Spring Break adventures!

Each year the school where my husband works has a one-week holiday called "Spring Break". This is an American term and tradition, one that we embrace as it's the only break in classes at school in the six months between Christmas and the end of the school year in June. 

In recent years our most common activity during this single week in March is to go camping. The weather is starting to warm up, though it can be a little volatile. We experienced it's volatility last week.

Tuesday

We left for our camping trip on Tuesday and the weather was great, if a little cloudy.

Our destination was the Boso Peninsula, east of Tokyo on the other side of Tokyo Bay. The fastest way there from our place, theoretically, is straight across the city and across the bay using the 15.1 km tunnel-bridge built 29 years ago. It features a 9.6 km tunnel, one of the world's longest underwater tunnels, and a 4.4 km bridge. The place where this transitions between a tunnel and a bridge is a tourist destination on an artificial island called the Umihotaru (literally "Sea firefly"). We'd decided to stop here for lunch, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be enough parking for the traffic it receives and we crept for ages on the access ramp from the tunnel. Frustrating!

But we did get a yummy lunch and then a photo on the deck outside (it was a little chilly):

Location of the artificial island

Another photo of the island that is fashioned like a boat.

We got to our destination early afternoon and had fun setting up our tent. We had a fairly large site (for Japan) and therefore multiple layouts in which we could have set up our tent/tarp annex. It turned out later that our prediction of where possible wind might come from was wrong. We did have a nice view and didn't pay top-price for it.

I put the below photos here for reference for what happened later.

Beautiful sunset first night.

This is where we were located.

On the first night there were a lot of people around, especially young men. They weren't loud, but they also didn't sleep much either. We were located near the amenities block and often heard people walking past.

Wednesday

All our fellow campers packed up the next morning. It's often the case in Japan that people just camp for one night, so we weren't surprised. 

We went for a walk before lunch around the local roads, and then after lunch drove down to the beach for another walk. We played games (Scrabble and Red 7) and the weather was calm and very comfortable and a relaxing day. We were looking forward to more of that the next day.

This new sprout is apparently called a "Jack-in-the-pulpit" or Arisaema Triphyllum.

This is a sign at an archaeologically significant site near our campsite. Apparently
the site has evidence of habitation since around 5 or 6,000 B.C.

Here is the underwhelming (for us lay people) site.

Welcome sign at the campsite. Look at that blue sky.

Selfie on the local beach with my ever-obliging husband

We enjoyed camp pizza, a free hot shower, and then readied the campsite for a rainy night. Weather forecast is something we always keep a close eye on when we're camping and the forecast on Wednesday night was for rain to come in for several hours from around midnight.

Windy night

At around 1 am we realised there was an excessive amount of flapping going on outside and David went out to check. One corner of our tarp-annex had collapsed from the strong wind. From experience he knew that it was best not to try to reconstruct the shelter at that point, so took the whole structure down to the ground and secured it over the top of our equipment.

Then we tried to get more sleep. But it was very broken sleep. I thought about stories from the Bible that involved storms, including the amazing story of Jesus sleeping in an open boat in a storm. And I tried to read my book on my Kindle to distract my brain from going into "what if" mode. The side of the tent our heads were close to was slapping us on the heads which significantly disrupted any sleep that might have happened. 

Around 4 am I was concerned by further noises outside and opened the door to our sleeping area to investigate. To our surprise, the front of the tent was not where it should have been (around a metre in front of the sleeping area): instead it was almost blown inside to where we were. Investigation showed that the pole holding the fly out there had split and was no longer able to do the job it was designed to do. The whole tent was flapping considerably at this point and it was very noisy. David also discovered that the kitchen had pretty much capsized, which put much of our dining equipment in the muddy grass.

At about 5 am we decided to abandon our sleeping bags and evacuate to the car. The part of the tent where we'd been sleeping was secure and nothing in there was wet, nor did it seem in danger of blowing away, but it was just very noisy and stressful being inside there.

The car was so peaceful in comparison, though I wish I could have gone back to sleep. We sat in the car and watched our tent, passed the time with games (including Scrabble), and ate a small breakfast (70g tub of yoghurt and a mikan/mandarin). Around 9 it started to calm down and we bought some caffeinated drinks from the vending machine at the campsite. 

