Processing our weeks in Australia

My husband and I have both found ourselves continuing to process our weeks in Australia, but especially the last three crazy weeks of speaking and travelling. It's processing that's happening in the quiet moments between other things . . . and in our subconsciousness (i.e. dreams...last night I struggled to pack for a return journey from somewhere and had lost luggage and a lost toothbrush).

Since we returned to Japan life has been pretty busy, yet fairly routine, especially after David started back at school and I got back into my routine editing work. So we've now got the mental space to do the processing needed.

Yesterday I enjoyed an afternoon puttering 
around our local area: the city we've lived
since 2010. I volunteered at school, did a 
little bit of grocery shopping, and met a long-
time Japanese friend. This photo is of the 
front of the school. The gym is currently having
a maintenance facelift, hence all the scaffolding.

The other day I watched an interview of a good friend/author. Part of his story is that he was medically discharged from the military, but not due to physical injury. This I knew, but it was interesting to hear him (with a bit of space since it happened) tell about the process and the advice given to him at the time. One of the things he was advised to do was to minimise chaos in his life, to seek out something of a boring life!

That struck me in terms of my own life. Missionary life can be full of not-boring stuff and plenty of chaos, especially at transition times. The challenge of living (even thriving) in another country is often not boring. Certainly there's plenty of stress involved at times. The temptation that many of us deal with is to fill your schedule with so many things to keep things interesting and make you feel like you're achieving stuff that you can report in your regular letters to supporters. 

And then there's the strange thing called home assignment. That's full of decisions, upheaval, and adrenaline-filled periods.

Overall, I'm grateful to be back into my relatively boring daily life here in Japan. I'm thriving with the household tasks of simple menu planning, grocery shopping, and making our own food. (Not that I didn't appreciate others cooking for us for much of our time in Australia.) I love being back on a regular daily and weekly schedule that we've been working with over the last couple of years. Though I do need to get some vacuuming done soon!

So what is there to learn? I think that for us, we need more margin during home assignment than we need in our daily lives in Japan. To us that looks and feels like laziness, it's uncomfortable as we're generally conscientious people who work hard at the things we're given to do.

And then there's always the deadly comparison. It's easy to look at what other missionaries do, and think that we should be doing the same. In mission circles everyone's heard the crazy stories that people tell about home assignments: "Yeah, we spoke at 52 churches in 20 weeks, never staying in the same place for longer than a couple of days, often doing two or three services each Sunday..." I exaggerate, but it's no lie that some people do incredible feats of travel and speaking when they're visiting supporters. I think that it's become pretty clear to us that David and Wendy Marshall aren't among their number.

When I find myself working with a lack of sufficient margin I need to remind myself that I don't need to perform to any audience. I don't get extra points from anyone for being super busy. What I mostly get is physical signs that I'm too busy and stress. And, I need to let go of caring so much about what others think of me. The only one whose opinion matters is God...and I can't do anything that will make him love me less (or more). I'm saved by grace alone.

We're back in Tokyo

This morning it's a week since we landed back in Tokyo. The last week has been a bit of a blur, however. We came back very tired and my health hasn't been superb. But all that is improving as we settle back into life here. We're very happy to be back in our own little apartment and slipping back into routines. It was wonderful to be welcomed back to our church in Tokyo and feel like we'd come home. While time with family and friends in Australia has been good, there is a joy in being known here too, in our other home.

Yesterday I drove to my friend's house in a nearby city to pick up my 16 potted plants! My Japanese friend has quite a green thumb and she's done a great job of looking after them. It's challenging, though, to take care of plants in pots in the midst of a Tokyo summer. Extreme heat with lots of sunshine stresses most of them. Our apartment is very bright, which is wonderful in winter, but finding places to put plants in the summer is a bit challenging (our tiny balcony and bay window are on the south side, and very hot). My office is on the north side of the building and gets little direct sun at any time of the year, so I haven't usually put plants in here, but have four of them in with me just now...and I really like them!

I also got a haircut on my way home from my friend's house. The hairdresser was pretty nervous about cutting my hair so short. Not many Japanese women have their hair as short as mine, so getting a haircut can be a challenge. (I now have a video I show them of myself with freshly cut short hair that makes them much more comfortable.) This salon is so much cheaper than anything I could get in Australia (about AUD11) so I persevered and managed to get away without getting it cut through our whole time in Australia, but it was getting very shaggy and feels much better now it's been trimmed.

I've been working on our August newsletter. It's been a couple of months since we wrote to people and a lot has happened. Actually, when I started work on it on Saturday, I found reviewing what we'd done in Australia quite stressful! It's good to look back and debrief a bit, though, because we'll have to decide what to do next time we need to take a home assignment (which, if we keep doing this every two years, will come much faster than we want it to).

David's already back at school too, and loving it. He really does love his job and this school, which makes me happy too.

