A fun night out

Last night we stepped of our comfort zone (which is: staying quietly at home on a Friday night and going to bed at a usual time). Instead, on the eve of our 28th wedding anniversary, we went out on a Friday night and had fun. 

Start of the women's 200m.

It's five years since the Tokyo Olympics were supposed to happen and four years since they did and we sat at home in Tokyo watching events happen in our own city that we had had tickets for! Last night we went to the National Stadium (the main Olympic stadium—22 km from our place) to watch a session of the World Athletics Championships.

It was a lot of fun. I feared that part of it might be slow, but they kept us entertained for five hours! I only left my seat once. At times it was hard to know where to look. At one point there was women's javelin, women's decathlon shot put (both of which were down our end of the stadium) and some 800m and 5,000m races all happening at the same time, during which the male triple jumpers were also warming up. So much going on and so impressively organised. I love going to orchestral concerts because they are visually an absolute feast, and this was the same, so many things to watch.

When you are at an event like this in person there are so many things you can see that don't get shown on TV, like how they get the javelins and shots back to the athletes (remote cars for the former and a ramp for the latter). There was also a cool dude on a motorised unicycle on the track taking video of the runners in the back straight (the video you'll be seeing on TV). The choreography that went into putting out and removing the hurdles was also impressive.

The weather was also gorgeous. Finally the fiercely hot and humid Tokyo summer is in the past and we've entered into delightful early autumn. It was neither hot nor cold last night, even as we walked home at midnight.

A lot of the 58,000 people in the stadium were Japanese; you could tell that merely from the noise when their athletes were introduced or competing. We discovered that the reigning female World Champion in javelin is Japanese and we watched her strive last night to qualify for the finals in the competition to defend her crown. She didn't qualify, unfortunately, but she was well cheered for by the crowd.

This was early in the evening when 
the stands weren't so full, by the end
of the session at 10.30 there weren't
many spare seats near us.

But it was an international event and there were many foreigners too. Many more than we are used to seeing. Later, when we got on a train to go home, I watched a Japanese guy, probably on his way home from a work event, look in amazement at the large influx of people onto his train, many of whom were talking (not something common on trains), and not all in Japanese. He was sitting in front of where I was standing and craning his neck to see if he could tell which station we'd all gotten on at (he'd probably been napping). 

I'd not been looking forward to the trip home. I've had some very uncomfortable, overly crowded experiences late at night on Tokyo trains (and some not so great ones getting home from sporting events in Brisbane too). This wasn't so bad, though getting out of the stadium was a tad confusing, when the route we'd taken to get in was closed. The staff redirected us along different routes, largely by shouting at us in Japanese through hand-held speaker horns. But once we found the station, it was okay and many passengers got off our train fairly quickly and I ended up having a seat for much of the trip home, which was a good thing because I was definitely drooping at 11.45 on a Friday night!

Enjoying where we live

Despite having lived here for 20 years I think it's only just dawning on me that I live in this nation's capital! And that a lot of cool international-type things happen here. To those who see Japan as a travel destination, a place to see the sights and do the fun things, it might seem weird. But we live in Japan, we're not on holidays here and, like most people in the place they live, we don't do much tourism. 

And also, when we first arrived in Tokyo we had three boys under seven, and for a long time we just hunkered down and did what needed to be done. Rarely did we venture out to events that weren't part of our immediate circle. We didn't have the energy to go to events or take the family out for travel adventures. Most of our outings were, in the early years, to parks, and later (since 2010), many of our Saturdays were consumed by interschool sport.

But on the other hand, some people might also find it weird that missionaries do any tourism at all. Before we came to Japan we were given some excellent advice about missionary life. We were told to try to be as present as you can, where you are; to enjoy things you couldn't do elsewhere. That doesn't mean we love everything about Japan and only eat Japanese food, but it does mean that we'll happily enjoy an international event like the World Athletics Championships when they come to town. By the way, it also means that we rarely eat Japanese food in Australia, and we do our best to enjoy being present in Australia too.

We'd also been advised by a psychologist, as we approached having all our kids leave home, that we should spend more time enjoying ourselves! We're a pretty good team, but fun hasn't always been easy to do. I'd like to think that we've made some progress on that front in the last couple of years. And last night surely qualifies!

