Reflecting on a busy couple of days

I'm taking some time between errands to reflect on Friday and Saturday. 

Friday started out fairly normally. I took the trains across town to our mission headquarters to continue working on improving the content of our OMF Japan website.

I got back to our neck of the woods at 3.30 and stopped on the way home from the station to buy some onigiri (rice ball) and inarizushi (sweet rice ball stuffed in a fried tofu skin) for wrestling the next day. 

After I arrived home I had an hour to prepare dinner for later (bacon and corn soup into the slow cooker) and get to a meeting at school about the Seniors' trip to Thailand in March. Only one boy was home at that point, so I chatted to him about his day too. 

I ended up not learning much at the meeting because David has been on this trip a couple of times before, but I guess I'm glad I went anyway. Then I rushed home and put the finishing touches on the soup by the time our eldest arrived at six after training and we quickly ate. Somewhere in there I fitted a shower in too, knowing it was going to be a late night!

The finale at the talent show, with all 53 seniors on stage.

We left at 6.30 for the 7pm Senior Talent Show, an annual fundraising event put on by the seniors. It is pretty much always excellent and a "talked about" event for many days/weeks/years afterwards. Our family still reminisces about certain acts in previous years. But this was also a "culminating event" (as one American-Japanese friend put it). One of the "lasts" in our son's high school career. 

It was indeed an enjoyable evening. When you know most of the performers, that makes it even better. I particularly enjoyed a parody on the famous Japanese Algorithm March.

But the evening was late. We didn't get home until 10, and faced an early-ish start the next day for another long day of wrestling. Additionally I was feeling the pressure of another magazine issue just about ready to go to the printer, but with a design team needing my eye to go over it one more time. I managed to read though 20 pages on my phone during the 2 1/2 hrs on the train on Friday, but still had 20 pages to go. So I printed out the rest, thinking I might look at it during quiet moments at wrestling the next day. While I was doing that, another wrestling mum messaged me, asking advice about getting to the on-US-base meet the next day. We ended up agreeing that her van could follow me in our full van. 

Then to bed. But it was hard to relax and late before I finally dropped off. Then I woke an hour earlier than my alarm, as I often do on wrestling mornings. David was up before 5.30 and that was enough to disturb me. He was driving the high school team. I ended up running late, though, but we still arrived with plenty of time to spare. 

And then it was continuous wrestling from about 9 till after 5. With 13 schools, each with up to 13 wrestlers, it was quite a crowd and we were really squished into the bleachers. The wrestlers came, mostly from US bases, from across Japan and Korea. Some slept the night in the gym! The meet is an annual event and is aptly named The Beast! It really is a precursor to the big three-day final meet in Korea next month (called the Far East Wrestling Tournament), because almost all the same schools are there and it's the only time that happens before that. Hence this is a very important because it is a place to see almost all the contending wrestlers. 

Our son had his two hardest bouts first and came through with wins, which was encouraging. But you never know what's going to happen, so that keeps things on edge the whole day!

This was in the middle of our son's hardest bout, the guy
he's wrestling ended up the silver medal winner. It is
the same guy he's wrestled several times in the last two
seasons, and all of them have been hard. This move is
called a "leg lace" and looks like a "crocodile roll", the
goal is to roll your opponent over and over. Everytime
their shoulders are "exposed" to the mats the one in control
gets two points. This is how Callum lost three times to the
Far East champion last year. It is painful to be
on the receiving end of.

Not to mention that we were getting periodic news from and about our other wrestler who was battling things out at another meet, in another school. He didn't have the day he'd hoped for, but thankfully we were able to talk to him to help him through his disappointment. 

Can you guess how I went with reading through the magazine proofs? Maybe I should have found a quieter place, but I could barely muster the intense concentration needed to read at this level of mistake-finding for longer than a few sentences. Actually there really wasn't anywhere else to go. Outside was blustery and cold and the venue we were in was just a gym, not much else. Eventually I gave up and reluctantly messaged my design team telling them I wouldn't get to this until the next day. 

Four of the five CAJ mums that were there supporting our wrestlers!