Thursday: not so restful

Then we started to assess damage and try to make a decision about what to do: did we clean up (including a trip to the laundromat to wash all our towels, tea towels, and rags) and re-erect the tarp shelter and stay on one more night as we'd planned, or did we clean up, pack up and go home? In the end it was the weather forecast that decided us, and that this was supposed to be a holiday. More rain was forecast the next day, which would have meant that we'd be packing up wet the next day. Packing up wet gear has consequences when you're going home to a small apartment where it's harder to dry things, especially the tent. We decided to cut our losses and go home and try to salvage some rest in this short holiday period.

Around 4 or so David piled much of the kitchen stuff against
the fence that delineated our campsite from the next door one.
He tells me he nearly lost the tarp, but thankfully it
caught on a tent rope and he was able to grab it.

This angle shows that the back part of the tent (where we were sleeping)
was still intact, it was just the entry that got a bit demolished by the wind. 
However the wind was hitting the side facing the camera and knocking
us around inside.

Thus ensued four hours of cleaning, drying, washing up, and packing, done with sleep debt and not much food. But the power of water and soap is amazing. I picked up the fry pan out of the muddy grass, washed it up, and later cooked dinner at home with it!

We had conversations with the camp site caretakers who were very sorry that this had happened. They, like us, had not seen any forecast of strong wind (in the worst of it my apps were saying the wind was blowing around 27-37 km/hr, which may or may not have been right for where we were on an exposed ridge). 

Alas, I think the worst was to come. It took about 5 ½ hrs to get home (about 110 km). The congestion driving through Tokyo was pretty bad and Google maps was frustrating, more so because we were tired and hadn't eaten well. We got stuck in 5-10 km/hr traffic in tunnels under Tokyo where there is nowhere to pull over if you're tired.

I saw these guys when we stopped for ice cream after our beach walk.
I think they looked like we did after our windy night!

Rural Japan sight: a tiny tractor! Really just the size of a small ride-on mower.

Finishing drying out the tent in my office.

Needless to say we slept well on Thursday night. Disappointed, but also glad that we hadn't been so far from home and could bail out fairly easily. 

Friday and Saturday

On Friday we'd planned to meet a friend for lunch on our way home. After a slow morning we were still able to meet her, but sadly got stuck in traffic again. We did have a really lovely afternoon with our friend, though, and I came away feeling refreshed (and we had a good drive home). 

Saturday I had declared to be a "spring clean" at our apartment: tackling things that don't normally get cleaned, like windows, tops of high furniture, etc. But first we finished tidying away the camping gear. I also mended one of the tabs on the tent that had been ripped out by the wind. It was good to clean together and we finished the day feeling satisfied.

Most of our friends will wonder why we even bother with camping when things like this happen. But honestly, this is only the second time in nearly 15 years of camping that we've encountered such wind. And I'd much rather be dealing with this than walking down a very crowded street in Harujuku or going to Tokyo Disney (or be stuck in city traffic)! You take the good with the bad when you go camping and most often it is good. And certainly you store up lots of memories and stories!

Okinawan adventure

Last week we had a pretty unusual week. Okay, some things were familiar, but many things were not.

The girls posing on the beach

David and I flew to Okinawa (a group of Japanese islands closer to Taiwan than Tokyo). We travelled with two teenage girls from CAJ. It was our first visit and when we arrived I realised I'd never been on such a remote island. 

This part of Japan is also distinctly different to what they call "mainland". I was surprised when talking to my dad when he referenced a sad wartime Australian folk song by Ted Egan called "Sayonara Nakamura" about a pearl diver from Okinawa. The region has a sad wartime history. There are still a lot of US military on the islands (about 30,000 troops and a population of around 80,000 from the US). We didn't get much time to ourselves to explore, but maybe one day we'll be able to go back.

We were the support crew for CAJ's high school girl's wrestling team at a two-day tournament called "Far East". This is the same type of tournament that we've been to several times before, notably, two of our sons were crowned "Far East champions" in their last year of high school when they won the final in their weight classes at this event. Across the world the US military run regional tournaments for various events such as wrestling, track and field, basketball, etc. Our region is "far east" and includes Korea and Japan.

It's way out in the ocean!