A bit of couple fun

Every time we go to Australia for home assignment we have a debrief with a psychologist/counsellor. A few years ago they told us we were obviously good at working together, but probably needed to rediscover fun. Missionaries having fun?!? Yes, we need to!

And it was true that we'd fallen out of the habit of having fun as a couple. When the boys were younger we rarely went on dates. We first moved to Japan when we'd been married just three years, and we had a very busy toddler. In Japan we had no family and it was just too much stress to find a babysitter, so we learned to stay home and enjoy what we could do there, like watching a TV episode from a DVD or play Scrabble. We’ve turned into home-bods, even more than we previously were. As our guys got older David and I have slowly gotten out a little more, but still often found going out too tiring when we were already tired from work and parenting. Much of our fun was as a family: supporting our guys at their sporting events as well as camping and holidaying together.

The last 18 months, and especially the last nine (since our younger two moved out), things have been changing. David and I went to several cricket matches in Australia (our shared love). Obviously (if you've been reading my blog this year) we went away for two months! Living on a budget, though, we rarely ate out in Australia—though it’s easier to do so now that we don’t have to cater to enormous sporty teenage boy appetites.

This is the first time we've ever been to a live
match of any sport between our two countries.
Japan and Australia just don't have many team sports
in common. One day we might find a Rugby Sevens
match to go to!

Last night we did something that felt like "playing hooky". We went to an international sports event: Australia played Japan in wheelchair rugby, a sport we’ve come to appreciate via the Paralympics. We actually had tickets to go to a session of this sport for the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021…but Covid…'

It was a lot of fun. I just wish I could have cheered louder…there didn’t seem to be many true Aussie fans around (they handed out Australian flags to Japanese people at the door, in a valiant attempt to support the guests).

Time out for a quick team meeting with the players on the court.

It's called the Shibuya Cup and the teams are playing four matches. Last night was the first. They gave us a booklet that showed the teams, and explained the game and the rules.
If you'd like to take a look at some of the action, it's here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JWRF/streams

Japanese publications are so cute!

 

We also were given these free cartons of coffee milk as we entered!

This little trip yesterday was fairly spontaneous, I only heard about this free event last Monday because I follow the Australian Paralympic Facebook page. I wonder what our next adventure will look like? David's got Christmas holidays coming up...and we have no family to hang out with this year, for only the second time in our lives. We'll see what turns up and what fun we can find.

 

Change is in the air

The dominant theme in my week has been transition planning at work. Yes, I know, I've been thinking about this for months, and rightly so, it's more than one complicated problem that I've been trying to solve. But this week I feel like I made it past a tipping point in the planning and was able to get some plans rolling. Each day I've been juggling my usual work with communicating with people (via email or video call) about jobs I'm going to hand off to them, or how their particular job will change with me stepping back. 

It's exhausting and has come a bit to dominate my thinking over the last months. And, while I'm happy to be making visible progress, I think I'll also be happy to make it past the planning stage into the execution stage and see a visible reduction in my workload on this side of the ocean, to make room for new things.

End-of-senior-year pressure cooker

I'm very happy this is my last time as mum of a senior at high school. It's a lot of pressure and life is moving like a rocket for these kids at the moment. There is so much going on in these final weeks of school (graduation is two weeks from today), that it's hard for us parents to keep up. 

I'll be very glad for these two weeks to be over, but there's a bitter-sweet note too, as these friends with whom they have forged something very special, will be scattered around the earth, literally. Kids growing up outside their passport culture find "home" amongst other people like them, so at an international school the bonds are often stronger than you'd usually find in a school. During times we've spent in Australia it's their school and friends from CAJ that they have missed the most, even more than Japan itself. This is a much more "permanent" goodbye to that relatively safe place. Our youngest has been at this school since kindergarten, barring three home assignments, totalling 2 ½ years. During his life he's said goodbye to a lot of good friends, but usually one at a time, this time it's much bigger. So grief hovers below the surface of the craziness that abounds at present.