At that point things were heating up at the meet as we headed into semis then finals. What was disappointing was the number of guys in our team who didn't wrestle as well as we would have liked, that hurts. It's not just our boy we enjoy watching, we barrack for all of the team members and seeing them sell themselves short is sad. 

We had a good number of parents there too, being one of the closer meets to CAJ. That made for an even more enjoyable day. Especially for us mums.

The trophy and medal.

But our son made it through all his matches all without loss and I could hardly believe it when he won that last match, making him "Beast of the East champion" for his weight category. 

It seems a bit of a dream that he is succeeding like this this year. After weathering disappointments over and over in previous years, it's taking some digesting. I'm so happy for him, he's worked hard for a long time. Make no mistake, this is a tough sport. I think the hardest is mentally. In training he is regularly pushed to the point of being overwhelmed. So this success makes me emotional. 

But wait, there was more. After all the medals were given out there was one thing left on the awards table, a large trophy. We assumed it was a team award, but had been specifically pre-warned by the home team's coach to be ready for a surprise. Our son was named Outstanding Wrestler of the meet, an award voted on by the coaches. There were so many very good wrestlers there that I find this award coming to our boy quite amazing. 

But oh so proud!

And it means I'm looking forward to our trip to Korea, even more. 

ANZAC Slice became Protein Bars

We've been "running" since Friday morning with little break. Most of it good and some of it exciting, but for now I've got a magazine to check before it goes to the printer tonight, so I thought I'd share a recipe.

In the ongoing effort to provide portable, nutritious food to our wrestlers (and spectators) during meets, I modified a recipe the other day and it worked beautifully. We were packed like sardines into the stands yesterday, so plenty of people around me wanted to try what I'd made and it met with approval everywhere. Deliciously moist and chewy and not crumbly or dry, my ANZAC slice* became a Protein bar.

Here's the usual recipe (from here):

ANZAC Slice

Ingredients:
90g (1 cup) rolled oats
220g (1 cup) brown sugar
65g (¾ cup) desiccated coconut
220g (1 cup) flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
125g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup (I guess you could substitute honey or maple syrup, or any type of syrup in here, really, though the taste would change)

Method:
1. Heat butter and golden syrup in a small saucepan on low heat for 1-2 minutes, until butter has melted and mixture is well combined.
2. Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Add butter mixture to the dry ingredients, combine well.
4. Press firmly into a greased/baking-paper-lined pan (18x28cm) using a fork.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes in a 180 degree oven, or until golden. (Careful, it can burn quickly.)
6. Cool completely in pan. Cut into required sizes.

To make these into Protein Bars, I did some substituting with what I happened to have in my larder. I reduced the brown sugar a little bit as well as the flour and added in Protein powder (ours is chocolate flavoured and has a bit of sugar in it). I also added Chia seeds and Almond Flour. 

I can't tell you how much I substituted in, I didn't record it as I did it, but I was fairly conservative this time. I didn't have time for this not to work! You could add in sunflower seeds, nuts, even peanut butter and apple sauce (substitutes for butter). Be creative. The texture of the batter should be tacky and pretty easy to work with (not too dry or too sticky). It holds together well, so should hold together whatever you decide to add, as long as you don't add in too much.

They are filling, more so than a usual biscuit, I'd venture to say. Not a substitute for good food, but a slightly more healthy snack. A lot of homemade granola bars need to be kept in the fridge to stay together, but these don't, that's what was particularly attractive to me about them.


*Background: ANZAC is short for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, see my post here about the special day called ANZAC Day in April. The connection between the war and the biscuits (yes, the Commonwealth-useage of biscuit) is hard to pin down. Here is what Jamie Oliver has to say on it: http://www.jamieoliver.com/news-and-features/features/the-history-of-the-anzac-biscuit/

Photos of our city #6

Wow, it's been more than a month since I wrote one of these. This post isn't so much about our city of Higashi Kurume, although most of the photos are from there, what is true about our city is true about much of Japan: there are lots of walls.

In Australia properties generally have fences, often quite minimal fences. Many have nothing at all at the front of the property. It is different in Japan. I'm not sure on the "why" of that, though one could guess that because properties are so small and buildings so jammed together, that people need to "mark their territory", though possibly for privacy too?

