It's still messy, but I think I am growing

I took time out of the house yesterday, mostly with the intention of making more progress in reading the book Awe and intentionally following up on thinking about some of things I wrote about in this blog post in September "It's messier than I like to admit". In that post I wrote that I was planning a followup...I've not managed that till now (and I'm just pondering where the last seven weeks have gone!).

Autumn colours in the park

I've been trying to come to terms with a less busy life. A life without boys at home is less busy. Both the ministry roles I've returned to this year are less intense now. A lot of what I've done in the past has been spread out amongst others, which is a good thing, but leaves me with wondering how to best use my time. But I'm also aware that, though I am not "old" yet, I am "less young" than I was 25 years ago when I started having the responsibility of children, and the reality of that is that I have less energy and take longer to recover.

So yesterday I rode to my favourite large park, but was very distracted by how chilly it was (around 18C). I'd neglected to put on appropriately warm clothing as the day before had been quite warm (25C inside). The weather and the seasons are messing with me! Last Friday I had a conversation with some American friends and it became clear how messed up I was. 

This calendar year started with a Queensland summer. We accelerated our descent into winter by heading south in mid-March and our month (April) in Tasmania in an unheated motorhome was quite chilly. Then we drove back north to a more moderate Queensland winter! In July we accelerated into summer by flying north, going from around 2 degrees Celsius to 30 C in just one day. The next two months were full-on summer and since mid September we've gradually been descending into winter again. 

Add to that that we're just still figuring out how to weather the seasons in our new apartment, which has both more sunlight and more insulation than our previous abode. So we often have difficulty accurately judging how outside will feel before we get there. This is made worse by the structure of a Japanese home: in that, to properly go outside, you have to put shoes on, at which point the inside of the house (and clothing) is no longer accessible to you...unless you take your shoes off (or take other measures, that you might have seen illustrated in OMF Japan's social media post a few weeks back, if not, then I recommend checking it out here). 

But I digress. The problem with my conversation was that if I started using seasons to anchor my story, I was instantly in trouble. For example, "We came back [to Tokyo] in the summer, but will be heading back [to Australia] to a summer wedding in January." followed by "We're also planning to go back to Australia next summer (but it will be winter there)." Americans tend to call the middle of the year "the summer" as an overall term for "long school holidays", whereas Australias call our long summer holiday period "Christmas" or "Chrissy holidays" or "Christmas and New Year" or "End of the year." And so it's all a confused mess. So, in the conversation, I started using calendar anchors, rather than seasons!

Anyway, back to trying to read my book in the park: I spent ages trying to make up my mind about what I'd do about feeling too cold. I ended up eating lunch and riding to a coffee shop in a familiar shopping centre on my way back home. It wasn't ideal as it was much noisier than the park, but at least it wasn't home where there are so many other distractions.

I tend to process things better when I write (or talk), but I didn't take my computer or any people with me. Only the book, my phone, and a pencil and notebook. So I'm going to do some processing here.

The book is full of thought provoking stuff. It's key point is that human beings are hardwired for "awe". The problem is we were created to be in awe of God, but because of sin find it impossible, and the awe of God is very quickly replaced by awe of self. He's saying that "awe lies at the bottom of a whole range of human struggles". Nothing else satisfies our awe-wired existence, and thus we end up angry, lonely, disappointed, addicted, bitter, etc. We are self-centred, feel entitled, or experience relational dysfunction, seek to control people, live in fear or envy or drivenness or exhaustion. Tripp traces all these things back to our "awe problem".

In relation to the purpose of my ministry now that life is running at a slower pace, I was struck (in September) by: "Ministry is meant to be something bigger than completing a list of tasks" (p. 49. Ouch. He continues, "You have been called to the high position of making the invisible glory of God visible to people who quickly lose sight of God's glory and begin to look for glories elsewhere (Psalm 145:4).

In many ways he's writing to himself, but also to us all. All Christians are "in ministry" whether paid or not. We are all called to point others to God's glory. If we were all doing this for each other, we would be a more effective community.

It's easy to get very discouraged by all of this, because Tripp goes to great lengths to tell us that we can't help ourselves. On our own we can't fix this. However, God can.