My experience of orchestral concerts has 
always been people dressing fairly formally.
It wasn't so on Saturday, but we had fun
nonetheless!

Something different

David and I did something totally unusual on Saturday night. We went to a symphony orchestra concert downtown. It was a suggestion I gave him for my birthday present. This is something really enjoyed doing when I was much younger: I have fond memories of my mum taking me to concerts as a young teenager. It's not something David has done much of, in fact, we have only once before done this as a couple, way back when we only had two kids, nearly 20 years ago! 

The concert was held in NHK Hall, which has a
capacity of 3,400! It was about ¼ or ⅓ full. NHK
is the national broadcaster in Japan, and the 
concert was recorded for TV and radio. Not sure
when they'll broadcast it. And yes, we were 
towards the back (there was a tier above us).

It proved to be a great experience, one that is very accessible in Tokyo. We can see concert-going in our future. We're definitely thinking about how life will be different as a couple and pondering how we can make that a rich and full experience, rather than the rather negative "empty nest" tag that it's often given.

Surprised by a book

I'm currently reading a book as research for writing an editorial for Japan Harvest on a topic I know little about: singleness. The book is called Sacred Siblings. Two people recommended that we publish a review for it in the upcoming magazine, but no one volunteered, so I decided to use it to help me write an article that I feel incredibly ill-equipped to write.

The book is not what I expected. It is very applicable to all people in ministry, but especially overseas ministry (their stated audience). I've been surprised to find that my experience as a married mother has come up many times in it. Married women with young children and single women have very different stories on the mission field, and not always in ways that you might imagine if you've not lived as each. It's interesting to have that written out in black and white, I'm not sure I've ever seen it acknowledged in print. 

I was struck by a story shared by one of the authors about two teams she was part of: one had a majority of married couples and the other had a majority of singles. She noted how the majority (no matter the makeup of that group) had a lot of difficulty seeing and accommodating the minority.

I'm nearly halfway through the book, but am already glad I've picked it up and hope that by writing about the book in the magazine it is picked up by others in the missions community too, especially the majority in leadership (largely married men with children).

My role is about to change in this area too with the remainder of my children leaving home, I'll soon be a married woman without children in Japan. I guess we've been living in the middle-ground for nearly six years now: with one of our sons living in Australia. I expect that this change to just the two of us here will give me a different perspective from that which I've had up till now—I've never been in Japan without children at home.

And such are the thoughts that are rushing around in my head at the end of this week. I'm also keeping an eye on the weather. I usually do a grocery run on my bike on Fridays and we have a rain front approaching us, so if I want to do it and stay relatively dry, I need to hop on my bike very soon! In fact . . . it's already raining, which is not what the forecast said . . . so do I don rain gear, or wait a little, or take the car?

Good memories, no regrets

Is another wrestling post warranted? I do want to document that my youngest son was crowned Far East Champion of the 215 lb weight class on Wednesday. He wrestled very well and none of his opponents could find much of a chink in his armour. 

It wasn't our first rodeo, as you may know. We went to Korea to watch our eldest son compete in the same competition six years ago. Each of their journeys was quite different. Our eldest did a lot of off-season wrestling in non-school clubs, and also had a two-year rival who he had wrestled many times and not always won (though his rival didn't beat him during our son's senior year, he did make him work hard for the victories), so when they faced off in the semifinal and again in the final, the result was definitely unknown. 

Our youngest son hasn't been able to do anywhere near the same amount of wrestling during his high school years, for various reasons, including injury and a pandemic. He has spent a lot of time in the gym, though, building up strength and body mass. At the start of the tournament he was also unbeaten so far in the season, but it's also not his greatest passion, so in some ways the stakes didn't feel as high. 

Although no one told my body that. I had the same physiological reactions: lost sleep, messed up digestion, raised heart rate, general shakiness and difficulty concentrating. When I'm at a wrestling tournament, I can't read (and I'm a reading addict), nor can I even feasibly play a game; we tried to play Scrabble on the second day, but struggled. Two nights of waking at 2am and not really falling deeply back to sleep, plus two days of sitting in a noisy gym, really did a number on me. I was glad to not have an international flight and then travel on trains back from the airport like I did six years ago, but it's been hard to get back to work these last couple of days.