Most properties seem to have walls, usually concrete, or as you can see in the first picture here, concrete covered by tiles. Often a wall on the bottom half and a wire or metal portion on the top half.

Here are some samples from around here.

This is our back wall/fence and our neighbours'.

This is only about 100m from our house. Both sides are fields, one with a hedge the other with nothing. Those
concrete brick walls are very common on older properties.

More walls.

A neat little road that we walk down to go to the station and ride down to get to church. I love the built-in flower gardens!

Not sure why the sudden narrowing of the road here, this is just 30m from our house (our house is around the corner at the red stop sign in the "distance").

Apartment block.

Yes, and vending machines are periodically set into walls. As are community rubbish "stations".

This is a newly built house, with a minimal wall, but I think privacy one reason they've opted for this type of fence. A six-foot fence would cut off any view from the windows and light would be minimised too.

More modern houses, like this one, have no front fence. That is primarily for ease of parking the car.  This one has a covered place for parking bikes too (on the left)!

Music and prayer

Today, on my way to a missionary women's gathering for prayer and encouragement, I read an article by a missionary about music and prayer. It had only landed in my inbox this morning. 

I didn't have much time to read it, but skimming was enough. The author's style is not one I'm particularly drawn to, but she made a point that I suspect many missionaries can connect with: that most of the time we're worshipping and singing in a language that isn't our heart language. The words are foreign and often the melody too. It can make worship dry and our hearts grow fatigued. Then, when we do have the chance to sing in English, the emotions can come pouring out with tears. 

Many of you may not know what it is like to not sing in your heart language at church regularly. I nearly made it through the whole Christmas season last year without once singing an English Christmas carol in fellowship with others.

Our gathering this morning was permeated with song.

I see it in my friends who gather with us once a year for fellowship, blessing and restoration. They lift their arms to the sky, singing in English for the first time in months.

As we gather together, I hear in their voices a year’s worth of prayers held together with tape and glue, tattered through treacherous dangers, embedded – as we are often reminded – in spiritual battle. We let our worship do the praying for us. The words we’ve been missing for so long don’t dare hide the promises of Scripture, or the God who sees and loves sparrows and wildflowers as much as the hairs on our head. From here.

There were more than this present, but I didn't try hard to take a photo, rather
I luxuriated in being fully present with these friends, new and old.

It's fitting that I was headed where I was when I read this. Together with other, mostly foreign, women I worshipped in English this morning. I'm unusually blessed in this business as I get to do this most months at our mission gathering. But many do not. 

Still, gathered in an unhurried way with other English-speaking women, my tears still spilled over this morning. I couldn't even tell you what exactly the tears were for. But I suspect, as the author of the article above suggests, that this was an outpouring of prayer, of love, for my heavenly Father.

What's happening?

(S-cuse me, just a bit of thinking out loud here) . . . So today, do I write about a bigger topic like "failure" or "walls in Japan" or do I tell them about what's been happening here? The latter is easier . . . so I might go with that. I'll leave the other ideas till later.

Sunday was a recovery day, plus worship as usual at church in the morning. We also had an unexpected visitor for lunch, one of our OMF kids who's also a senior. I'm not always great with spontaneity like that with younger friends visiting, but older kids are just great.

The afternoon was largely spent relaxing. Two boys went to youth group and the rest of us just hung out.

Monday
Monday it was back into work. I'd been battling the start of a cold, so I was feeling particularly sluggish (the below-freezing temps outside didn't help). So I pulled out of two prayer meetings and stayed home. I worked quietly at my desk most of the day except for a quick ride to fill the pantry. Oh, and a dental check-up after school with our 11 y.o., but our dentist is at the station, less than a kilometre walk.

Korea

Where three of us are headed a month tomorrow.

Last night I ended up in the middle of a texting-blizzard. Two wresting-parent friends and I were trying to figure out a good package to fly to Korea and stay in hotels for the wrestling tournament next month. It's not something I've done much of: dealing with tour packages or, believe it or not, foreign travel! At least I've travelled a little, but not on my own. I've mostly travelled in a group or with an organisation where the responsibility of finding and organising transport, accommodation, flights etc has usually not been mine.