This was the first ever girls-only Far East tournament ever held in our region and the first one we'd ever been to. Most tournaments we've been part of have been male-dominated and this one looked quite different in some ways. Some notable things:

• most wrestlers had long hair and most of it was braided
• lots of them had mascara
• emotion was close to the surface: tears were common and winners often were crying, boys react quite differently to winning
• many more hugs going round, most of the girls genuinely loved hanging out with their competitors
• it took a while to figure this out, but the cheering/screaming was higher pitched and it really jangled in our heads after a while
• girls don't sweat as much as guys and the gym didn't quite smell as bad as quickly as with a gym full of male wrestlers

But in other ways, it was just a wrestling meet. The rules were the same, the outfits (almost) the same. These were athletes doing their best at a sport they'd worked hard at and there were some great matches.

Because we were such a small team it almost felt family-like. It was also quite different travelling with two teenage girls, as opposed to boys. David was impressed that when we told them we were meeting in the foyer of the hotel at 7 am to catch the US school bus they'd sent for us, the girls were there, on time, with all their gear! I was honoured to be asked by the girls to pray for them at the start of each day of competition.

Yummy Okinawan Zebra bread
(peanut butter flavoured)

On the last afternoon we were freed from the base in time to see the sun set and explore the local shops a little. We noted that the girls were looking for scenic spots to pose and take photos...something that we've found boys not interested in at all!

I was so glad I had the opportunity to do this. It really was a historical occasion. For years I've watched girls struggle on the edge of this sport. Having to wrestle guys is not at all ideal and we've longed to see the sport grow so that girls will have other girls to compete against. It was very special being part of this inaugural event! I do wonder why I'm so passionate about this...I think it's in part that, as a short girl I'm excited about a sport where short, strong girls can succeed. So many sports that were open to girls when I was younger were biased towards taller girls. We watched tiny, strong girls competing last week, and it was fun.

The girls were sad that the rest of their team and their usual coaches weren't with them. We were a poor substitute to the guys they'd been training with all season. We've heard rumours that it will be a combined meet next year and we're hopeful. We talked with the girls over meals about recruiting more girls and even dreamed about having a female coach sometime in the future. I wish I had the skills to coach them, but I'm content to support from the sidelines and hope I'll continue to have that opportunity in the future.

Another Okinawan treat: peanut butter filled biscuit/cookie.

Not all beautiful.

Braiding was a real theme...I'm not sure
I'll ever say yes to braiding someone's hair
at a meet again: my lack of skills was very 
obvious when one of the girls did this after my poor
attempt the day before. Japanese hair is
fine and slippery!

We got cute t-shirts!

The saga of our turtle

Baby Tiny

In February 2011 we bought a tiny turtle and called him Tiny. He weighed less than 10g. My blog tells me that he grew quickly. This post I wrote three months later (with cute photo included) and he was three times heavier than when we bought him. This post was written a year later, showing dramatic growth, from small enough to conceal in a 12 year old's palm, to as big as that palm a year later.

Other turtle posts: 

• May 2014 when he moved out for 15 months while we were in Australia.
• June 2016 when we took him by bike to a summer vacation at a friend's house while we went away during the summer for a few weeks.

Other times I've wrote about him on Facebook, not necessarily here. Like his escapes:

Yes, and his tendency this year to bite. I'm the only one who was "got", but it made me quite shy of picking him up.

Then two weeks ago he permanently moved out! We gave him away at Thrift Shop and he's landed in a great situation. On the Monday after he left, I wrote a bit of the backstory, but I've since found out more.

He's gone to a small Christian school. (Yes, we have warned them about the biting and escaping.) 

Last I heard he'd become a school project. The grade Ones were researching how to look after him. Some of the other grades were going to work on building him a better habitat. They are all on a roster to care for him, grade-by-grade. The Grade Ones were excited to be first up.

I'm so happy that he's got a new home where he's obviously being cared for with great enthusiasm and joy. It had gotten to the point in our house where we weren't particularly enjoying him, just keeping him fed and clean. And that was mostly David! I hope that Tiny continues to give many children much joy.

It's a little bit sad that we don't have a pet anymore, though Tiny wasn't an affectionate pet and we don't miss him like you would a dog or a cat. It's sad that our lifestyle means that furry/feathery pet ownership has been unlikely (our landlord won't allow them). 

