Our local area

This is Six Mile Creek, still running despite how dry everything is. We've
had short, light showers only a couple of times since we arrived six weeks ago.

We've landed in a delightful area that I didn't know existed, though we've driven past many times. We're in basically in the same area as last time, just 6 km west in a neighbouring suburb. This suburb, Collingwood Park, is about 30 km south-west from Brisbane CBD in the neighbouring city of Ipswich and about 11 km east of Ipswich's CBD. 

It used to be a mining area, though I can only find information about one mine in the actual suburb. The area has a reputation from an incident of subsiding land that happened ten years ago and resulted in a group suing the government.

In any case, there isn't any mining happening here now, but there is nearby bushland to roam about in. In researching a little for this post I discovered the suburb has only a bit more than six thousand people living here. Population density is distinctly lower than what we're used to. Where we live in Tokyo there are more people per square kilometre than there is in this whole suburb. 

We're still close enough to major roads, though, so it's a convenient spot to be located for these months. The Ipswich motorway, a major east-west road, is only six minutes from our front door. School for our youngest is only six kilometres or 10 minutes away. Yesterday I drove to a doctor's clinic 27 kilometres away and it took me well under an hour. Granted I wasn't driving at peak commuting times, but it still surprises me how easy it is to get around in this spacious city. The roads are wide too, driving on them isn't so much a "dodge-em" exercise as it can be on the tiny roads in Tokyo. It's a good thing that driving isn't nearly so stressful as driving can be in Tokyo as we're doing whole heap more than we usually do. We can reach several decent shopping centres within 20 minutes by car, including a large grocery store just down the road (1.5km, which in Australian terms is very close).

Below is the view from our front door. The road seems a long way away! We can't quite see the horizon, but there's plenty of sky. Out behind our house is scrubland. So from our windows we can see gum trees in most directions.

Below is a Jacaranda tree in the car park of our home church (located just five minutes drive from our house). Church does have a car park, something we don't have in Tokyo.

A beautiful "mackerel sky" spotted last week at our local gym, where we're all exercising at least once, if not twice a week—it's between our house and the school.

I just love the blue skies (even though I know that means no rain). That blue is so common here that you can take it for granted...unless you've lived overseas. In Tokyo we rarely see such blue sky. 

This is a eucalyptus tree (colloquially known as "gum trees" in Australia) in the scrub behind our house.

Mixed thoughts on home assignment

It was a lovely weekend. Without an athletics meet to spend all day at on Saturday, we were left with a much slower-paced weekend than we've had since early April. I did some guilt-free relaxing. I started this email, but never got to finish it. Watched two movies and another episode of Downton Abbey. Slept in! Finished a book, started another. Did a little bit of baking. Played games on my phone. Chatted with our eldest son. Tried a little bit of paper craft (but didn't finish).

But with extra time comes time to think. Especially, in our case, time to think about what needs to be done in preparation for leaving for Australia.

Home assignments
I'm working at finishing up things or finding people to hand work tasks over to. I've got a meeting tomorrow that will hopefully sort out some of my OMF social media responsibilities. But work-wise, I'm not yet quite at a place that I've got much spare time for the preparation of materials we'll need only a couple of weeks after we arrive when we start speaking at meetings and churches. However, that extra time is close, especially when our weekends are much free-er from now on.

This is the fourth time we've gone on home assignment. We're getting a little bit of experience under our belts!

The first time we moved from Hokkaido to Tokyo, via a year in Brisbane (2004-2005). That was a huge move as it involved starting over again: new city, new friends, new colleagues, new job, new baby (our youngest was born two months before we moved back to Japan). Moving out of Sapporo we had boys aged 2 and 4). We stored our goods in Hokkaido and it came down via ship to Tokyo when we arrived there a year later.

The second time (2009-2010) we also moved cities, but within the prefecture (yes, Tokyo is a prefecture, not a city). We had boys aged 4, 6, and 9) when we left for Australia. We had to store all our household goods for those 12 months.

The third time (2014-2015) was most similar to what we're doing this time. We were coming back to the same house. But we had full-time sub-letters coming for 12 months, which meant we had to reorganise our house and try to do a very deep clean. Here's a blog post from May 12, 2014. Our boys were 9, 11, and 15.