But now I must get back to other urgent matters that have been waiting...especially the Autumn issue of the magazine I'm the managing editor of—our busyness and then travel and post-arrival recovery time has slowed up the whole process.

Coming "home"

The day after our son's wedding we farewelled our two younger sons as they flew back to Brisbane and then worshipped with my parents and two close friends at the church of our son and new daughter-in-law. They, of course, weren't there. 

We briefly farewelled my parents after church. When I say bye to someone I often mentioned something about when I'll see them again; this time we were able to say: see you later this year. Our plan is to visit for a short time in south-east Queensland during July. Mum asked if we had dates and I laughed. Despite the blog post I'd shared the week before about looking forward to 2025, we'd barely thought beyond that weekend!

Home, with a new tablecloth!

Then had lunch with our friends and farewelled them. I wasn't ready for the farewells, but they happened anyway. We then gathered our stuff and left town, heading four hours north to Cairns. Australia is a huge place with long spaces inbetween many places (Tasmania being the exception to that). If you've been to our native land and haven't figured that out, then you haven't seen much of it! It was a tiring journey, but we listened to radio commentary of the Aussie women playing cricket against England. We cruised into a very quiet looking Cairns around dinner time, watched more cricket as we wound down in the evening, and crashed on the bed.

The next morning we were moving again: to the airport and back to a chilly Tokyo. The trickiest part was always going to be getting back home from the airport when we were so tired. We'd parked in long-term parking and once again cricket on the (internet) radio helped us on our journey! (Yes, we're cricket-mad, and not ashamed at all.) 

The most immediate culture shock we had was figuring out what speed to drive! Yep, we've driven for nearly 25 years in Japan and in 13 days forgot that most driving is slower in Japan than in Australia. Quickly sorted that and we were home in 1 ½ hours by about 8 pm. It felt odd, but also good to walk back into our apartment. It's at the same time still new-to-us and very home-like. We moved around like we were in a dream, reminding ourselves that the most urgent thing was being prepared for David to leave before 8 am the next morning (Tuesday) for work, and getting some sleep.

Some Christmas presents from our
sons that we received before
the wedding.

I predicted that it would take several days to get back into the groove, and that is exactly what happened. By Saturday we were exhausted and very thankful for a quiet day with nothing at all on the schedule.

Now those 13 days in Australia seem like a dream, except that every now and then there are reminders from our time there: like photos, messages from our new daughter-in-law, and things that we brought back with us. As usual, things have moved on in our absence, so it has been a delight to have a few friends here demanding to see photos from our time away!

So, we're going through the motions, but sometimes my thoughts and soul are still catching up with where my physical body is. It remains true that the last 12 months have contained much change for us, and I think I'm still finding my feet in this new phase of life. Please pray that I'll be patient with myself and people around me as I walk through this.

It's messier than I like to admit

I kinda regret that I had to talk about our ministries to people in Australia. How many of you have to stand up in front of friends and strangers and talk about your job and why you do your job? It's one of the weird things that missionaries often have to do, and not one of my favourite things.

Why do I regret it? Because I said things about the past that sounded like I'd resolved them, that I was past all that. It's tricky to get up in front of an audience and tell a story about your life. You have to have a point and a conclusion. Sometimes to make that point or come to that conclusion you have to make it sound more complete than the story actually is.

So here's what I regret: I told a very brief version about how I came to be doing this pretty specialist job as a missionary (editing and publishing). The story I told was only about 400 words long and took 2 to 3 minutes to say. That's a radical summary and it's not that simple. And nor is it complete. Part of the reason I ended up doing this was because I struggled with learning Japanese and was asking God why he brought me to Japan. Saying it like that makes it seem like that was all in the past. The truth is that I still struggle (so much!) with Japanese and that I still wonder sometimes why God brought me to Japan.

One significant part of my job these last 23 years has been raising children, and obviously that is over in a day-to-day sense, which means I'm less busy (even cooking dinner and doing grocery shopping takes less time). 

I'm also sitting with transition within the two main jobs that I've done these last seven years: magazine editing and social media for mobilisation. With both these jobs, at present, I don't have as much day-to-day stuff to do as I've had in the past. 

I wish I wasn't feeling so unsettled, but the old thoughts about why I'm in Japan keep coming back. That's despite spending a whole year telling people we met in Australia why we were going back to Japan and fighting so hard to make that possible! The fickleness of the human heart astounds me sometimes. The other annoying thing is there's so much evidence that I should be here, that God's put us here again. Despite understanding that transition takes time, I don't really understand why I still feel so unsteady, and so grumpy at times.

Cosmos were almost the only blooming plants
in the whole park (aside from weeds). I took a
moment to enjoy them.

Then yesterday I took some time to ride to my favourite park—something I've been looking forward to for months. I'd been waiting for the weather to cool off a bit, which it did on the weekend, and then, on a meeting-free day, I hopped on my new bike and went on an adventure.