How can I finish this post without sounding callous to pet owners? I'm happy to see your photos and watch your videos, but in some ways am glad that we don't have that responsibility (or the bills). I'm especially glad that we don't have the angst of handing a beloved pet over every time we have to leave the country for Australia for an extended period, I think that would be very hard.

Today's bits

This was the view from our room last time we
were there.

I'm racing to get lots done before we leave tomorrow morning for our mission's national conference in Hokkaido (big northern island of Japan).  (See here for last time we did this in 2013 at the same hotel.)

Today after church we celebrated Father's Day (it is Father's Day here and in many countries in the world today, unlike Australia) by going out to a cafe for morning tea. It was fun to get the boys to try to remember stories about their dad.

This photo of my family I took on our way from church to the cafe for our
Father's Day celebration. It lacking clarity. I was riding my bike and
just whipped my phone out of my bag in my front basket and
snapped one shot. David just happened to turn around at that moment!
He didn't know what I was doing and I didn't call his name! Amazing.

We stopped at a hardware store on the way home to get a chicken-type wire to make a lid for our turtle who's been trying to escape his enclosure recently.

We rested after lunch, as usual on a Sunday.

What caption would you add? This was how we transported our
turtle to our friends' house. It felt a bit weird but Tiny was fine!

Then three of us took the turtle to his/her turtle-sitters for the next month. They were very, very excited. With five kids in the house I'm not sure Tiny the Turtle is going to get much peace and quiet.

I then had to make 100 biscuits to take to conference. There's one thing about conferences in Japan (or Asia in general, I guess), is that they don't really do "snack time". Hence we've been asked to provide 20 portions of snacks per person attending = 100 for us!

Then it was heating up leftovers for dinner, eating, and reading the final instalment of our family read-aloud book for a while, Drowned Wednesday by Garth Nix. (It's obviously not coming to conference with us). I've since read and sent some important emails and am writing this quick blog post.


Packing has occurred at various times through the day and continues as I write (I'm not quite finished myself...)

It's exciting to be going away (except for getting up at 5am) for the week. The conference has many things we're looking forward to:

• great fellowship,
• fantastic meals (all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast and dinner),
• swimming pools in the basement,
• luxurious onsen in the basement and on the top floor (Japanese public baths),
• networking, and
• more fellowship.

Hopefully we'll get good Bible teaching too. 

It will be nice to doing something different and to not be stuck at my desk and for the boys to be occupied. Oh, and hopefully there will be some nice weather, especially on Wednesday afternoon when we have free time, so that we can enjoy Hokkaido's rural beauty too.

However I am aware that my work doesn't stop just because I've got something like this on. The magazine is hopping on various fronts at present (three magazine at various stages on the go at present) and other matters that will need to be monitored. I'd be horrible at a traveling job: I always find it difficult to keep up with email etc. when I'm away.

But while I continue to sit here and write this, I'm not getting anything else done. So, farewell for now! 

Shopping adventure in Japan

When our boys were younger we got a lot of attention when we were out with them: "Kawaiiiii" (cute) was the cry. Understandably we don't get that any more. Two of them are bigger than me and the other is close behind them. No longer cute, but still worthy of a few polite Japanese stares. Unlike other cultures where people might flock to us, or stroke our

At times we really do feel a bit like aliens
in Japan.

hair, Japanese people are much more subtle.

We rarely go to the shops as a group these days. If we go with one of the guys, it is usually one adult and one or two boys. Today we all ended up at a small local shopping centre. That in itself wouldn't usually get too much attention (it was busy). But today we had one boy whose glasses were about to break. He also needed an eye test for new lenses. But it ended up being a strange situation. I've never had an eye test in Japan, nor accompanied anyone doing so. So I asked for David's linguistic assistance. I'm glad I did, but the whole thing didn't go in a textbook manner.

In my brilliance I also invited our other two boys along because they each had shopping needs that had been put on the back burner recently. One needed new sneakers. I suggested the other boy also come along and see if he could find another pair of shorts in the hopes that spring will arrive soon, and stay. 