One way to tell that you're at a gym

hosting a wrestling tournament...

you find this on the back of the toilet

cubicle door.

It was fun to go away with David, even if it was for two days of wrestling! We enjoyed doing this together, and shared passions are important as you move towards a time when your kids all leave home. We made great memories and I have no regrets. Oh, and it was fabulous being able to support our son like this.

One fun memory centres around hair. Our son's hair is now wavy and long (below his shoulders), definitely tricky for wrestling, where you can't use anything but hairbands and product to secure it. His brothers have always kept their hair short, so we've never dealt with this before. I've never had much to do with my boys’ hair, actually! But on Monday one of the first things our son said to me when we saw him was, "Can you braid my hair?" Wow! I've had short hair for nearly 12 years and I can't actually remember if I've ever braided someone else's hair . . . I wasn't that kinda girl. 

Neither of us had a comb and my first go at it was straight after he'd warmed up, so he was sweaty! We didn't have hairspray and only two hair-ties, so it got messy pretty quickly after he helped a teammate warm up for a match (they use their heads quite a lot). He wanted me to redo it then, but we weren't sure when his first match would be, and I was already shaky. Braiding hair with shaky hands isn't recommended. 

I was particularly nervous that I'd get partway done and he'd be called up for his match. There's no waiting if you're called. It's something that new wrestlers (and their parents) have to learn about a tournament: there's no timetable, you simply wait for your name to be called, and it can be excruciating (and hard to figure out when to eat). Once you're called, you've got to hoof it to register that you're present and ready to go, with all the gear you need (in your wrestling singlet and shoes and warm-up clothes, plus a water bottle and headgear). This tournament was well organised and had wrestlers waiting "on deck" about three bouts ahead. A bout can last 20 seconds or over six minutes, but they don't tolerate delays.

In any case, I couldn't see myself doing a decent job of braiding his hair in that situation, so I went for a "first aid" solution. My networking came in handy: I knew the mum of one of the female wrestlers, so I went to find her and ask if her team (which had several girls with long hair) had any hairspray. She went right to work and found a girl quickly who dug around in her bag, pulling out not just hairspray but something that looked like mascara. It had a wand that you pull across the top of hair that is "done" to glue those flyaways down—I had to ask her how to use it. Her coach, who I also know, was sitting nearby quietly laughing as I explained how I only had boys and needed help here. She was great!

Well, it worked, and he made it through his first match without distracting hair in his face. Then we had time, and I had another go at braiding it and did slightly better.

The next morning when we met in the gym (our room wasn't near the team), I had a third go, before his final. This time I brought a comb I'd snaffled from our hotel bathroom and handed him some "action" hairspray that I'd bought the night before at the mall near the hotel, and instructed him on how to use it. Our boys haven't grown up with sisters, and he was only six when I cut my hair short . . . there are some things they just don't know!

It's a good thing the braiding was for practical purposes, not aesthetics, but I was pleased that because I was present I could do this one thing for him. In fact the whole couple of days was very much about being wholly present for our son (and his teammates). It was a joy to have the flexibility to do that.

Oh, and giving my sweaty son a shaky hug after he'd won gold was a highlight too. And he didn't pick me up, like he did his coaches!

These moments when we get to intensely invest in our kids are soon going to get more difficult to find. I'm treasuring them.

The good and the bad, and joy in the midst of it all

I have a lot to be thankful for this week . . . maybe I'm learning how to have joy in the midst of pain?

On the one hand, I've been weary and overwhelmed, and I've struggled with headaches all week. 

Playing French cricket with our UK friends on Saturday was fun.
And the sky was magnificent viewing: all day! It's not often you
get so far from other people and buildings in the greater Tokyo area.

But on the other hand, we've had some great things happening. Last Saturday, despite being unable to do our planned camping trip, and having some last-minute hiccups, we were able to spend the day with friends/colleagues. I was able to have a long weekend—a quiet day of just relaxing at home on Tuesday was very unusual, but matched with my family's schedule (school's Fall Break) and was needed. 