So this is the fourth time. We have only two boys again (13 and 15) and I'm feeling more relaxed than previous times. Possibly also because it's only for six months, which seems more like an extended trip than a whole year. If we don't get a deep clean done, no one will notice: as far as we know we don't have anyone coming for any length of time to stay. That also means not much packing and reorganising is needed.

But it is still a big thing: to uproot for a while, change many of the routines, and settle in another place, even if we don't really put our roots down there. I can't believe that it's six weeks today that we'll be landing in Australia!

Bits and pieces to organise
We don't have a house or car yet on the other side, but a house will be searched for by a precious friend in June. The spreadsheet about our household stuff is filling up with promises from our home church and others. And we continue to pray for a car.

Give me a home among the gumtrees.

We're working on school enrolment for both our boys (not so easy as it might sound). Also on lining up the "big rocks", for example, a trip to Singapore for professional development for me and then onto meet the guys in Perth for 10 days of visiting supporting churches on the West coast. My flights are booked...the guys, not yet.

Most of our church visits are booked and a variety of other speaking appointments are also in the schedule. We've still got lots of room for mid-week and Saturday events.

One thing, that might seem a minor issue, but I have been thinking about a bit is that I have committed to not taking as much of my wardrobe previous times. It just doesn't seem necessary for only six months. But that leaves me with, eventually, deciding exactly what I will take. Thankfully I can lay aside all my super warm clothes (clothes for day time temps below 10/15C). Queensland is a warm place, with winter equating to a nice mid-spring day in Tokyo.

If you're a missionary  this is an interesting article with practical ideas of ways to prepare for home assignment (or leaving more permanently), some of which you many not have thought of before.

Not to many emotions going on yet. Part of me is not happy about the upheaval and disruption, part of me isn't happy to say goodbye to our friends here. Another part is looking forward to seeing friends and family in Australia, and the freedom for me that comes with living in an English-speaking country. Part of me isn't looking forward to doing a lot of driving. Part is looking forward to the variety of things we get to do while away from Japan, including working much more closely with my husband. And of course a big part of me is looking forward to seeing our son again more often!

So there we are. No, we're not packing, but we're doing lots of other small and not-so-small things to prepare to leave.

Brisbane trains

So a bit of a different post from my sojourn in Australia. I travelled on the train today and took some photos of things that are a little bit different to Tokyo.

No ticket gates on many stations (i.e. a place you have to swipe your transit card to get through). You have to "level-up" and remember to touch your transit card to a "post" on the platform somewhere (short, yellow pillar in the middle of the photo).

Train stations with park-and-ride car parks, and dedicated drop-off areas. The former I haven't seen in Tokyo and the latter is uncommon. Also, the areas around train stations in Tokyo are generally really built-up, not necessarily so in Brisbane. 

As an aside, this train station seemed to be next to a train workshop and they appeared to be testing the horn of the yellow train you can see in the picture behind the cars. It was LOUD!

Inside a Brisbane train is designed for less people. Most Tokyo trains only have seats lining the sides so a maximum number of people can fit (standing) in the carriage. There are also many more things to hold onto in a Tokyo train, again, because many people ride them standing up.

It's hard to see, but also in this photo is a button next to the door that you have to press in order to open the doors. All the doors open whenever you stop on a Tokyo train—one reason that they are so overheated in winter, because otherwise it would get quite cold inside with all the door opening.

Ah yes, and the big elephant: many, many less lines. I didn't get a photo of the timetable, which reveals how few trains actually run on these few lines. Train travel is not as convenient as Tokyo. You have to be more careful about when you get to the station, so that you aren't waiting 29 minutes for the next train.

I was surprised at how long we stopped for at most stations. In Tokyo you get very little time to hop on or off for most stops.

Day three of settling our son into Brisbane

Another busy day today. We went out into the country west of Brisbane to access our storage container on a friend's relative's property. Found some useful stuff for our son, found some junk too! Amazing how hard it is for a 16 y.o. to assess what he'll want/need 2 ½ years later!

After that we had lunch with my parents and one of my sisters. They live west of Brisbane, so where we were was something close to half-way for meeting.