It seems as though it's been pretty much settled, now, though. I just need to pay for it! Travelling to Korea from here seems to be cheaper than travelling internally in Australia, or at least equivalent! It's certainly faster to get there than it is to travel from the east to west coast of Australia: 2 hrs 40 min (but about the same time as Brisbane to Melbourne). But we do have significant transfer time between home and the airport here and the airport and the hotel there (two hours both ends).

Getting around in a country where you don't speak the language is always interesting. We could have some adventures. But we'll be spending most of our time on or near the US air force base, so I presume we'll find a fair bit of English around. 

I'm excited about this little adventure. Three days of wrestling is going to be a treat, but also a tad exhausting, plus the travel that I always find tiring. I don't think I'll be ready to report for work on Monday morning (we get back late on Sunday night).

Confession: I'm feeling a little nervous about Korean food. I've never had kimchi! But it is the seventh Asian nation that I'll get to add to my "stayed in" list. Actually, truth is, the seventh country, outside of Australia, that I've ever stayed in. That's right: I've never been out of Asia, especially if you consider Australia geographically a part of Asia.

Second confession: David and I are both leaving the country for this and leaving our youngest two with friends (David's an assistant coach and gets to stay with the team on base, unlike the rest of us parents). Actually the only way we're managing this is because one of our friends will have our two younger boys to stay for the four nights David and I are away. Actually more than half of their family is also going to Korea. Two of their three boys are in the Varsity team (A team) and their mum is travelling with me. So the four of the ten of us who aren't going to Korea get to hang out together here. I think I might have to give them some money for having our boys for five days! At least to cover the food.

What else I did today
Aside from doing that, today, I've been working on editing (and helping someone else edit) for both the Winter and Spring issues of the magazine. In fact I got myself so mixed up that when I sat down to write my editorial for the Spring issue, I put stuff in there that is relevant to the Winter issue! Thankfully I figured that out pretty quickly.

My breathing is a little tight, but I am not coughing often and my cold hasn't moved past the mild zone, for that I'm very thankful. Working quietly at home and sipping honey and lemon drinks seems to have been all I needed this time to avoid a worse incursion of the dreaded cold-turned-asthma flare. Hopefully my day out with missionary friends for prayer and fellowship tomorrow will not reverse the effect of these quiet days.

Tonight I'm not cooking dinner. Indeed I've decided not to cook dinner on Tuesday nights until the wrestling season is over (4 ½ more weeks). Thanks to the inter school basketball schedule, we have basketball matches at CAJ every Tuesday for a number of weeks. That always means "concessions", which is a temporary shop in the gym foyer with both main-meal food as well as snacks that's run by the senior class. Our family loves to have dinner there, though it is quite scattered, you do meet various random people from the CAJ community. It's also helping raise money for the senior trip to Thailand in March.

Slice of heaven on Friday mornings

I wondered what I was going to write about today. After two posts full of wrestling (and a head full of wrestling) it is hard to think of anything else! But this photo was posted on Facebook today and it's perfect.

These are some of the praying mums at CAJ. First-up on Friday mornings I often go to an all-school parent prayer meeting, schedule and workload permitting. Sometimes I struggle with wanting to go, prayer is never easy. But I'm usually blessed by praying with others. Here we have a slice of heaven from last Friday (except the lone man is behind the camera at this moment): six nationalities—Japan, USA, South Africa, Hong Kong, Korea, Philippines, and Australia. And often at least Japanese and English, if not Korean can be heard as we pray together.

I can imagine that if I had never left Australia (something that is actually quite hard to imagine), at this stage in my life most of my friends would have been very similar to me. Moving away from all that was familiar when I was 27 was super difficult, like a form of death. However what an amazing life God's given me in exchange. I'm so thankful that I'm constantly challenged by being surrounded by people who have such different backgrounds to me. Not easy at all, but really good for me. 

The one thing all of the above ladies share is faith in the Lord of the Bible. That is a huge common bond.

Oh, and I was not wearing a red skirt. That is my jacket, warming my legs.