Being able to get them to a shop has never been easy, but it is increasingly becoming difficult with two of them not getting home till nearly dinner time many school nights as they train at school for interschool sports competitions.

So we had them all out. The optometrist, shoe store, and clothing store are all very close at this particular shopping centre. Our goal, as usual, was to do this as fast as possible. So my idea was that while the optometrist was working, we could get the other two boys sorted. 

Except that I also wanted to be at the optometrist and see if I could familiarise myself with the language associated with that speciality. Trying to be in two places at the one time didn't work very well and it quickly got worse. At the shoe store every time our son identified a pair he liked the look of and I looked for something in the right size in the piled boxes underneath the display, a worker came over and said something to me that sounded like a polite "Please don't do that" (I was having a fuzzy-brain Japanese day today that didn't help"). I was frustrated. Japanese shopkeepers are usually more helpful than that.

So I slipped across the way to see how David was doing and ask if he could help. They were just looking at frames while they waited for the exam room to be free. I figured picking out frames wasn't beyond my Japanese ability, so I suggested David go and assist our youngest with his shoe shopping. Meanwhile I'd asked our eldest to go over to the clothes store and see if he could locate some acceptable shorts. He came back quickly and said he'd found none! So he stayed and helped me at the optometrist.

Before David returned the exam room became vacant and we were ushered in there. I'm thinking, How bad can this be?

It started fairly well, but soon we were interpreting. Or trying our best to interpret. We were guessing from our previous experiences of optometry and from what we understood. It turns out we were understanding fairly well, but there was that element of doubt that doesn't engender confidence in the native-speaker service provider. I was especially hesitant because glasses are pretty important. They're expensive and if you get it wrong,  and there are consequences beyond the fiscal.

Eventually I sent our eldest son to see if he could fetch his dad, who came and said, "We've got some, you just need to pay for them." So we switched spots. In the shoe store the attendant was digging a bit deeper, trying to use easier Japanese or even fetch up some English. She told me we shouldn't throw these in the washing machine. She also mentioned spray deodorant and something about a waterproofing spray. I'm not sure, but I guess she was probably trying to sell me extra stuff in a roundabout Japanese way. She also tried to sell me some socks and something else . . . but I managed to get away with just shoes.

We touched base at the optometrist and they were fine (reassuring us that we'd be on track), so I took the other two boys to the clothes store to see if my shopping-eye could discern any shorts. It turns out that I did find a whole rack of shorts and even got him to try two pairs on. They left the store as fast as possible (going back to the optometrist), leaving me to buy the suitable shorts. When I got back to the optometrist I found two of the four guys sipping green tea and all the boys were looking at a game on the shop's iPad. Apparently kept by the shop to entertain kids while they waited.

So I shot downstairs to find a small snack to help us get home (it was nearly lunch time and we had a 3 ½-4 ½ km ride home, depending on the route we took).

I returned to the optometrist's shop one more time and found they'd finished. As we straggled off two of the employees lined up and bowed, saying, "Thank you". I didn't look, but I suspect that they watched us for a short while as we walked. I'm certain they don't often have a family of five foreigners in their store.

While we no longer get impassioned "kawaii" exclamations, we still generate attention. It's something you get used to and learn to largely ignore. After all, we still have to get things like this done, even if it is in an ungainly, foreign-like way.

Driving fun in Tokyo

I drive in Tokyo. That surprises some people, mostly non-Australians. I don't drive a lot, because we don't use the car as our everyday transport. We're close to all the things we do regularly: school, shops, and church. So our usual transport is walking or bikes. We're also close to the train station. So, for example, on Monday when I went to the OMF prayer meeting across town, I just walked to the train station (about 6 minutes) and caught trains.

But sometimes we use the car. For example for going camping or on holidays it is very useful. It's also great for grocery shopping on wet days and for a day like today when I bought bulk groceries at Costco (about an hour drive). We also use it to ferry other people to things like school events (sports, camps etc.) and out-of-town missionary gatherings. It's also good for getting large or heavy things around, like cans of kerosene to heat our house in winter.

Basically, if we're going a fair distance towards or through the centre of Tokyo (east) it is generally a bad idea to take the car. But if we're going south, or west or north the car is quite a viable option.

But there are challenges. Like getting lost or stuck!