As beautiful as Brisbane it, it was gorgeous getting out of the city. I spent a lot of my young adulthood driving around south east Queensland in the area west and north-west of Brisbane. It's very nostalgic to be out there again. We had lunch at a restaurant in a park, and it was great therapy to gaze at the magnificent Australian gum trees.

On the way back into Brisbane we did some Op-shopping (shopping at "Op" shops, or secondhand shops). The goal was clothes, but I think we got an equal amount of books!

Then this evening we've had dinner with friends who have supported us in many ways since we first began this journey into mission. As former missionaries themselves (and the wife a former TCK herself), they have great insight and, as always, wonderful conversation.

But we're getting tired. Lots of information, lots of conversation, lots of busy-but-not-fun stuff. Transition is exhausting.

Tomorrow morning we're both taking an "at home" morning. Both of us have computer work to get done, but a slow start is sorely needed.

Sizzling Summers

It's been really hot this summer, but not for as long as usual (speaking from experience, not stats, mind). We had an eight-day heat wave (31st July to 7th August) with maximum temperatures at or above 35˚C. Since then it's been more mild except for the occasional spike. Of course the humidity has remained high.

This was one of the last nights of the heat wave in our bedroom. It was one
of the only nights, however, that I really struggled to sleep. I've been very
surprised at how well I've managed.

Because we've had relatively nice temps (only 29˚C or so at bedtime), I was surprised to find this on Saturday night. The humidity isn't shown, but it was around 89%. Just a bit hotter than we were used to.

Other than those extreme days and twelve other days that they were 34˚C or 35˚C temperatures have mostly been in the low 30s. 

What makes the summer especially hard to bear in Tokyo is the humidity. Average relative humidity commonly sits between 70% and 80% in summer, which is higher than a place like Brisbane. Brisbane tends to get very humid during the day, but that dissipates more at night-time than Tokyo's does.

My parents noticed that the nights are hot, that we rarely get a breeze of any kind (and they were here just before it got really awful), and that the houses are often hotter inside than out in this weather. 

The houses are packed close together, but I don't think that's necessarily the reason for the lack of breeze because we certainly get plenty of breeze at other times of the year. The hot nights are related to how much concrete and asphalt there is around. That effect is known as the Urban Heat Island effect.

1. An urban heat island (UHI) is a city or metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities.

Here's the heat index, which show that we've been living in the "Extreme Caution" and  "Danger" zone for weeks now.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index

The good news is that it's cooler today. My phone says it's currently 27˚C with 61% humidity. It was only 25˚C in our bedroom when we got up at 6.30 this morning, it felt almost chilly after what we've had. Our bodies have obviously adjusted. Friday was pretty mild at 29˚C,  but it was humid and a friend who's spent the last year in dry Seattle was very uncomfortable. 

How we feel about the climate is all relative! So it always surprises me when people persist in asking, "Which season is your favourite?" Because summer in Seattle, Glasgow, and Tokyo are obviously vastly different. Brisbane and Tokyo are much more similar, but I still prefer a Brisbane one.

By the way, here's a post I wrote two years ago comparing Tokyo, Brisbane, and Glasgow's climates, including some nice stats.

Re-entry shock: Bikes

The other day we had to drive about 10km to get to a bike repair shop! In Japan where we live, we could get our bikes repaired or serviced in at least three different places within 1km of where we live. We don't live in the centre of Tokyo, either, we live about the same distance from the main Tokyo CBD as we are in Brisbane. It's just that there are way less bikes per population here than in Japan. 




In Japan there are about 72 1/2 million bikes (about 57% of the population) and more than 10 million are sold every year (from here). I couldn't quickly find stats about how many of those bikes are regularly ridden, but I'd guarantee that it is more often than most bikes in Australia. 

In Australia the cycling rate is much lower. Around 13% of 18-39 year olds cycled in the last week prior to being surveyed in 2011. Around 8.5% of 40+ year olds cycled in the last week.

This is a great post about why cycling is so popular in Japan.

Look at this lovely big footpath outside of school. I still have
parents panicking about me being on this footpath with their
kids, like really!?!

Bikes here are generally more expensive, we've discovered. They're not really designed for mums doing shopping or carting kids to kindergarten. They're mostly designed for recreation or serious cyclists who wear lycra! I'm missing my Japanese bike with its two huge baskets!

