, though!): http://www.caj.or.jp/about/video.php

Friday Fun

Here's some more Friday Fun. Questions for you to answer if you wish. But I'm going to answer them below.

Mossy mountainous memory.

1. What jobs have you had in your life that most people don't know about?

2. List up to four of your hobbies.

3. Which would you rather do: wash the dishes, mow the lawn, clean the bathroom, or vacuum the house? Rank them 1 - 4.

4. What's the last movie you saw? What did you think?

5. If money were no object, what would be your perfect two-week holiday?

1. Nursing assistant (during uni holidays, this was probably the hardest job I've ever done, shift-work!). Customer training and support consultant (for disabled people receiving employment support).

2. Reading, cross-stitch, camping, and baking.

3. Ranked: Wash the dishes, vacuum the house, mow the lawn (though this would be first if it were a ride-on lawnmower), clean the bathroom.

4. Star Wars. We had a glut of Star Wars last August and again over Christmas as we helped friends introduce their kids to the series. We saw the new one just after the start of the year. I enjoyed it more than I did the others. Perhaps after the glut of watching them I'm finally understanding it?

5. Hmm, another hard question. Probably in a cabin on a mountain somewhere when the temperatures are in the 20s. Lots of books! If money were no object I'd be there with only my husband, someone else would be paid to look after the kids!

Promoting missionary attrition

Missionary attrition is a problem across the world. That is, missionaries leaving the field early for reasons that are potentially preventable. We find ourselves in our fourth term, our 13th year on the field, and find, with shock, that we're quite a way above average in terms of length of stay. I'm not sure what the exact figure is, but I'm pretty sure I've heard it quoted as well below 10 years for Japan.

I found this interesting post by a missionary in Thailand the other day about missionary attrition. He writes with cynicism, listing:

10 ways that mission agencies, churches, and others (including missionaries themselves) can speed up unanticipated departures from the mission field.

Here's his list:

1. Encourage high expectations.
2. Minimize language study
3. Promote the Saviour complex
4. Isolate people
5. Leave tasks and goals intentionally vague
6. Discourage pre-field theological and pastoral training
7. Emphasize right methodology 
8. Trivialize concerns and struggles
9. Promote conformity
10. Demand results

Interesting! I would suggest that within that are some reasons that people find it hard to remain in Japan:

• The language is hard. After a while that gets wearying, even for those in missions who don't minimise language study. Missionaries come with high expectations and are looking for results, it is hard, therefore, to spend years slogging away at the language (and therefore not being able to "do" work). 
• Many come with tiny mission organisations or as independent missionaries (isolation)
• Openness to the gospel is slow (results). 
• Because the lifestyle isn't so hard compared to other countries where missionaries serve it is easy to trivialise concerns and struggles.

This is worth thinking about, no matter where you are. If you're in a church supporting a missionary, on a missions board, or in a prayer group. Or perhaps you yourself are a missionary or planning to become one.

Unnecessary missionary attrition is tragic. Not only is it such a waste of resources, it leaves a scar on those it touches, both those who pack up and go home and those they leave behind.

Tokyo houses aren't rare

My image of Tokyo before I first came here was of tonnes of sky scrapers. It didn't help that I'd spent time in Singapore, where, it seems most people live in large apartment complexes. I imagined that Tokyo, one of the largest metropolises in the world, would be living vertically. After all, how else do you manage to fit so many people into so little space?

Well the truth is something else entirely. There are a lot of apartments in Japan, but I'd guess that most of them are under 10 stories, probably even under six. We've lived in our different dwellings in Japan, two in Sapporo which were both apartments and neither higher than four stories. 

When we came to live in Tokyo we had three boys and decided that a house was a better idea. Who heard of living in a house in Tokyo?

See the skinny house taking advantage of a strip of
land that would have just been "wasted" in Australia.
We often joke when we're in Australia that Tokyo-ites
would have build several houses on the grassy
verges between houses and the roads there.

Well, as it turns out, lots of people. We've lived in two houses in Tokyo. Our neighbours are all living in houses. Next to us is even a house with just one elderly lady.

I think the key to high population density with low rise buildings is not wasting space. There really is minimal wasted space in this city. Japanese are experts at utilising almost every space imaginable. 

Yesterday I did a "Costco run". It is something I do every couple of months to stock up on various things. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour usually, to drive there, but the distance is under 20km. Along the way I snapped photos of houses I saw (when I was stopped at red lights). I wonder if this will give you something of an impression of what real Tokyo looks like. The houses are compact and use up most of the block. 

I have to emphasise that we don't live in the highest population density area of Tokyo and neither do any of the photos on this post come from those areas. The population density in the inner city areas of Tokyo is around 15,000 people per square kilometre. Our area has "only" 8.980 people per square kilometre. My drive took me west to places as sparse as 3,000 people per square kilometre! As far as I can tell it is hard to find areas in Australia that even come close to this.

Population density map (unfortunately without a key, lighter means more people).

I'm not quite sure what's happening here.  Two separate houses, but one car
parked behind the other. Perhaps these two houses are on the same property
and are owned by an extended family?

Townhouses. But much smaller than Australian townhouses.
They are only one room wide, and, by the look of it
two rooms deep.

A footpath (sidewalk, pavement) is a rare thing. These houses are on a
major road (two lanes each way), hence the footpath.

This house caught my eye because of the sneakers airing/drying on the wall.
With Japan's low crime rate, these shoes are probably pretty safe, even
though the house is just off a high-traffic two-lane road.

Only just enough room left for these cars. These are three separate houses.

Bath tissue

This was on the wall in my toilet cubicle at Costco this morning. In the company of north Americans I've grown accustomed to calling the "toilet" a "bathroom" even when there is no bathroom. Sometimes I'll use restroom, because bathroom just seems too weird.

But this is pushing it too far. All I can see when I read "bath tissue" is a bunch of tissues floating in bath water. Eeew!

Language is funny, because when words are a part of your regular vocabulary you don't even think about the literal meaning or an alternative literal meaning. For example "car park" sounds strange to American ears. To us it is merely a place that you park your car. But they think about parks and how weird it is to have a park full of cars!

What other phrases do you use that makes sense in your culture, but not to people from other cultures?

Too tired to cook for the family?

So here's a scenario: it's mid-afternoon and you're headed home from a full day of meetings. You're more tired than usual but know you have a tribe of boys to feed in a couple of hours, but aren't sure if you have the energy to make the meal you'd planned for that evening. You're too tired to eat out (and that's not really in the budget anyway). The larder is fairly bare due to a planned trip to a bulk food store the next day. What do you do in your context?

As you might guess, this is my story today. It's interesting to ponder because I know what I'd do in Australia would be different to what I'll do here. 

The options I considered:

Heating up tinned soup

Buying crumbed fish/meat/croquette/meat on a skewer (yakitori) at a grocery store I passed on my walk home from the train

Bacon and eggs (one of the few protein options I have in the house)

In the end I've decided to push through and make the fairly easy from-scratch macaroni cheese that I'd planned. (After a bit of horizontal therapy.)

I know I have readers from various cultures and countries here, though most rarely comment. I'm wondering, what would you do in the above situation? (Noting that my boys eat a lot, a kilo of chicken along with about 12 tortillas and a lot of salad disappeared in one sitting the other day, and that was when David wasn't even here.)