It wasn't the nicest of days. It was grey and gusty, with a threat of rain, and despite the much more pleasant temperatures it was a little unsettling out there. I headed to a small shelter in the park and ate lunch and later headed a bit further south to a favourite cafe of mine that I've visited in the past.

My intention during this time out of the office was not just to get some exercise and go to favourite places, but also to ponder what was going on in my heart. A retreat, of sorts. I've been thinking about the question of what God's got for me in this new season in Japan, but the much bigger question of what my purpose is as a human. The Westminster Catechism (shorter) summarises that as "to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." The New City Catechism says "God created us . . . to know him, love him, live with him, and glorify him".

What does that mean? I found an article from The Gospel Coalition called Enjoying God. It was a little heavy for my poor little brain, reading it on my tiny phone screen while I ate lunch, but still good. One Bible reference it pointed to was Psalm 145, which I encountered again at my next stop.

Then I rode to the cafe and, after a spot of birthday-present shopping nearby for my husband, I ordered a coffee and retreated upstairs (yep, it's a two-story cafe) and pulled out an old favourite that I've started re-reading: Awe, by David Paul Tripp. To my astonishment, the chapter I was up to was called "Ministry" and spoke right to me (and quoted Ps. 145 in its entirety). 

This blog post is getting a little long now, so I'll commit to writing a followup on it because it's easy to sit here at my computer and simplify the journeys that God takes me on, putting it all down in black and white as if I've got it all figured out. Doing that denies the reality that it's messy! I'm hoping to sit down again tomorrow with my Bible and a couple of books to listen further to what God is saying. 

Suffice to say, that I need to take a bigger picture approach to my life and ministry. My last 25 years have been full of the minutiae of raising children, the last 14 years have been full of deadlines pertaining to the magazine, and the last 7 years have been full of social media deadlines. My life has been very busy, and I've loved it. But change is inevitable and indeed necessary. I need to refocus my eyes on Jesus and remember that he didn't make me just to be a mum to my kids or just to have a schedule full of deadlines.

I'll be back...

Something to ponder: "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV).

What's it like, being in Japan without your kids?

Missionaries with younger kids are asking me: How does being here without kids feel?

A few different ways to describe it and I'm grappling for the best way. The most dramatic is to compare it to the grief of losing someone you love. You know they are in heaven and without pain. You’re happy for them, but still sad. You wouldn’t wish them back for anything. Like any metaphor this breaks down pretty quickly, but it does convey that there’s an emptiness in our lives, and it’s a matter of sitting with that and finding a way forward. They will always be part of our story, just not an everyday part. It's weird that we're meeting people now who have never known our sons, and often I feel compelled to bring them somehow into the conversation: they are part of who we are, they bring context to our lives.

Today I'm a little sad because its one of our son's birthdays. It's the first year that I won't celebrate with him in person. He's not a big one for parties, but we'd always have a cake and presents for a small family celebration. I'm not making a cake or wrapping presents today.

But if you think about it just a short while you realise that it is also sad if they don’t move on! It's a natural and expected change and when that doesn't happen it's a cause of grief too. A Japanese colleague pointed out to me that having them remain tiny and dependent is not what we want.

Parenting is all about sadness and happiness. Both emotions regularly occur at the same time from very early on: when a child begins eating food instead of drinking mum's milk, when they start school, have their first sleepover away from home, get their licence, finish school. All these evoke both sad and happy emotions for the parent. And often other emotions too like fear and pride.

And then there is expectations that we place on ourselves and our kids and that society places on us. When those expectations aren't met we run into emotional challenges too.

People working cross-culturally generally expect that their kids will move to another country after high school. Most of our expat peers here with adult children are living in a different countries to their kids. So in that sense it is normal.

Arggh, basically parenting is an emotional business, there's no way around it, not even not having kids.

On the positive side of things, it is wonderful watching our sons living life independently (even if we're doing it from a distance). There were many years when I wondered if they ever could learn to take showers (or go to bed) without us prompting them. But to be all taking care of their own basic needs (including feeding themselves) is nothing short of amazing, when I think about it. None of them have someone else cooking or housekeeping for them. None of them has someone else driving them around or keeping an eye on their schedule. That they are all functioning as independent adults is a source of great joy.

It must be said that there is less stress in not living in the same house as them: out of sight out of mind, is fairly true. It's not that we don't care and we don't think of and pray for them often, but we aren't spectators to their daily lives and so things that are stressors don't weigh us down like it would if we were closer. We are also not rubbing each other up the wrong way on a daily basis (living with someone on the autistic spectrum who also struggles with anxiety and misophonia isn't a walk in the park). I think we have more to give others as a result.

There's joy in doing (and eating) things that we could never do when they were here. Eating out has gotten more affordable, and so has eating in! We can be more spontaneous too. I still remember, as a young adult hearing that my parents has spontaneously gone out to the movies. It seemed quite out of character...but I only knew them as people who had children at home and they were discovering who they were without that responsibility.