Our family is a novelty here, riding bikes to school. It was the way a teacher opened a conversation with our shy middle son the other day: "You're the boy who rides to school, aren't you?" We've only seen one other student from the school riding, out of eight or nine hundred students! It isn't a local public school, however, and many students come from far afield on school buses or on trains.

More subtle culture shock comes while riding bikes. Australians seem to be more scared of bikes than Japanese people. Probably because they see less of them. I have heard, however, that Australian cyclists can be a dangerous lot. Here we have wonderful wide footpaths to ride on. I try to keep the boys off the roads (where the drivers are a dangerous lot who drive fast) but pedestrians can be a bit antsy about sharing the footpath with us. Legally we're supposed to get off the footpath, and we try to do so wherever possible. I had someone swear at me once for not doing so, even though we had a good two feet between us. 

The footpaths in Tokyo are, when they exist, usually much narrower and people and cyclists seem to coexist with a lot less angst. I guess bikes are more familiar to them. I even scared a little dog here the other day, it nearly jumped out of its skin when I passed it as it walked with its owner! Japanese, in general, are used to the give and take that living so closely with so many other people entails. Australians, I guess, are not.

Anyway, we're enjoying our bikes and working them hard. We're still riding to school four days a week, and getting stronger. In Japan we rarely ride more than a km or two and usually without much in the way of hills. Our suburb in Ipswich is much hillier and our gears get a workout, though as I get stronger I'm managing less gear changes.

Spring in Brisbane

This is our street

As you might have inferred from this post about summer earlier this week, spring in Brisbane is also quite different to Tokyo. For starters, its quite warm. This week it's been over 30 degrees Celsius every day.

But the signs of spring, an Australian spring, are still around.

They are lovely shade trees too, once they have their leaves.

The most striking, in Brisbane, is the purple Jacaranda tree. It isn't a native Australian tree, but there are plenty around and they are gorgeous. Beautiful in a similar way to the Sakura or Japanese cherry blossoms. They gain their purple flowers in spring (October/November) before their leaves come in.

Just as I love being surprised in Japan by the subtle pink flowered tree in random places around the city, it is the same with the Jacarandas. This is their time of the year to shine. Even better than sakura, they flower for longer than just a few days, several week. They also carpet the ground with their fallen flowers.

It is a common story at uni that if you haven't begun to study for your year-end exams by the time the jacaranda are blooming, you're in trouble.

I took this from the overpass at our local train station. I just love how
the trees stand out in spring. (Sorry, dodgy Smart Phone photo.)

That's our driveway.

Australian Silky Oak in our neighbours yard.

The Australian Silky Oak leaves when
they've dried up on our driveway.

The tree I wasn't so familiar with the name of is (I think) the Australian Silky Oak, part of the Grevillea family. I'm familiar with its leaves, they drop everywhere and make an awful mess. But I wasn't aware that they flowered beautifully in the spring, with orange flowers.

I never was a gardening-kind of person. Despite growing up with a mum who loved her garden. However, moving between countries has heightened my appreciation of the different flora in different countries. Spring is much more subtle in Australia because most of the trees are evergreens. But if you've eyes to notice, the signs are there.

What is summer?

I'm sitting in air conditioning. Yesterday it reached 40 degrees Celsius here and today was forecast to be the similar. When I rode to school with the boys this morning it was about 34 degrees.

This is spring in Brisbane. Sometimes people I meet in Japan ask about the climate where we come from. "About five months of summer," often shocks people.  Tokyo's summer isn't as long, but it is terribly hot and humid, even at night.

The heat in Tokyo ramps up at the beginning of July and sticks around, generally until sometime in September. Compared to Brisbane, where we're getting already 40+C temperatures in October and could be getting them until March, Tokyo has a short summer!  But it's brutal. Some of that is because with 30 million people occupying the Kanto plain, an urban heat island has been created.

An urban heat island (UHI) is a metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areasdue to human activities. The phenomenon was first investigated and described by Luke Howard in the 1810s, although he was not the one to name the phenomenon.^[1] The temperature difference usually is larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds are weak. UHI is most noticeable during the summer and winter. The main cause of the urban heat island effect is from the modification of land surfaces, which use materials that effectively store short-wave radiation. (From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island.)