Only when the awe of God rules your heart will you have joy even when people disappoint you and life gets hard. Awe means your heart will be filled more with a sense of blessing than with a sense of want. . . remember that he [God] is so rich in grace that he will never turn a deaf ear to your cries (p 105-106).

We all question God's character, and, despite the theology that we say we believe, we struggle to live that way "at street level". We wonder if God is good, if he is in control, does he have the power to help us, does he even care? Yep, I have these thoughts too (witness it in this blog post from this time last year). Therefore it was reassuring to read this:

God alone will never leave you...he never sends you without going with you. He is your protector, guide, defender, teacher, savior, and healer. He never mocks your weakness but gives you strength...His care is so awesome and so complete that nothing in your life's experience in any way compares." p 105

None of this is new to me. But I keep forgetting, so it is good to be reading a book that reminds me (and of course the Bible is riddled with such reassurances). Not remembering these things leads to discontent and complaints. And it's so easy for complaints to slip into our thoughts and conversation.

You can't do that work of awe reclamation on your own. You desperately need grace—but you and I are called to treasure that work and to pursue and participate in it any way we can. And we are called to humbly admit our need and again and again run to the grace that stands as our only hope of personal growth and change. (p. 129)

So I guess yesterday was partly about me running back to my saviour and admitting my need for his help. Help to grow, to know how to walk with him in this new season, and to fix eyes on him so that my awe is directed towards him again, instead of my own "kingdom of one".

God sent me to Japan again in July. He came with me and he has a purpose for me here in this new season, with all my weaknesses and foibles. I need to trust him . . . still and again! Possibly I'll look back at some time in the future and know what that purpose is (though I suspect it won't be one simple thing). Right now my job is to do my best each day, with God's grace, to point others towards his glory, however that looks in my life and with the strengths and skills that he gave me.

I hope this makes sense to you. I am not sure I can make it any better at this time! I am planning to finish the last three chapters of the book before the end of the year. Maybe I'll write again after I read those, maybe I won't. Perhaps you'll see the outworking of God in my life and writing without me consciously trying to pry it out of my head?

We've had an awful lot of "life" going on

We went back to our home church last weekend for the second Sunday in a row. It was a relief to feel a lot less fragile this time.

Almost the sum total of books we own in
Australia. Not many at all! And many of them
are photo albums or school yearbooks. But
it's good to have them up on a shelf and
out of boxes!

In one conversation I had with an older lady, she comment frankly: “What you’re dealing with is just life.”

My gentle retort was, “Our problem is that we’ve had an awful lot of 'life' all at once." 

For example, most people help their older teens adjust to adult life over months or years. In the short 20 days we've been here we’ve been doing things like teaching them about banking, getting a learners licence, getting a MyGov online account (for various official purposes like tax, medical insurance), etc.

On top of that we're introducing them to life in Australia, as almost-newbies. How to access a doctor in Australia, how medical insurance works, what's the best place to buy a certain product, how to get a haircut, public transport, etc.

It also happens to be university-open-
day season at the moment, so on Sunday
we hoisted ourselves off to the University
of Queensland (UQ), David's and my
alma mater.

We've also moved houses into a suburb we've never lived in before, so we don't know the answers to all the questions that are related to locality. And it's not all about our sons—David and I have started new jobs and we've also just bought a car in Australia for the first time in over 25 years.

It's no wonder that I'm routinely feeling like we're much further into August than we actually are (it's not helping that we haven't gotten around to putting up more than one calendar yet, nor that the season doesn't feel at all like winter, except in the middle of the night and early morning).

We're trying to get on top of daily life things so that we can pay attention to what we're going to say in our upcoming speaking appointments. This Saturday we're running a 50 minute elective at the state conference for our organisation. The blurb we gave them was:

Title: Working together to share the good news about Christ in Japan

Blurb: Why do a school teacher and editor/writer work with OMF in Japan? Mission work involves more than just church planting and evangelism. Our work in Japan contributes to supporting the wider community of missionaries. Join us to consider how missionaries work as a team to spread the good news in a nation where less than 1% of the population are Christians.

I've actually written on this topic in the past (see this) and I'm married to a teacher, so things like this don't faze him much. We have a general idea of where we're headed, but just need to nail down some details.