Yes our house is quieter, that is mostly good. What's weird to me is that they all moved out more than six months ago and I'm still feeling the difference. We left on our two month sojourn just after they left, so didn't have much time to grieve then. Then we got back only three months before leaving the country, so there was a lot to do to plan and execute that move. 

Now it's all over and there isn't much to plan, not so much to talk about. That's weird. We've sat for so long with trying to figure out "what's next" and especially wondering how we'd be able to achieve all that was necessary for our guys to all move out and us move back to Japan without them. After living with that tension and stress, it's an adjustment to get back to a more "boring" life. Living life with contentment is obviously something I need to work on.

So, overall it's good, but there's no quick answer to "What's it like without your kids?"

It's been a lot of change!

A week and a half ago I came down with a cold that David had already had for a week. We’re both still recovering, though each day our symptoms are receding further. We both have chronic asthma that is well controlled, but at times like these, it's in our face and limiting our capacity; both of us have lingering coughs. I went to the doctor last week to get my regular asthma meds and he thought I had sinusitis too, so fun times and lots of tissues. 

A friend captured the proposal
from a distance (only our son
knew the photographer was there)

Last weekend I had very limited energy, but nonetheless we had an exciting weekend: on the Saturday (24th) our eldest son asked his girlfriend to marry him and she said yes! So we’ve been digesting that news and gradually telling people. I started this blog in 2010 when he was only 10 years old. It’s hard to believe that we’re now already at another new stage of parenting: getting ready to welcome in a daughter-in-law! (And we’re only just starting to get used to having no kids at home in Japan.) Of course, we’re not in the same country as them, so we’re now planning a trip to Australia in January to help them celebrate their wedding. 

Every now and then I'm amazed at how much change has gone on in these last few months:

• our younger two sons moved out and that has precipitated many big and small changes that we're still adjusting to
• we moved countries, again
• we moved to Japan without children for the first time (and yes, this warrants its own bullet point)
• after a year of both of us based at home and not working regular hours, David's working outside the home again, 8–5 Monday to Friday, and I'm at my desk at home for many of those hours too
• we've downsized into a small apartment and small car
• I'm learning to cook again in a smaller kitchen with a smaller space for storing ingredients
• our eldest son has made a lot of changes in his life in the last couple of months, and believe it or not that is taking a bit to adjust to in our thinking
• our middle son, who has been unemployed since leaving school in June 2021, has a job, a licence, and a car, and continues to surprise us as to what he's able to achieve
• we are adjusting to the idea of having a future daughter-in-law whose name we know!
• we're planning an unexpected short trip to Australia for a wedding in January.

There are a few other things, including changes in the two teams I work with in Japan, but I'll leave the list as it is.

That list makes me feel tired! It partly explains why we got sick and it's taken so long to recover. It helps me to remember to be gracious to myself when I'm feeling wobbly or weak, and that transition of this magnitude takes time to recover from.

But aside from that, there is so much to be thankful for in the above list and we're amazed at God's provision, his leading, and his care for us and our children.

It's been a month since we moved in

Moving day, four weeks ago!

It's hard to believe that it's been a month since we moved into this apartment, but the calendar doesn't lie. This is a simple, photo-heavy blog post with some before and after photos from the last couple of weeks.

It took a while to refine our new
household rubbish sorting system.
We have no outside storage, so it's all here.

This is how it looks today. We're pretty pleased. Two little plastic trays for paper and bottles/cans under the microwave. On the floor is a tiny "dirty" rubbish bin and plastic recyclables. We’ve also got

some extra (non-rubbish) storage in that little cupboard near the floor.

This was 10 days ago. We got rid of almost all our boxes: 
to a fellow missionary who’ll be moving in a few months
and in the “paper” recycling last week.

Looking tidy now!

More boxes.

All gone. Only thing left in this picture to deal with

is hiding behind the plant: wall pictures to hang.

I’d hoped to get this area of my office sorted before Christmas, but my
 amazing husband sorted it just after 
I last included this photo in a blog post!

Doesn’t it look great? And if anyone local
wants some metal cricket wickets…

Our new slow cooker arrived last week too.
We sold our large one last year and have bought 
this, which is more appropriate for two people.
I cooked 700g of pork in this last night and it was
so tender!

School started for the students today too, so hopefully we’ll get into more of a daily/weekly routine (and start remembering what day of the week it is again). It’s been over a year since we had the routine of David working at school, so it is a bit of an adjustment, but good. David’s been struggling to get over a cold, which to me shows this transition hasn’t been nothing. It’s taken a toll and we have to take time to recover, but that’s hard to remember some days.