In Tokyo, average maximums exceed 25 degrees for only four months of the year (June to September). In Ipswich (just west of Brisbane, where we're living this year), average maximum temperatures exceed 25 degrees eight months of the year! 

But the real killers in Tokyo are the humidity and night-time temperatures. Humidity in Tokyo sits at around 70% throughout summer. Night temperatures in July and August average 23-24.5C. Average night temperatures in Ipswich never make it above 20 and the humidity stays around 43-54%.

The other thing that isn't so easily reflected in statistics is that Toyko's heat, when it comes, tends to stick around at a high level, like a two-month heat wave. Brisbane/Ipswich's heat tends to come in shorter waves. So a few super hot days will be generally be followed with some cooler ones.

A while ago I mentioned on FB that I prefer a Brisbane/Ipswich summer to a Tokyo one and someone suggested that I'd forgotten how brutal Ipswich summers can be. 

But I don't take either summers lightly. It is so easy to get dehydrated in Australia's dry heat. Tokyo's heat saps you tremendously, especially when you're not able to sleep in air conditioning.

I was going to write a post about spring in Australia, but with the temps what they are today, I think I'll just go and sit at the water cooler and wait until it feels more spring-like again!

Re-entry shock tales

Some of you may be interested to hear of the things that shock us in this time of re-entering our "home" culture. You might be surprised at how many there are. 

This evening, for example, we were driving a road that we know pretty well, when suddenly it split and the half we were on took a dive under a bridge. We thought we were headed in the wrong direction. No one had told us that that particularly intersection had been radically altered.

Early reentry shock last week involved impressions like how much space Australia has, so many parks, so much space between houses and the road and each other. We continue to be amazed at this. But I have to admit I don't miss hearing my neighbour in the shower, or the guy a couple of houses down blowing his nose just as we went to bed.

Sizes of containers at the store: eg last night my husband was shocked at the frozen veggie packets. They're usually about 250-400g in Japan. Here the norm seems to be around 1kg. Our boys are getting used to pouring 3L bottles of milk again, after doing 1L cartons for the last four years. 

Accent is another shock. This is slowly wearing off, but most Aussies sound to broad to the outside ear! Our boys' accents are fluxing and changing too. I wonder how foreign they'll sound to their classmates when they get there. 

I have a subtle feeling that people might or might not be staring at us. They often do in Japan (very subtly). Question is, if they are staring here, why?

My middle son and I had to answer this question at the optometrists yesterday: "So what's it like living in Japan?" We were speechless for a time until my 11 y.o. finally manage to spluttter out, "Lots of people!"

McDonalds menu here is so different to that of Japan's. It's so much more complicated. My first attempt at ordering I had an impatient cashier who didn't get that I wanted a wrap with salad and no fries or drink. Her terminology was confusing and her manner not that helpful. 

Japan is terribly organised and rules orientated. Australia seems a little lackadaisical after that. In some ways that is refreshing, like being able to chat with the drugs inspector at Cairns about snorkelling on the reef. In other ways, like when we needed assistance with the assembly of a new bike and being told we have to wait till next Tuesday (the only day this store does bike assembly), was a bit of a shock. 

We asked at the boys' new school where we would park bikes, as we're intending to get the boys to ride to school as much as possible. The admin lady had to make enquiries about this. Another lady said she doesn't know of any primary kids who've ever ridden to the school (Grades 1-7)!

We found that driving home at 7.30 on a work evening, there were very few cars on the road. This afternoon we drove right across the bottom part of Brisbane (from the east coast to home in the east of Ipswich) it only took 45 minutes! Where is everybody?

We've also rediscovered that driving in Australia is much easier than driving in Japan. The roads are wider, meaning we're not dodging power poles (which are often on the thinner roads in Japan), or pedestrians,or cyclists, or dumpsters, or even other cars. Many local roads in Japan are only just wide enough for two cars to pass if the above common obstacles are absent. But you still have to slow right down to avoid scraping side mirrors. Intersections on these skinny roads often require careful manoeuvring, not a straight-through drive. Being able to drive almost into the centre of town (about 26 km away) in only 30 minutes (encountering less than a dozen traffic lights) is no less than a miracle!

The stories will keep coming. Stay tuned!