This morning, though, I'm taking a break from everyone and have walked to our local library. That's right: we're walking distance from an English library!!! If I hadn't been an ardent e-book borrower over the last four years from this exact library, I'd be even more excited, But I am keen to see if there are some hard copies of books that I haven't been able to find electronic versions of.

But the main reason I've come to the library is to write. And to hopefully start something of a Tuesday morning tradition for this home assignment. Hence this blog post has been written, but I'm planning to write other things too, I'm just not sure what they all are yet!

Waiting with grace?

I started this blog post a couple of weeks, just after I sent out our latest prayer letter. Writing (mostly) monthly prayer letters is something I've been doing for over 23 years now. It's a useful time to reflect on the month past and look toward the month ahead. It would be a normal month when we look back at the calendar and say: "Wow, that only happened this month!" Of course at the end of the calendar year it's traditional to look back also, so I included this brief paragraph at the start of our letter:

For many, including us, this has been a hard year. There are many things that have happened differently to what we’d hoped or planned for. How are you coping? We’ve found comfort in doing the daily things that God’s given us to do and leaning hard on him in prayer about the things that we wish were different. As we come to the end of this year we know that God’s been with us the whole way, holding us and helping us. Let’s acknowledge the hard things, but also be quick to thank God for all he’s done and the hope he continues to give us.

This has been a year of disappointments and angst. Also waiting. That theme has continued to pop up for me in various places. How do we wait and do it with grace? Recently, a friend asked: How do we Christians do it with our hearts right with God, resting in his Sovereignty?

Waiting isn't new to me. I guess we all know about waiting, but somehow missionary life brings a different angle, maybe even a greater challenge to waiting. Just getting to Japan meant disappointment and waiting (we were turned down two, nearly three times for a lack of financial support in 2000). Every time we go on home assignment we wait to find accomodation and wheels, last time we left Japan without an address to go to in Australia. The last two times we've been on home assignment, we've waited for house sitters for this place in Tokyo too. With limited financial resources, we're thrown on the generosity of others more than perhaps we would have been if we had remained in Australia in higher paying jobs.

In some ways it's easier to describe what waiting badly looks like. A lot of times it's due to attitude. Waiting badly can look like complaining, it can look like frantic activity to fill the blank left or to distract ourselves. It can also look like scheming to "fix" the problem and manipulate the situation so that it "works". It can look like worry and even physical sickness that's induced by worry. It can look like insomnia or tears. And yes, I know this because I've got personal experience in waiting badly!

But of course you can't look at someone and easily determine if they are waiting well or badly! However, by talking to them, you might get a glimpse.

Good waiting, in my experience, is much more peaceful. There's a quiet trust in God that this too is in his plan. Waiting well doesn't mean inactivity, but rather seeking what is the right thing to do now. That's been a big challenge for us this year as we've waited, especially, to see how God would guide us for the next steps for our nearly-adult kids.

One key to waiting well is to find pleasure in the now. Find ways to enjoy your current situation. Don't forgo celebration, instead seek out reasons to celebrate, reasons to give thanks. Another key is to find ways to serve others, within our limits, of course. When you're waiting it's easy to turn inwards, to be selfish and self absorbed. But when we turn our thoughts upwards to God and outwards to others we gain a better perspective on our situation.

Some lights we often walk past at night. This
is a little unusual in Japan.

We're about to go away for our traditional pre-Christmas holiday. I've been waiting for this break for too long. I'm thankful God's given me the strength to make it through to now and that I'm not a messy heap on the floor. But I'm also glad he's given me things to do while I waited that kept my eyes off myself (most of the time).

I don't know what you're waiting for, but I do know the Lord who can help. Don't miss him in the midst of the wait.

If you're interested, here are three other blog posts I've written on waiting:

I told our waiting-to-come-to-Japan story is here (a summary, really).