Bending and flexing into our Japanese home

We’ve been watching quite a bit of the Olympics between other things. We watched both the men’s and women’s pole vaulting and they were amazing competitions for different reasons. The flexibility and balance of these athletes as they fly through the air is amazing. I feel like fitting oneself into a new living space in Japan also means a lot of flexibility and balance, though certainly not while flying through the air, although sometimes I have to admit that it does feel a little bit like we’ve lost all contact with solid ground.

There’s something odd about changing houses in Japan, it’s different to moving in Australia. I don’t know if Japanese people find this, or if it’s exclusive to foreigners (I suspect it’s somewhat universal, simply because of the multiple things you can buy to help…keep reading and I’ll show you some). You could say it’s related to small houses, but even places that are larger have their “oddities.” It seems you need creativity to make them into efficient spaces to live. Things that we take for granted in many Australian home aren’t always present, like rails to hold towels.

Last year one of our colleagues wrote a little about this aspect of life in Japan on her blog: https://memoirsofamissionarymom.blogspot.com/2023/08/trash-and-treasures.html?m=1

I love floor plans, it helps me (better than a video tour) to get a vision of how an apartment or house is laid out. Below is my English version of our house plan. I traced it from the Japanese one we have and added how we’re using spaces. So I'll put it here for you to refer to as I talk about various spaces (with photos).

We don’t really have a name for the area to the left of the word "dining". It has bookshelves in it, but no chairs, so not a library. Maybe it’s best called a multifunctional living area, as it could be an extension of the lounge or the dining area when we have guests. It’s the area we have recently stored boxes yet to be emptied, large rubbish (a disassembled desk), wall pictures yet to be hung, and empty boxes waiting to go to new homes or be thrown away. We also assembled our new furniture there yesterday.

For perspective, the lounge room, as depicted here, is 2.5 x 3.5 m. The toilet is cosy. I can touch both walls with my elbows while sitting on the pedestal. I can also easily, with my hands, touch the door and the back wall while standing.

The kitchen is very small, mostly just a sink, a stove top, and a narrow bench between the two that is 64 cm deep and 34 wide, with cupboards under it all and very high small cupboards above the sink. So we’ve had to get creative. This bookshelf has been our temporary pantry and place to hold plates and plastics. Yesterday we had three pieces of new furniture arrive, but the bookshelf is still holding plastics and some food, plus the bread maker.

This is our new plate cupboard (left of it is entrance to bathroom, right is the door out to the entrance and my office, furtherest door to right is our bedroom). We’re very pleased with how the cupboard fits here and what we've been able to put in it. It needed to be narrow to fit into this space. We threw our old one out last year, we’d had it 20 years and it definitely wasn’t new when we got it. It would not have fitted into this space. This piece of furniture came flat-packed (from Nitori, a Japanese furniture store) and took us about 90 minutes to build.

Another piece of new furniture that we built yesterday: a stand to hold the microwave/convection oven. It’s also got our tea/coffee corner, and spices and herbs on top, plus rubbish bins at the bottom. 

I’ve mentioned once or twice that the city expects a fair amount of rubbish sorting required of us, which of course means multiple bins. This is still a temporary area that we’ll need to figure out how to organise better, probably buying at least one more receptacle that will fit better into this space. 

Here is the kitchen sink. It’s typically large, extending almost to the right end of the cabinet. We purchased a small shelf that rests on the end of the sink so we could balance the drying rack on it. There is no plug; we wash up the water-saving Australian way (not continuous running water like Japanese people do), so we use a small washing up bowl. The curtain is a work in progress. I want to cut it down the centre so we can more easily open it to get more light into this area, I'll have to find the sewing machine to do that... We have a curtain because the hot summer sun pours in there in the morning (which will be nice in winter, if the angle is right, but isn’t nice in this current heat).

This is the three-burner stove top. What’s notable here is that we’ve added a small plastic-coated wire net in the corner (cost about AU$3) to hang utensils on as well as a more hooks on a rail that’s held up by suction caps. These save space on the bench and in drawers and make frequently used utensils easily accessible.

Here’s the whole kitchen (minus the plate cupboard and bookshelf). It’s a bit narrow, but seems to work. It’s very exciting to have this third piece of new furniture next to the fridge that gives us more bench (counter) and drawer space. It’s too high for me to comfortably use to prepare food, but will be useful for temporarily holding appliances like the bread maker, slow cooker, mixer, etc, as well as for helping keep the bench next to the stove clear so that can be used for preparation space.

The rice cooker can be used insitu here (Japanese furniture bonus!). But the mixer below it and the small food processor squished behind the mixer will need to be lifted out when needed. Two of these drawers are key pantry storage.

There are several areas that are still messy. We have lots of collapsed boxes and other not urgent things that have yet to find a home.

The cupboard in my office is stacked full. Some of this is destined for the school bazaar later in the year, other things need more sorting and potentially tossing. Camping gear is in here too, and probably needs more downsizing. A goal: being able to close these cupboard doors before Christmas.