Stuck
The other day I drove our middle son to the orthodontist. We can take the bus, but I find driving this route less stressful than the bus along exactly the same route, even though it involves about 30 sets of traffic lights.

I have memorised a route, but there was one little bit where I thought I could knock off some time by taking a back route. Bad idea without a navigator! Oh, and a bad idea when you're already running late.

Looking at the map, you can see the red route. The easy, "big" route. That's what I have been taking (destination on the left at the end of the red line).

On Friday I deviated and drove the green route. My limitation with navigation while I'm driving is that I can't keep too many steps in my head at once. And the roads are so small, there's no verge to pull over and check your map, so I was driving by instinct rather than clear directions.  

I got to the red asterisk and knew I my destination was close, but probably one street over, I just couldn't find a connecting road (the bigger road further north of the asterisk is a one way road going the wrong way). At that asterisk there were two construction vehicles with guys working on something on the corner. There was one small and one large truck blocking the way into the street that I thought I wanted to go down. As is the custom in Japan, the workers noticed me and took action to allow me into the street. They shifted the large truck and helped me squeeze around the small van. 

About 50 m down the road I realised I'd made a big mistake. There was no way out of this road. The tiny "road" marked on the map is just a bike path. 

So I had a small panic, for a moment I wondered if we'd ever get out. We could almost touch the orthodontist's building and we were about 20 minutes late! But now I was stuck pointing the wrong way down a dead end. I uttered a hurried prayer and swallowed my pride.

Getting out of there was no small feat. I backed back until I found an empty carport under a house, quietly apologised to any one who might be home, and backed into the space. The road was so narrow that it took me about 15-point turn to get in and out again, pointing the right way.

Then I smiled and waved at the construction workers and squeezed back past the van. There was only a couple of centimetres on each side of my side mirrors, thankfully I didn't have to retract them to get through.

It was a miracle that I didn't hit anything. Took me a while to recover, though!

Entertaining traffic controllers
Today I was driving on a larger road (large enough to have a dotted line down the middle) and encountered some road work, one lane was closed and they were directing traffic around it.

Japanese traffic controllers can be very entertaining. They usually use an orange-red "light sabre" or two flags, one red and one white. Some of them can get quite animated with their waving. 

But today the older gentleman directing traffic got me a bit confused. He held his light sabre vertically and was waggling it. I wasn't sure if he was calling me to stop, or to move over into the opposite lane to pass the road work. I slowed from the 30km/hr I was doing and then moved over.

That had an astounding effect. He started jumping up and down, and moved his light sabre to horizontal, which clearly meant stop, so I pulled back into my lane. I've never made one of these guys jump up and down before!

Driving in Tokyo is never boring. Often tedious, but there's lots to keep you on your toes.

Unwanted adventure

Yesterday I had an adventure I'd rather not have had.

Our nearly 13 y.o. has a cross-bite (top teeth on both sides of his bottom teeth when his jaw is closed, preventing heathy chewing and a precursor to problems later in life), so in May we'd been strongly advised to seek orthodontic intervention. Of course we waited to begin till we came back to Japan, thinking it would be easier if we could do the whole thing (or at least the major beginning stuff) with the one practitioner.

A view of Mt Fuji from our train station.

We did what we almost always do in Japan when looking into something new, like a new professional or service, we ask around. Word of mouth is the a big way that expats survive, how we find out about these things. We asked a friend with three boys who'd all had braces who they saw and have gone from there. We were particularly looking for someone not too far away and one with a little bit of English would make things a little bit easier.

Trouble is, we needed to catch a bus, a number 12 bus. The bus stop was next to the train station, not too far away, as we figured out which bus we needed to catch.

But it wasn't easy getting our young man out of the house yesterday. He was in the midst of a good book in his favourite place (home) and doing something unknown like this wasn't his idea of a great way to spend a holiday day.

Eventually, after trudging through the rain (that sounds a lot like a story I've written about when he was two and we walked his brother to kindergarten in the midst of a typhoon, I guess some things don't change much), we made it to the bus stop. But we were a couple of minutes late. Before I had too much time to figure out an alternative plan, a bus with the number 12 pulled up. That was the bus we wanted! So we jumped on.

I relaxed. Sat back and tried to make conversation with my surly son.