And, after months of waiting, we're seeing some positive changes in the local situation. The number of new COVID-19 infections is the lowest it's been all year. This week three meetings that have been online for many months have been, or will be, in person: a prayer and fellowship meeting with our mission, a prayer meeting at school, and worship on Sunday at church. 

All good, but also a tad overwhelming in the suddenness that it's all changed. We've also seen forward movement on a couple of fronts for one of our guys, which is very encouraging, but has made my schedule next week a bit busier than I'd like.

Another unexpected thing I've been doing this month is a daily photo challenge with Taking Route, an online community for expat women. The challenge is #thisglobalwalkoutside. Using daily photo prompts, expat women around the world are taking photos outside and sharing them. I've not been interacting much with the community, but been simply enjoying taking the simple prompt and searching each day for a photo to take (or one that was taken earlier) and post, plus something to write about the prompt (I can't resist the writer-side of me). It was something I stumbled upon at the start of the month and I have to say the results have been unexpected. My reflections have surprised me (as have some of my photos).

I have to say also, that despite all that I've had going on, plus a headache, I've been remarkably productive in even this short week . . . but that reminds me that I must get back to my To Do list before this working week is over.

Japan family fun night

On Saturday night we ran a Japan-themed family fun night at our home church. Of all the various up-front things we do, it's one of our favourites. Alas not many churches take us up on the offer to do it. Over the years we've done them in about six different churches.

The principle is simple: introduce people to Japan and mission in a fun way, with lots of interaction and activity.

On Saturday, we knew that people would probably wouldn't all arrive at 5pm when it began. So during the first hour we had a variety of individual activities for people to get into the theme: from origami to Japanese-themed colouring-in and worksheets to dress-up in Japanese clothes. The kids really got into the origami, but there were quite a few takers at the photo booth too.

Then we had a bring-and-share dinner, to which we contributed rice balls (onigiri) and coffee jelly.

After dinner the main programme began.

We divided the group into teams by playing "happy families" where people were given a card with a Japanese surname on it and they had to find the rest of their family.

Then we ran a slipper-chopsticks relay (pictured). They had to change out of their shoes into Japanese slippers, run up to the bowls and move five sultanas from one bowl to the next with chopsticks and then reverse the journey back to tag the next team member.

Chopsticks proved harder than the slippers, though David did advise them not to run in the slippers!

The next activity we started moving towards our theme for the evening: support. Each team got a bag with 45 plastic blocks and had to create a tower that would support this "Japanese missionary" (aka wooden doll). They did really well at this!

The main element of the evening is pictured below. One volunteer (a young girl) was our "missionary" who was first given a box representing "ministry". She was then given a lot of other boxes representing other things missionaries have to do, or need in order to function healthily, eg. visa help, language and culture learning, education of their kids, spiritual growth. Needless to say, she looked rather overwhelmed after being loaded with all that.

So we got more volunteers to take some of the load off her (I've blanked out faces for privacy reasons). It was quite a powerful demonstration of how missionaries involved on the "coal face" of evangelism and church planting, can be mightily helped by having others around them to help. It was pretty obvious that without all those other tasks, the missionary would have a lot more time to do ministry.

The analogy was continued when David asked everyone else to form a circle around the kids. We represented those who remain in the sending country and we support the missionaries by praying, giving, etc.

It was a fairly small group but we were hopeful that those who did come would not forget what they learned there. As our home church, it hopefully helped them to understand why we're doing what we're doing as support workers.

Speaking at churches when you're a support worker in mission isn't the easiest thing. People like to hear conversion stories, news about people being baptised. Teaching science and editing a magazine doesn't have quite the same impact. So we've been trying our best to raise awareness of how important what we do is to those who are evangelists and church planters. That what we do will help those who do those things stay longer and be more effective.

We have one other opportunity to present this to a church group this home assignment. Though if you're reading this and would like us to do this in your church (and you are in SE Qld), then do get in contact with us as we've still got some Fri/Sat nights free (or even mid-week nights).

So live

I'm still struggling to find some open space for swimming. That's how I'm phrasing my current "status" at the moment.