My office. It’s getting there. I had one Zoom meeting here this week. It still needs more finessing. I have a love-hate relationship with desks and chairs. I find it hard to get comfortable, so I hate getting new combinations and trying to make them work for my body size. A footrest is one thing I need to work on. The chair isn’t quite high enough for the desk, but is as high as it goes…so I’m not sure what to do (I’ve got a couple of thin cushions on the seat at present). Some of the stuff on the desk would be better elsewhere, but it’s there for now.

So yes, a lot of literal and figurative bending and flexing. A lot of problem solving on big and small scale. 

All of this is, of course, tiring. Transition is tiring. So I’m trying to be kind to myself and try to help David to be the same to himself. I’m ever so grateful for so many things, including this beautiful apartment, good sleep enabled by air conditioning, and that we work for an organisation that knows how exhausting international transitions are. I'm still feeling a bit shaky and temporary, though anticipate that that will dissipate as time goes on as it has in the past. 

I'm sure I would not enjoy pole vaulting, as fun as it is to watch. I'm not particularly fond of the bending and flexing needed for moving either, but it doesn't go on forever! We'll solve these small inconveniences one by one or we'll get accustomed to them and get on with living! Life here will soon seem more routine and stable again.

I'm also grateful for this verse that reminds me that no matter how messy and unstable my life seems, I have a solid foundation given to me by God:

He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand (Psalm 40: 2 NIV).

Update as we continue to settle

 Another week has past and what's happened? We're feeling more and more settled. Our apartment is feeling more homey and we really like it. On Saturday we opened up most of the boxes with books in them and put them on shelves. That's always a turning point for me in a new place. Things were starting to take shape and we were getting a better idea of what we still needed to find to make this place work smoothly.

The sunny side of the apartment (south side). This side faces the river/stream/waterway that
we regularly walk along. It's a block of four apartments and ours is the top right of this photo. If you look carefully you can see our laundry drying on our small balcony.

This is the north side. Our apartment is the top left here. The window on the left is my office.

Bookshelves populated. So fun to see old favourites there.

David leaving the apartment to go for a walk with me one evening.

Reality checks

On Sunday we went back to our old church and found that they had had to scramble to find a place to worship that morning. The electricity was off in the main sanctuary, so they moved to the room where the Sunday School normally meets. A Japanese worship service was a good reality check. In Australia we're frequently considered the experts on Japan, and especially people assume we're fluent in the language. Yet I come back here and it doesn't take long to show that, though we get by, my language, in particular, isn't superb. I understood very little of the sermon on Sunday (noting that that understanding a long monologue is one of the hardest language skills). Two days earlier, I also understood very little of the official language involved in buying a car or getting us registered at the city office (David managed better than me). But somehow we get by! It's so hard to explain to people who have never lived in a country with a difficult language like Japanese how we can feel at home here, but also not be completely fluent!

Monday

This day we rode again to a nearby shopping hub and went to a homeware store, electronics store, and a 100 yen shop. We bought a number of smaller things to help in the shower and kitchen. Best purchase was a new rice cooker (we threw our 23-year-old 10-cup one out last year). When we rode home at midday, the temperature was well above 35C and we were glad it was just a short ride home and that we could have a quiet afternoon.

Wednesday was a big day

We borrowed a car on Wednesday and did a number of jobs, this took all day and involved several hours of city driving. We drove back to the place that we're buying our new car and finished off some paperwork that we hadn't been able to do last week because we forgot to take our inkan (Japanese seal, which replaces signatures on official documents). We also found out we can't pick up our car until the end of August.

Then we drove another hour to an area we rarely visit in a car: Shinjuku. It's much more inner city than where we live. There we bought a second-hand desk off a guy I think is from Egypt. I found this in the same way I bought a few things in Australia: through Facebook Marketplace. It was a bit dodgy for a little bit, though, because he gave us a location that was over the road from his tiny apartment and said to "ring the bell" when we arrived. Alas the location was another block of apartments, none of which had his name on their mailboxes. Finally he answered my messages (I think he works late hours and was asleep) and came out to meet us.

After that we drove back closer to home to a big second hand store. There we found an IKEA armchair for half the price we would have bought it new, but didn't find the printer we wanted. 

Our second last stop was at Nitori, our favourite Japanese furniture store. It has an open plan, so much better than IKEA. And the furniture is designed for small Japanese homes, so you're much more likely to find stuff that's the right size. There we bought a carpet and curtains for our washitsu (Japanese style room with delicate woven flooring called tatami), this room is our lounge room and it's easier to take care of the flooring if it's covered. We also bought three pieces of furniture for the kitchen. I'm planning to write about that next week after the furniture has been delivered, so I can show you. Japanese kitchens initially appear impossible to Australians, who are used to lots of bench (counter) space, and quite a lot of cupboards, but these problems can often be solved with problem solving and the purchase of a few small and larger items.