A few minutes into our journey I saw a reflection of the front of the bus on a vehicle in front at a red light. It didn't say 12 anymore. I'm not sure what it was (it was a reflection, after all), but it definitely didn't have a 1 in it.

But I didn't say anything. I just became more alert, noting our surroundings (we were headed roughly in the right direction) and trying to interpret the stops as they were announced. Unlike Brisbane buses, they were also helpfully displayed on a screen at the front of the bus, even in Romaji (Japanese using English letters).

Soon we were the only ones left on the bus and sure enough the bus turned into a driveway that lead to what could only be a bus depot.

"Shuten desu," announced the driver slightly shocked driver when he saw us. Last stop.

I told him where we wanted to go and he pointed out the bus stop on the depot premises. He said number #15 should go where we wanted.

Heedless, I jumped on the first bus that stopped and asked if it were going to "Musashi Koganei". No.

Then we'd barely jumped off when another pulled up, this one with #15 clearly on its side. I asked the same question and got a positive answer. Phew!

And sure enough it took us there. Relief!

Then we had a printed Google map to follow to get to the orthodontist. Japan doesn't have road names except for main roads. There is a numbering system, but it is complicated. Google and Navi systems have helped tremendously, but generally we ask for a map or directions when we're going to somewhere new.

We found the place, though it didn't seem to be quite what we'd been led to believe. It said, "Dentist." In fact the carved sign over the receptionists desk said, "Painless dentist"! I thought we were going to an orthodontist. Anyway, they were expecting us (I'd had an email exchange with the orthodontist himself), so all seemed somewhat well.

I thought I'd made an 11am appointment, but it seems that I didn't. I think we were there on a first-come-first-serve basis, as are many medical appointments in Japan. We weren't seen until an hour after we arrived.

The verdict was braces and several years of orthodontic treatment. It was what we expected, but the prices quoted were still shocking.

Another appointment was made for Saturday for preparatory tests and we were on our way back to the bus stop. We stopped by a very convenient convenience store for some lunch and ate it outside while balancing our umbrellas on our laps.

We stopped at the train station to recharge my son's travel card and then traipsed around all the bus stops to see which was the one we wanted. Thankfully we found it and the correct bus turned up very soon afterwards, 30 minutes later we were back in home territory. You've got to give it to Japan, they have excellent public transport.

We got home four hours after leaving. It turned out to be a longer outing with more adventure than I'd hoped for!

Oh, how I sometimes long for Australia. Where I'd have been able to drive those 9km in just a few minutes. It would have been so much easier, and probably with much less adventure attached to it.

This weekend's adventure promises surprises

Today we're flying to Canberra and tomorrow evening we'll drive to the camp of one of our supporting churches from Canberra. The camp is at Jindabyne, one of the highest settlements in Australia (just under 1000m above sea level) and a service town for ski resorts like Thredbo and Perisher in winter. 

It's just into March, therefore past the peak of summer, theoretically, though you wouldn't know it by today's 40 degree C forecast for Brisbane. But it looks like they know about autumn in Jindabyne, today's forecast is 6 to -3C! I've been trying to think of how cold I felt at the Youth Group's ice skating on Friday so that I can actually pack appropriately.

Tomorrow, before we drive south, we'll visit two families who support us. It looks like we'll have a bit of time to do visit something like the National Science and Technology Centre too (Questacon). This is the fourth time we've visited Canberra since 1999 on our missionary journeyings, so we've seen these before, but each time we go back our boys are older and it's like new for them.

It's a long way south, but no, we're not driving. We'll
fly to Canberra and drive another 2 hrs south to the camp.

As for the camp itself, we're not really sure what it will be like, except that there's likely to be teaching and food. From the sounds of an email we received today, it also sounds like there's going to be some serious non-scheduled time where various sports like tennis, basketball, volleyball, or even water sports could be on the cards. There might even be some wildflowers to see.

One part of me is excited about this adventure. It's a great opportunity to see people we haven't seen for ages and to get to know this church better. Plus, I've never been this close to Australia's highest mountain (though it will be 60km away).

The second part of me is feeling tired and wondering if I'll last the distance.

Then the third part is reminding me that God is my strength, I'm not in this alone.

Psalm 28:7:

The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him (NIV).