The value of waiting for your prayers to be answered: http://mmuser.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-other-end-of-answered-prayer.html

Waiting expectantly, but like a jellyfish: https://mmuser.blogspot.com/2021/04/waiting-expectantly.html

Lining up ducks

I haven’t written a blog post yet this week, mostly because it’s been a busy week away from my desk. Actually a very different looking week to what most of the year has looked like. I spent a lot of the week with other people! All day Monday I spent at a prayer meeting with other OMF missionaries. And travelling across the city in peak hour on trains to get there and back (total about three hours travel and six trains). It was something I hadn’t been looking forward to. Last year when I did this long day I ended up with a nasty headache and actually fairly distressed at wearing a mask (the pressure on my nose and ears when I have a headache is close to unbearable). However I’m more used to wearing masks now and I didn’t end up with the worst of headaches, so it wasn’t so bad.

Tuesday morning I did a quick couple of hours catching up on urgent computer tasks and email before replenishing the larder with a grocery shop and then shooting off downtown again. This time I spent the afternoon packing the latest issue of the magazine that I play a significant part in publishing.

Wednesday was a cold, rainy day, so I was glad I got to stay home and work at my desk. I made good progress that I was able to continue into Thursday morning. Then Thursday afternoon was consumed with online work meetings, specifically about planning for the weeks ahead, which are less-than-straightforward weeks. More about that later.

Friday morning I spent at a school prayer meeting and then a couple of hours with small fellowship group in a restaurant. Friday afternoon was another shopping trip and then seeing what I could salvage from the rest of the day at my desk, but a headache caught up with me and I didn’t last too long there.

In the middle of that has been a few other things:

• 
  Fudge making: last year I raised some money for the school by making and selling fudge to staff and local friends. I’m doing it again this year. I’ve made it a little easier by using a silicon mold, which means that the size of the pieces is much more consistent. So in between other things, I’ve been making fudge this week.

• Wrestling: our youngest (16 y.o.) has rejoined the wrestling team this year. Last week they had their first meet, a small affair between two schools. It was weird to be back in person at a sporting event, but also great. Unfortunately he got injured in his first match and hasn’t been able to get back into training this week while he recovers. But we did watch the rest of the team via a live video link on Thursday night.
• 
  Cricket: cricket fans that we are, we’ve been enjoying live cricket this week for the first time in several months. The English team is in Australia at the moment. The two countries are playing the famous Ashes series. We’ve been able to subscribe to the series (that has rarely been possible in the years we’ve been overseas) and it’s fun. Alas, most of the play happened during our work hours this week so we haven’t seen much, but it’s been fun, another interest David and I share.

• I also passed 100 books read for the year (I also started more than 20 more, but for one reason or another they ended up in the "I don't want to finish reading" list). I've got more than a dozen lined up for the next few weeks, I wonder how many of those I'll get read?

Monday and Friday would have looked quite different during most of 2021. I’m so grateful that, for the moment at least, we’re not living under so many restrictions. It’s weird to look at the cricket and see crowds of people without masks on, though. Masks are still being worn by 99.9% of people in public here.

The coming weeks are a mixture of relaxation and business. This time next week we’ll be up in the mountains taking a week’s holiday. Our traditional pre-Christmas holiday. With school on a three-week break, I anticipate that I’ll be taking things a little slower after Christmas also. Certainly we won’t be getting up at 6am.

In January I’m helping facilitate the same OMF course I helped with last year. This year it’s still online, but we’ve changed a few things so that hopefully it will be a little less arduous. However, I haven’t completely stepped away from my social media job, so I’ll be juggling a few more balls than I did last year. Plus, there's a variety of wrestling events on in January and February. We'll see how well I come out of that busy season. I didn't cope very well in January/February this year, but part of that was an unexpected and traumatic loss in mid-February.

Meanwhile, I prepare as best I can for what's to come. First of all is getting my "ducks lined up" so I can go away and not check email or open my computer for a week. Ah...the bliss. I've got fruit mince pies to make and books to read!

How's your December looked so far?

How are you going/doing?

I've got some spare minutes and want to write here, but don't have any strong topic in mind. That's not good!

I had a writing friend ask me in an email if I'd been doing lots of writing. And I really haven't, although I have been writing, although much of it has been editing other people's writing. In recent days I've:

• written a prayer letter
• rewritten some elements of the Japan Prayer booklet (which is deep editing, basically)
• researched and written some Facebook and Instagram posts for OMF Japan
• written an email calling for articles for our Autumn issue of Japan Harvest.
• edited various short articles, from blog posts to magazine articles

So it really does feel like I've been writing, but nothing much longer than a few hundred words. 