Our last stop was to drop the car back to its owners and ride home. It had been a long, hot, exhausting day and my physical condition slipped back a little, but with rest in the cool and some food, I recovered and slept really well and long that night.

Lounge room is taking shape. TV is out of sight on the right and still needs something solid to sit on.

My new desk. We'll add a small bookshelf where those boxes are next week.

Recovery days

Both Tuesday and Thursday I spent mostly at home. Some of that was just resting in the cool, but also writing a prayer letter and doing more home-set up. Yesterday we also pulled the furniture out of the lounge and put the carpet in (more like a door-to-door rug) as well as David's new chair. We also rearranged the office and installed my new desk (which I really like). I keep reminding myself that we've had a big month and that slow days and recovery time is important, especially with the energy sapping heat and humidity this time of the year in Tokyo. Although, having good air conditioning at home has meant that we've been able to achieve more in a shorter space of time than we otherwise would have. 

Snickerdoodles and my microwave-
convection oven (on a temporary table)

Early in the week I also had a go at using the oven part of my microwave convection oven. I've rarely used that because in our previous house I had a really top notch oven. I made a fairly good batch of Snickerdoodles and was satisfied that I could live with this new method of baking. Though it looks a lot smaller, actually I could still bake 24 biscuits at one time (previous oven I could do 30), so it isn't too big a change, although it does take a lot longer to get up to the set temperature. Being able to bake is another of my turning points in adjusting to a new place, so being able to achieve this goal so soon after we arrived felt great.

Complexity

Settling after a big move like this takes time, even though we've moved back to our old neighbourhood. We're thankful that we've had time to make the adjustment. Jumping between countries is weird. It's like jumping between two different parts of our lives. 

Here we have a lot of history, a lot more of our lives have been lived here as adults than in Australia. This morning we rode to the police station to change the address on our drivers licences (wish it was like Australia where you do it online!). The station is across the road from where our youngest son was treated for concussion a couple of years ago. Part of the route we rode is a route I've often ridden on my way to and from my big park adventures. Our visit to Nitori brought up memories of the first time we visited this store when we were in our first month in the country in 2000/1. Our apartment has many more bits and pieces of our last 23 years than our lives in Australia do. 

But it's okay. I'm reading a biography of Naomi Osaka at present. I'm surprised by how parts of her story resonate with me. She's grown up and lives "between" cultures, as do many high level athletes. She's black, and Haitian, and Japanese, and American. I'm clearly a white Australian, but I'm also someone who's lived a long time in Japan and had a lot of interaction with the expat community here, and have been changed forever by these things. I'm gradually learning to embrace all of this complexity. 

We run our monthly news/prayer letter past our adult sons before we send it out, because it includes news about their lives. This week one of them called me out on some of what I'd written. Apparently "home" was a notion that was confusing things. It's a concept that is more complex for some people than others and certainly even more so in the midst of transition.

But to conclude this blog post, I want to reassure you that we are feeling quite at home here: in Japan and in our new abode. Each day is feeling more normal as micro and macro routines weave their way into our days. Work will add another layer to that in this coming week, but we're looking forward to being settled enough at home that we can turn our focus more outward.

Checking in from Tokyo

 Yes, we really are in Tokyo now. I'm still pinching myself. It's been another huge week! Here's a summary:

Friday (19th): this time last week we were at Brisbane domestic airport, hoping we could still travel to Melbourne for a wedding. However, as you'll recall, there was a global IT crisis that affected Jetstar. We didn't get even as far as checking our luggage in and eventually, at 8pm they told us that we could "go home" and we'd be eligible for vouchers we could use on another flight. We were sad that we couldn't go through with our plan to celebrate our friend's marriage, but in the end it turned out to be a better plan to stay home.

Saturday (20th): Saturday became a much needed rest day. I had a headache much of the morning and stomach ache after lunch. These are pretty common "major transition symptoms" for me.

Sunday (21st): This also turned into an unexpected blessing, but it was a long day! Because we'd already said goodbye to (almost) everyone at our home church, we decided to attend our sons' church. Our eldest is moving to Townsville (today) and so it was his last Sunday there after 6 ½ years. It was a moving service, with his farewell as well as a speaker from Open Doors. The last hymn was "Take my life and let it be":

The only reason I didn't cry while singing that is because I was already emotionally exhausted. 

It was very special to be there at our son's farewell to the church. It was a bookend event: I was there at his first service when he was 18. We've seen him grow as a person so much in that time. Our whole family was at the service. Our youngest has been going there regularly since he started uni in February. Our middle son, who is newly licenced and has his own car now, drove himself to meet us there. It was a special morning.

The afternoon was also special. After lunch the guys came over to the place where we'd been based for the week of our move. We hung out, as we usually do on a Sunday. Playing online board games, chatting, and eating. Our hosts joined us for some of the time, and provided us with dinner. 