It's less than four weeks till we walk away from our lives here in Japan and move to Australia to spend half a year talking to people about what we do in Japan. Preparing for that continues to seem quite messy right now. I'm hoping that I'll have a clear run at getting my current responsibilities under control in these next few days, but every time I see a bit of clear space to swim forward, another "piece of debris" turns up to hinder my movement forward.

Today, it is email-sending difficulties. That always flusters me because when you send an email you trust that it goes to where it should, especially if your computer says it has gone and you don't get an error back. However I am periodically getting messages from people asking about an email reply that I sent and they didn't receive. That's a big concern when I've sent about 140 emails from four of my five regularly used work email accounts in the last 12 days (when the trouble seems to have begun). Yep, my work is very reliant on email.

It's easy to be flustered and I admit I've been there today. Then, late this afternoon, I remembered this article that I saw over the weekend: 
http://www.alifeoverseas.com/death-is-right-around-the-corner-so-live/

Here's a particularly good quote: 

Living and working cross-culturally is hard, and we often forget the joys of the little things. We need rhythms of rest and Sabbath to restore us, to remind us of how much we need the “sensible and human things.”

The content in quotation marks is a CS Lewis quote.

Though I know that it delayed my dealing with all the things I need to deal with in preparation for this move, I'm really glad that I spend my Saturday doing "sensible and human things".

Basically we "played". Friends invited us and another family over for a final get together before we leave. These are two families that we've spent quite a lot of time with over the last three years, socially, and at school events, especially sport, as our kids competed together. Two of our kids graduated together last year. We've travelled together (one of the mums I travelled with to Korea with and shared a room). One family we've camped with several times. These friends have become something like the family you have when you aren't near family.

On Saturday we were invited to lunch. Before we left, David and I spent time in the kitchen together preparing some things to share (I made tortillas from scratch and he made waffles and a yummy chocolate, nutty sauce to go with). That creating in itself was therapeutic.

Then lunch was tasty and fun. I did not expect it to morph into an afternoon of fun, though. The adults played card games and the seven kids kept themselves entertained (eldest 18, youngest 8). At one point I video-called our eldest and everyone spontaneously sang happy birthday to him and several chatted a little with him.

We got home at about 5.30pm. My love-tank was full to overflowing. We'd laughed our way through the afternoon. It was the first day that week that I didn't take a pain killer for a headache!

We didn't get anything done to prepare for our move at the end of the month, but we were reminded to live, and in doing so, attended to our well-being. So as I continue to try to swim forward through all the cluttered water ahead of me, I'm bolstered by the rest we engaged in on Saturday.

A bit of fun with an outfit

This is a terrible photo, but I wanted to show you the outfit that gave me a lot of satisfaction yesterday. Underneath the duffle coat (I don't know what other countries call this kind of Paddington-coat) is a teal-coloured wool-acrylic blend dress. The dress I unexpectedly found in a second-hand store in Australia. The coat I picked up off a free give-away table at a missionary meeting in Sapporo many years ago.

I have been very conservative in my dress-sense most of my life. Growing up in sunny Queensland my main wardrobe staple was t-shirts and shorts. That's had to change, obviously, with age, responsibility, and especially with climate.

In Japan we've experience more cold weather than either of us ever knew in Australia. Even me, who grew up in Toowoomba, a place that many Queenslanders know is one of the cooler places in the state.

Learning to dress for the weather was one thing we did out of necessity in our first few months in the country, as we landed in freezing Sapporo in December. Long-johns layered under long pants, two layers of socks (at least for me), extra layers underneath our shirts. Boots too! And then, of course, the outside wear: scarves, gloves, hats, and coats. All these things became necessary parts of our winter wardrobe.

Less quickly I figured out that other seasons also had special clothing you could wear. The majority of the year in Tokyo is either hot or cold, the seasons in-between that are unstable and generally (to a Queenslander used to much less seasonal variation in temperatures) seem to be a rush from one extreme to the other. So the fun of dressing for the in-between seasons were largely lost on me for many years.

However, that's changing. I've got a variety of levels of clothing now. Different weight and length clothes for different seasons. I don't spend much money on clothes that I can't wear often (like a light jacket for early autumn and late spring), but I've acquired a number of very useful items on sale and from secondhand stores. I also don't discard clothes easily, most of my clothes get worn for many years before they are thrown out.