At times it's been hard to stay focused and motivated. I know I'm not the only one,  that many people are struggling with staying motivated. I'm one that thrives on the next big thing. I like having things to look forward to on the calendar and whatever is there has steadily been scrubbed out. My emotions have been unusually turbulant, and that's been unsettling.

During a Zoom training meeting this week I unexpectedly found
my way back to this beautiful wallpaper (a photo I took during a
camping trip in Australia a few years ago). It was really lovely to
gaze at this image while listening to the speaker.

This week the school leadership decided that school wouldn't return to on-campus learning this school year. That means it's 17 more weeks until school begins again, Lord willing. I think the day they announced that I'd been feeling particularly frustrated with my "housemates." I was in trouble for walking too loudly, for saying the wrong things at the wrong times, for breathing while I eat. I tried to start conversations around the table and got shot down by teens. I couldn't find things to talk about that other people were interested in. And then school not starting again was like a nail in the coffin of my confinement. 

It's time to name losses and also lift my eyes heavenward. It's time to find some creative solutions.

So, here are some losses, in no particular order:

• face-to-face time with friends
• freedom to go out without concern about my health
• a haircut
• watching my boys run and throw at track and field meets
• the house to myself during the day, and the freedom that comes with that
• boys who are well-exercised, socialised, and are motivated by the usual rhythms of a class schedule
• a trip to Singapore for professional development and training with our mission
• a visit by our eldest this summer
• the opportunity to go to the Olympics and Paralympics this year
• mail that hasn't arrived from my family

Here are just some things that have comforted me:

• friends checking in that I'm doing okay
• randomly running into people (at appropriate distances)
• a small opportunity to serve other staff families
• opportunities to use my social media skills to encourage
• remembering that God is a solid rock that I can rely on
• the hymn "Great is Thy Faithfulness"
• opportunities to exercise in safe places
• books to read (loving my Kindle and the opportunity to borrow ebooks from the library, something I couldn't even do last year)
• remembering that many of those great writers of history were isolated or imprisoned at the time of writing (think Paul, John writing Revelation, 

OMF sent us a self-care assessment this week. It's taken me a while to look at it and I wondered if the topic headings might be good for you to see also:

Physical: food and drink, exercise, time out. I think I rate okay on most of these. Lacking on the "time out" front. I'm getting a lot less time on my own these days and that it tiring. 

Spiritual: personal devotional life and Christian fellowship. The first is about the same as usual. Second lacking a bit.

Emotional: this has been a bit of a struggle. It identified three different areas: healthy thought/feeling life, stress management, and leisure & fun. Probably it's healthy thought/feelings that I slip most on, not quite sure what to do with that. Mostly I've been trying to name what's going on inside and then reminding myself that that's okay, then try to apply scripture to that. Reminding myself that God is unchanging and nothing can separate me from him. Also trying to not pressure myself to be busy all the time. To understand that now, more than ever, I need to be content to be a little less busy and less focused on what I achieve.

Relationships/social: well I've already admitted this has been a bit of challenge. I've had some joy on that front this week and am planning more interaction with others this weekend online. A friend suggested that reading some girly books might not be a bad idea. Escaping into some female dialogue and stories might just be helpful. I love this creative idea and I'm giving it a go!

Ministry: appropriate use of time, and relationship with colleagues. This hasn't changed much for me. Much of my ministry was already done online and from home, so in that sense I'm very fortunate as I've had years to set up boundaries that allow me to stay healthy and balanced. This season has even allowed us more opportunities to connect with supporters in Australia. We've had one Zoom meeting with a prayer group and made two videos for supporting churches this month.

Areas of temptation/struggle: Hmm. Have I avoided difficult tasks? Probably. But perhaps not more than usual. 

Overall I'm probably not doing too badly. How are you? Is there anything you can change? Is there anything I can help you with? And if there's something you'd like me to write about, please let me know and I'll see what I can do!

My kitchen

Inspired by a month of posts by expats about their kitchens by Taking Route Blog #thisglobalkitchen, I'm going to tell you about mine.

