Challenging encounters

Coming back into Australia often feels like a cross cultural encounter. Beyond the obvious cultural differences, it's the deeper stuff that is more challenging, especially because others don't usually expect that we have a different perspective on things because we look and sound (mostly) Australian. 

These trees on my parents block remind me it's been a
long time since I grew up here. As a young adult on holidays
from uni I used to mow around these two
big trees—they were saplings.

This is a strange cross-cultural challenge, though, because some things remain the same others change. New ones appear and old things get an unexpected twist on them. Each time we come back for an extended period we tiptoe around a bit, trying to figure out what's changed. We try to spend time asking questions and listening. Sometimes that's hard because some people want to hear all about what we've been doing, but every now and then we can get people to talk about what's going on in Australia and get a feel for the lay of the land.

Topical hotspots
We've discovered that Australia has a number of topical hotspots at present. At the risk of opening some pandora boxes, they include:

• Plastic bags
• Gender
• Gay marriage
• Drought and farmer assistance (Australia's in the midst of a significant drought and metro areas have just realised, resulting in a lot of "save the farmers" type campaigns and includes blame casting.)
• Abortion (which is situated in a different political/religious climate to the US, it is nowhere near the political hotspot here as it is there)
• Refugees (this has been around longer)
• Anti-vax (which has also been around longer, but has had a financial impact on us as it's now a requirement by the government for our kids to have certain vaccinations that are hard or impossible to get in Japan, if they don't we lose out on some financial benefits that could be ours as low-income earners)

There are more, including a bunch of political issues. I'm also sure that I'm not keen to try to figure it all out. Not because I'm an irresponsible citizen, but I have to acknowledge that we have our limits and dealing with all that we have on our plates at present is plenty. It's also usually enough to seek to weather the conversations our own situation dredges up. 

Here are some real examples from recent weeks:

Japan and cars
Yesterday someone taking our money at the gym wanted to know if we wanted membership and we declined citing that we were moving at the end of the year. "Where to?" he asked.
We sighed, we'd been trying to avoid this.
"Japan"
"Oh cool...they have great cars there."
I have to say I've never had a conversation about the great cars of Japan . . . it's surely not my area of strength. But we heard plenty from him . . . before we finally got to go and work out.

Japan and bikes
When I came back in February and accompanied my son as he bought a bike for commuting to uni, we had a conversation about bikes with one of the staff. He was fascinated with hearing our experiences of using bikes in Japan. His knowledge had been much more of a serious cyclist, but we gave him an insight into daily life with bikes as a "commoner".

"Oh, you've lived in Japan . . . I've been to... (read here an unrecognisable name) what an amazing place!"
This is a more common conversation with a stranger when they discover where we spend most our time. The place name we often have to strain to recognise because we really don't have the Australian accent on Japanese words down pat yet. Japanese has only five vowel sounds and typically Australian mangle these, making many words very difficult to recognise without context. Needless to say, we try to go with the flow on a conversation that starts like this. Usually they aren't too hard to make it through, although if we stay at this point in a conversation too long I'll be cringing inside because I know that people have only seen the surface of Japan: the beautiful front that this nation puts up for visitors.

"Japs"
Believe it or not, I had a conversation with a very earnest young Christian man the other day who used this word as casually and neutrally as he might say "postie" (or postman for non-Aussie readers). I was shocked as I'd consider this an insult, but thankfully he moved on quickly.

Language changes
This relates to words we don't use in our family, words we consider crass or dishonouring to God. Some of these words have made it into polite conversation while we were gone. Our kids brace themselves at school because the language there is often cruder than they are used to hearing.

Odd conversations
There's the odd conversation that leaves me speechless. Something, if you've ever met me after breakfast, will find hard to believe. I can usually dredge up something!

I'm still staggered by an awkward conversation I had with a community nurse a few weeks back. As part of our routine medicals we have to have fasting blood tests. These I hate. A breakfast meeting is not something I volunteer for because I really can't make decisions before I eat (hence I eat pretty much the same thing for breakfast every day) and good conversation is really not  on the cards.

It all started off badly when the nurse asked, "So how are you this morning?"

I responded with an attempt of realistic humour: "I've not had breakfast or coffee yet..." 

She had no response to that at all. We fenced back and forth without finding any traction at all, on any topic. Towards the end of our encounter I tried again:

"It's a bit cloudy today."

She grabbed hold with both hands on this one and went, in almost one breath, from, 
"I wonder if it will rain." 
to
"The Chinese are going to take over our country because the farmers are selling out."

Quickly followed by, "What's your opinion?"

I was speechless. 

In my fragile, pre-breakfast state I was not about to step on this landmine. (Did I have an opinion?). I had the presence of mind to just mumble, "It's a complicated issue." And escape as fast as I could to get some food and coffee.

Conversations is what we mostly do
Conversations are the mainstay of what we do here. You might think it is up-front meetings, but that's just the most visible bits. But in fact, if you add up how much time we spend standing up in front of a large group vs one-on-one conversations with people you'll find the ratio is very much in favour of the latter. In the last six weeks we've spent less than 45 minutes in front of a congregation at worship services on Sunday mornings. We've already spent many hours talking to people—about mission, Japan, and our lives—before and after such events, as well as over coffee or meals or other occasions.

But obviously, from what I've written above, conversations that aren't even missions-related, conversations that are just part of our everyday interactions with the society around us can be treacherous. 

Do pray that we'd be wise. That we'd gain something of an understanding about this land that used to be so familiar to us, but has changed, and continues to change. Pray for our boys too. Australia is even more foreign to them. They've not grown up here and, at times, aren't sure how Aussie they are at all as they observe everyone around them.