Anyway, back to yesterday. A short-sleeve above-knees woollen dress is really not my usual style, but it's in my favourite colour and is very comfortable. Perfect, with tights and a long-sleeve t-shive for dressing up on those rare in-between days. Yesterday was forecast to be a mild winter day (around 15C), which I knew would work with this dress. And I had an occasion to wear it—I was going to an annual prayer and fellowship day with some other missionary women. I threw the duffle coat over the top because when I left it was still under 10C, so an extra layer was needed outside.

My love affair with the duffle coat goes back to high school days. I went to a state school that had an inadequate winter uniform. Many of the students wore duffle coats over their uniform and it was a highly desirable item. But very expensive! So I didn't have one. When I spotted this on a give-away table it was a no-brainer that I wanted it. Finally, a "childhood" dream to own such a coat. It doesn't get a lot of wear as it is quite bulky and if there's a breeze, the gaps aren't so good (it doesn't have a zip), but I always feel just a little stylish wearing it. Wearing it over the dress was the perfect warmth combo yesterday and it felt just right.

Just assuring you that this plain missionary can have a bit of fun with her clothes and is increasingly finding that is the case as she moves further and further away from her youth.

Big park fun

Several weeks ago we looked at the Christmas break, a three-week holiday, and decided to include a big get-us-out-of-the-house outing after Christmas and NYE. The parks that our teenage-family can visit these days and have fun have decreased in number and increased in size (and distance from our house). One park we knew our boys could have fun in is called Shinrin Park. It is a large park an hour drive from our house and a bit of a blast from the past. We were introduced to the park by a friend I met when my 15 y.o. was at kindergarten! We've been here a handful of times, but  not since 2011 (with visiting Australian friends, who wrote a guest post that included a mention of the park here).

Location of the park from our city.

We decided that it would be even more fun to invite some other families with teenagers. Actually it's a good strategy for entertaining teenagers, invite their friends! That part of the expedition got a little out of control, but we ended up with three other families and nearly 20 people to enjoy the day with.

The flaw in the plan was that in order to get the most out of the day (it is such a large park that it takes a whole-day to enjoy it), we needed to leave early. Especially considering the temperatures these days. Once it hits mid-afternoon (around 3) temperatures start to dip and the sun goes down soon after 4.30. But actually the park shut at 4 anyway. So, in order to get there in time, we needed to get the nocturnal teenagers up for an 8.30 leave. They've been staying up really late recently and the early rise wasn't appreciated. I think one got about four hours sleep that night.

The main strategy for enjoying the park is to hire bikes in the park and ride between the various attractions. It has 17 km of riding paths, I rode 15 km of them.

Here are some photos from the day. In the northerly part of the park we found this dragon head.

And a lot of lights, unfortunately not so attractive at this time of the day (apparently these are accessible after dark, but we're not quite sure how as the park in general shut before dark).

Pretty cool looking dragon/Loch Ness?

A section of the bikeways. They are wide and smooth, great fun for riding on. But strangely the whole park is "ride on the right side"! Very odd for a country that drives on the left.

The view from the northerly part of the park.

This was the main attraction for the bigger kids (we had ten kids with us, ranging from 7 to 18 in age). Huge trampoline-hills. Unlike most of these sorts of attractions we've found in Japan, there is no age limit (so even I could jump on it). It was so funny that when I first hopped on I had comments from our kids: "I can't believe you're doing this!" But I've always loved trampolines and these are soooo much fun.

A fun place for wrestling. (No photo evidence, but I actually did a little bit of wrestling with our eldest too.)

Or balancing (these were the oldest and youngest of our kids).

 And more rumbling.

A bigger view. We ate lunch at the white dome place on the right. It was concreted and covered in artificial grass. The sun had warmed the concrete and proved to be a lovely place to sit. Thankfully this place was fairly protected. The day's temperature was around 10 degrees, which was okay if you were dressed warmly and kept moving (and stayed out of the sneaky breeze). One fun memory for me was sitting on the heaving trampoline with some of the kids and comparing how many layers we were wearing (one had two pairs of long johns!). We spent a few hours here.