Saying goodbye to the guys was hard. But we finished well, final hugs were given, and good things were spoken. God has blessed us greatly.

Then I had to pull myself together enough to finalise packing and settle down to try to sleep. The latter I didn't do very well, and ended up with only about four hours shut-eye before we had to get up again.

Monday (22nd): flying day. We left at 5.45 am, with the air temperature 2C. It was a very smooth day all round. Even at the other end, we were out of the plane and through customs and immigration at a record speed. It took longer to find the place to get our Japanese eSIM access and activate that on our phones!

We were at our organisation's guesthome by around 8.30. I showered and then went looking for cold water to drink. The temperature outside at 9.30 was still around 30C. No cold water was in evidence, so I solved it in a Japanese way. I walked a short distance down the road (in shorts and tank top) and bought a bottle of cold water from a vending machine. It was kinda surreal!

Our apartment has a very narrow hallway.
The first thing the removalists did when
they arrived was erect these protective
barriers and floor covering.

Tuesday (23rd): We were up early again and borrowed a van from the guesthome to drive us and our five suitcases 50 km across town. It took about 1 ½ hrs on the "expressway"! City traffic!

We met three colleagues/friends and the removalists/movers at the place our stuff was stored. Then followed a usual kind of moving day. The difference probably was friends who came and stayed to help start the unpacking, to stock our fridge, and host us for dinner. It was a warm welcome in more than one way (daytime maximum around 37C), and helped to soothe the sadness at the goodbyes we'd just said in Australia.

In a weird quirk of timing, we discovered the owners of our former house in this city started demolishing it this very day, the same day we moved into our new apartment 300 m down the road!

Wednesday (24th): It was hard to know where to start this morning in our small apartment full of suitcases and boxes. I felt very shaky, though, so I started slow. We unpacked suitcases and located all our clothes. David got a few remaining boxes that were stored with friends and washed clothes. We opened more boxes, shifted some furniture around and gradually started to get an idea of how we want to use this new space.

It's a small kitchen (but pretty typical for Japan).
The motorhome had more bench/counter
space! It's a challenge to figure out
how to best utilise the space.

That afternoon, while we still had a car, we went on a "vision trip" to a Japanese homeware store, thinking about how to best supplement what we had in the space we have available. Of particular concern is that we have a much smaller kitchen than we previously did, so we've needed to problem solve about what we want/need and what's actually possible. We did grocery shopping and dropped the car off to the lady who was going to drive it back across Tokyo for us.

Thursday (25th): We moved some more furniture around this morning and got things into a something looking more homelike, including putting a tablecloth on our new table. It's amazing what a small thing like that can do for the look of a place. After lunch we rode to a nearby hardware/home store looking at more options for storage and other things like earthquake braces for tall furniture. I cooked our first dinner in the kitchen (a simple spaghetti bolognaise) and went for our first walk along the river.

This cupboard didn't come with shelving,
so we bought some. Japan has amazing
options for storage.

Looking more home-like. We've got a temporary
pantry/storage thing going with the bookcase.
The boxes on the floor behind the table are where
we'll put a kitchen island/cupboard.

Ice coffee break, amidst the boxes.

Friday (26th, today): Today our mission was to register our presence with the city, including our new address. That took longer than expected, but is done. We then went on an adventure to buy a new car. Three trains there (and back) and a bit of a walk, but it was another hot day so the travel was draining. But we have put the processes into place to buy a car, though we can't finalise that for three weeks (mostly due to public holidays and paperwork). On the way home we stopped by a Japanese friend's shop to say hi. She gave me back one of my plants that she's been taking care of for the year. I was shocked at how healthy it looked!

Important paperwork at the city office. I'm so thankful
David can manage this for us both.

Our new secondhand car. The secondhand car
market is much cheaper here than Australia!
We're looking forward to zipping around in
a much smaller vehicle (half the number of 
seatbelts to what we've driven throughout our
19 years in Tokyo).

My first plant made its way home to us! Looking so healthy too.

We have two places for plants that like lots of sun: first is this small
balcony (also for clothes drying).

This is the second place that gets southerly sun,
our lounge room and that windowsill is crying out
for some plants!

It's been a huge week. I'm glad to say that my physical symptoms of transition are settling down a bit. This blog post has run a bit long and I've run out of time to reflect much more on this week, but suffice to say, that it hardly seems like we left. We no longer have culture shock when we come here. This is one of the places we call home and because we've basically moved back to the same location we know where everything is in the community. It's weird, this time, though, with no children. Earlier in the week I went into a shop I've used for nearly 20 years and I kept seeing items that I would have bought in the past for our sons. Their presence in our lives here is all over our memories and activities. It's good and right that we've all moved on as a family, but it will be a process of adjustment for us all.

Thank you for your prayers and good wishes. I'll be back soon with more reflective thoughts. It's been a very practical couple of weeks full of huge change and it will take a while for my soul to properly catch up!