Giving blood, typhoons, and a cross country meet

None of these things are related, but constitute notable or interesting things that happened in the last week. Much more interesting to write about than the 30+ emails that I've written today as well as numerous editing and social media scheduling decisions I've made.

Giving blood

The blood donation centre is on prime real estate, looking
down over an intersection in the city centre that I've
crossed many times.

On my way back from Osaka last Tuesday I stopped at Ikebukuro (the nearest "big city centre" to us). They have have a permanent Red Cross blood donation centre there that I'd been intending to visit for some years. Periodically the Red Cross has been invited by CAJ to set up a temporary clinic at a CAJ event and I've donated a couple of times there. However, as donation was something I didn't find hard to bear, it seemed that I could do better than that. 

I've been a blood donor since I was 17 when I volunteered to go with a school group to get signed up. However, between "frequently" changing countries, learning Japanese, having under-school aged kids at home for ten years, and ill-timed illness (I was refused twice for medical reasons in recent years when I had the opportunity to give), I've rarely given in the last 20 or so years. It was time!

I have to say it was a satisfying experience. Not only did I negotiate this new non-English environment on my own, I felt like I was giving a tiny bit back to a country that has hosted me for so many years. Satisfying. Oh, and they have a cool vending machine which meant I got as many free drinks as I wanted, plus free biscuits and ice cream at the end!

Cross country meet
We've been going to cross country meets in Tokyo since 2010 when our eldest son first joined the CAJ cross country team. It seems a terribly normal part of September and October. Last Friday when I questioned the sanity of choosing to get up at 5 the next morning to accompany the team, I quickly dismissed the question. It's simply "what we do", no point questioning it. Our middle son is in the team and our youngest is a "team manager", the latter which is basically "coach's assistant".

I was happy when I got there: the venue is amazing, and I've shown it to you before (see here for just one of my posts). It's probably as close to seeing what "natural" Tokyo used to look like as you'll find.

A portion of the course that I walked. It all looks very similar to this.

This is such a tradition for us that I missed some "old faces" of other parents. Either their kids have graduated or they are on home assignment or not in the team this year for one reason or another. David wasn't even there this time as the school had need of a driver for the middle school soccer team and he was the only one available. So I busied myself with walking along the course when I wasn't helping "newbie" parents understand what was going on. (It helps to know that there are places you can walk to during the races to see the kids part-way through the race.) I managed to walk about 5 km through this beautiful forest.

Typhoon
Then on Sunday we had a typhoon set its "sights" on us. We watched it all day (an oppressively hot and humid day) and it finally started raining around 7pm and continued through the night. It was a noisy night as the rain pelted and wind blew. It was also hot as we usually rely on our open windows to cool our un-airconditioned bedrooms down just a little.

But we didn't cop the worst of it. Chiba (the prefecture to the east of Tokyo) did and they are still restoring power there today. Chiba is where Narita, one of Tokyo's two international airports, is located. It seems as though things didn't go so well there because public transport shut down, especially the trains, and many thousands got stranded at the airport.

Our monthly OMF prayer meeting on the other side of Tokyo (in Chiba) was scheduled to start at 9.30 yesterday, but the trains were all off schedule, and that left millions in quite a mess trying to get anywhere (not an exaggeration, from the statistics I can find, approximately 40 million train journeys are undertaken in Tokyo every day). So, with little damage in our area, the concern for getting to the meeting was about how crowded the trains would be and if they were running at all. I deliberately set out late and took a different route to usual and made it there fine (if a bit hot and bothered as it was very hot and I ended up at a station 1.4km from our HQ). Some people intending to come never made it, purely because of train problems.

There were thousands without power yesterday and even this morning. A colleague's son got to skip school for a second day running because power was yet to be restored to the school. That sounds lovely, until you realise that many were without power to keep them cool in the mid-30˚C temperatures.

The rest of my week is not shaping up to be anything nearly as exciting as any of the above, though we do have another early rise on Saturday for cross country.