Part of the walk into the trampoline mountains from the bike path. It would be fun to come back sometime without kids and hike around in the park away from the bike paths, especially in April or May when the temperatures are mild and spring is coming to life. There's so much of the park that we've never seen.

After the trampolines we went to the 24-part obstacle course. It is a little easy for our high schoolers, but still everyone found something fun to do.

Late in the day, the sun was disappearing. This pond had a thin layer of ice on some of its surface.

The other two mums who joined us, soldiering up another hill. Actually we were a little low of females. Nine boys, one girl, four dads, and three mums (though illness was why we didn't have four mums).

It was a fun day. We'd never been in winter and, while it isn't so pretty, it is much more doable. We've previously been in mid-summer and when the temperature is in the mid 30sC and humidity pushing into the 80s or 90s, it is hard to summons the energy to enjoy the whole park. Although there is a free water play feature that younger children really enjoy and make those conditions bearable.

It was also a great choice to invite friends. Most of us had more fun than we would have if we'd just gone as a single family unit.

Thrift shop fun

Here is my traditional post-Thrift shop post about some of the things we found to buy. At the end I've added some things I didn't buy, but were fun anyway.

Actually we didn't acquire as much as we might usually. Part of that is due to our kids getting older (most of the toys aren't so appealing), part is due to none of us being present during the "free shopping" time after Thrift Shop and just before packing up.

But we did find some useful stuff (which really should be the aim).

These aren't useful so much as whimsical. They've moved onto the window shelf in our downstairs toilet. The boys were mystified as to their purpose, but I explained that it was just a touch of decorating (something I haven't done a lot of in this house aside from pictures on the wall).

This has an amazing story. Literally the night before Thrift Shop our stick blender broke and I picked this up the next day for a pittance!

Already stowed on a high shelf—a puzzle for the Christmas break.

A pile I found in the corner of some things that our eldest bought. Seems as though he's planning to teach himself piano?

A picture frame for a certain graduation photo that's been lying around.

This was another huge bargain. Priced at something like 3,000 or more yen on Amazon, I bought a camera for our youngest son for 500 yen (AU$5.64). He's developed a recent interest in photography, what a great way to test and develop that interest!

That same lad explicitly told us what clothes he wanted, but not to buy them without his approval. Well, I didn't have a chance to get his approval on these before I bought them, but I scored approval later.

I found a new single self-inflating mat for camping. Practically new!

These I got for free in the five minutes of free shopping I had on Saturday. Three "new" shirts for winter. Skivvies are my staple clothing throughout the cold months of winter in Tokyo, I'm stoked.

Our eldest son bought this outfit (plus a "Sven" moose hat) for a dress up event at the middle school youth group he's a leader at! The boys could hardly stop laughing when he tried it on on Saturday night.

Our youngest son's purchases
Typically he found a brand name shirt!

This he bought for the family. I don't know how useful it will be...

Add this was his youth group dress up costume, complete with a leery wig and oversized sunglasses.

He also found Adidas pants!

This boy loves loud colours. Love the words on this.

And yet another shirt...

He's decided recently to collect key rings and Thrift Shop was a great place for finding them.

This kid is an artist and found some nice tools.

In case you're wondering, as far as I know our middle son didn't step inside the gym throughout the entire span of Thrift Shop. Too many people...hates shopping...and then he got a cold. But I did find him an insulated mug for hot chocolate consumption while camping (and any other time he might wish to use it).

Fun

The fun to be had at Thrift Shop is not just buying things cheaply, but having fun with people, particularly when you volunteer for hours and hours it's great to insert some fun into the time.  I enjoyed "modelling" a couple of fun hats on the two preparation days, call me an informal "moral booster" if you like.

Jessie from Toy Story. I wore her hat much of Thursday...it's been a long time since I've had a pigtail this long. It caused a little bit of an internal dilemma, though, when I had to go over to the school's business office to do some photocopying...should I wear it or take it off? I ended up wearing it over and got some giggles over there too.

These are the tireless workers of the Thrift Shop committee. Of course there were many other volunteers, but these are the ones who held most of the responsibility over the 4 ½ days we were in operation.