The lowdown on yesterday's day of wrestling

Sorry for the poor quality of these photos, I've pretty much
given up on taking photo. These are screen shots of the videos.
This feels like a retro photo. Our youngest son pinning his
opponent, something his big brother has done many times
before. Of course our eldest is much bigger now, so seeing
a younger, smaller version of the same thing takes me back.
The coach in the background is the same too: Coach Rudd
who patiently answered all our questions in those early years
of attending those meets.

Well yesterday, as expected, was a big day. We all left between 6.10 and 7am and got back between 4pm and 6pm. 

We didn't go so far distance-wise. 11km for David and our two oldest boys to the high school meet at the American School in Japan (ASIJ), about 45 minutes drive to get there. 22km for myself and our youngest to the middle school meet at  Yokota US Air Force Base. It took us about an hour to get there (longer to get home, because I missed a turn and took a while to figure that out).

Our school is at the top right in this map. These weren't our exact routes,
but are close enough to give you an idea.

This was the first time I'd seen our youngest son wrestle live in Japan. And one of the few times I've missed our eldest son wrestle in Japan. 

Our eldest son piling on the points in his second match
yesterday. These two have opposed one another many times
in the last two seasons. They've both won, so the outcome
is never certain. However our son has not been beaten by
him yet this season.

It was like going back in time, just a little. We cut our teeth in wrestling on two seasons of middle school meets. Going back to that was indeed interesting. Middle school meets are less intense and slower paced. 

But I missed sharing the day with my veteran-high-school-wrestling-parent-friends. We had a lot of parents at the middle school meet (eight parents for seven kids plus the coach), but most were at their first or second meet watching their brand-new young wrestlers. But it was fun to help them understand some of what was going on, like how a ref decided who won in the case of a match finishing in a tie. Or why a wrestler might do the move you can see our eldest doing in the lower photo here: grabbing the opponents legs and flipping them over.

However, those same high-school-parent friends were messaging me with regular updates from the high school meet. One even did a Live video on Facebook with our son's most challenging bout (the lower photo is a screenshot from that bout) and I watched it in the foodcourt at the air base just before we left for home. So encouraging to have friends do that!

The surprise for me yesterday were the girls. This is the first time we've had a female middle school team and only the third year we've had them in the high school team. They added so much life to the team yesterday. The boys were all pretty quiet and keeping to themselves, but the girls were interactive and bubbly. I've often felt a bit lonely as one of the few females around (though having enthusiastic mum-friends coming in the last year has been wonderful). I'm okay with hanging with "the guys" but yesterday was delightful.

Not just joy and personality, but they were so intelligent about their wrestling. They were asking questions, analysing the bouts gone, and planning ahead for the coming ones. Always learning. And they were good. They've impressed others too. I talked to some of the female wrestlers from another school who expressed their admiration (and fear). Additionally on the end of one of the videos we heard (presumably) a coach tell his wrestlers: "If you guys wrestled half as hard as the CAJ girls do, you'd be really good. I'm not kidding'. They're mean!" They are very intense, but there are smiles as soon as the bout is over. They have great on-off switches. And they really enjoy their wrestling to boot!

I enjoyed the status of being the mum of one of the wrestlers that these new wrestlers admire (our eldest seems to be a bit of a hero...), but I could encourage them in the knowledge that his early seasons weren't spectacular. They could barely imagine that he was once 12 and in grade seven, skinny and lanky, and not winning like he does today!

If you're wondering, our girls don't train with the boys, nor do they wrestle boys in competition. I think that is something that's quite appealing to them (this clear line is not generally drawn at other schools). Not only is it not that fun for a girl to wrestle a boy, it's not that great the other way either. 

The lowdown on the results from yesterday are this:

17 y.o. son: There were three "duels" (see Friday's post), but one school didn't have someone in our son's weight category, so he school full points for the team by just turning up. He won his other two matches too.
11 y.o. son: He had a round robin competition and was in a four-"man"-bracket. He won two of his three bouts and got a silver. 

This afternoon I'm trying to rest in preparation for getting back into "real life" tomorrow. Though my body has finally succumbed to a cold, after three days of a scratchy throat and slightly drippy nose. Perhaps yesterday was the last straw? Unfortunately it isn't a slow week, but if things continue to go south (especially with my inevitable asthma), I may have to cancel some things.