My kitchen is not glamorous, but it is functional and I love it. It's bigger than a usual Japanese kitchen, but nowhere near as large as a kitchen would be in the usual three-bedroom house in Australia.

Looking back to the dining room and my corner office from the kitchen sink.

When we first came to Japan, one of the biggest challenges at home was the kitchen. We were in a much smaller place (we were a smaller family then, just one boy less than two-years-old). What drove me crazy was no bench space (i.e. "counter"). It is pretty typical, we've discovered, for a Japanese kitchen to have little food preparation space. The only place we could prepare food in our first Japanese kitchen, was on the sink-drainage area. 

Thankfully this kitchen (and house) is much larger, though I'm not sure if I would have appreciated it as much if I hadn't had had to work in a much smaller space (that first kitchen shared a tiny room with the laundry and shower ante-room).

When visitors who know Japan come to visit, one of the first things they usually comment on is our kitchen. It has an unusual amount of storage room. These built-in floor-to-ceiling cupboards are unusual, what's more, a crafty previous resident has added tasteful internal curtains to these glass-doors. But there are other unusual elements that we've added.

This house has had numerous missionaries live in it previously. It is not owned by a Christian and was not purpose-built for foreigners. However, when we moved in the kitchen had a most unusual element: an ancient American gas oven/stove. It didn't fit, being far deeper than these cabinets were. In our small attic we found the original under-stove cabinet that was removed to put the oven in. A former missionary had brought an oven with them from the US!

I loved that dinosaur of an oven, even though we had to practically lie on the floor to light it. Its large four-burner top provided pseudo-bench space that was so valuable. Ovens are not usual in a Japanese kitchen. Most people use toaster ovens and microwave ovens with convection functions, which are obviously much smaller.

Alas, four years ago that oven started leaking gas. You can read about that drama here. The Japanese repairmen who came to look at it had never seen the likes of it! There was much sucking in of breath over the teeth (a clear sign in Japan that there is a major problem).

The end result of that drama was that we lost that old oven and bought this Japanese oven and three-burner stovetop to replace the dinosaur—that was not a cheap decision. We reasoned that we'd be living here for some years yet with our three growing boys (they were aged 10, 13, and 16 at that time). One of the things I love to do is cook and bake, I really struggled with the idea of going back to just two burners and only using my microwave/convection oven (even though it was the biggest you can buy here). 

This Japanese oven is the most spectacular oven I've ever used. It heats up quickly and cooks very reliably. I'm still holding out hope that when we move from here we can take the oven/stove with us to a new place, but know that that might not be a reasonable expectation as we'd like to move into a smaller place after all our boys move out.

We have underfloor storage. This is a cool thing about Japanese houses (not sure if they exist in apartments). A place to put food and stores under the floor is very cool.

Underfloor storage.

Oil, potatoes, and cereal in this side.

Breadmaker with rubbish "drawers" underneath.

Other elements of the kitchen that I love are the breadmaker (we make our own sliced bread), the chest freezer, and a large fridge with lots of compartmentalised drawers. All these make providing food for my family much easier.

You'll see under the breadmaker the plastic drawers that help us sort rubbish as we dispose of it. The top drawer is glass and tin, then "unburnable" (i.e. doesn't fit any other category), and the bottom is paper and cardboard. The rest is in the bin on the other side of the kitchen next to the stove: burnable (raw food, scraps, etc.) and recyclable plastics.

Look closely and you will see that the lino is torn in places. The mat in front of the sink helps to hide that. Also, there is a gas-outlet in the floor that we don't use, but it dangerous for foot traffic, so it's covered with a carpet tile! The wall tiles are an ugly green, and the trim on all the doors are hard to clean.

It's not a shiny, new kitchen with fancy appliances. It's not particularly space-efficient and it's challenging for two people to work in, but it works for us and I'm very thankful for God's provision. Not just of this kitchen, but this house. Next year it will be ten years since we moved in here. It's an old house that has it's flaws and quirks, but we've done the majority of our child-raising here and we're thankful for the stability and convenience it affords (it's close to school, church, shops, and the train station).

Japan is not an easy place to live and work as a missionary, but we have many things to be thankful for in terms of ease of living and stability of society. Indeed "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places" (Ps 16:6 NIV).

What do you cook for dinner?

So I've resolved this school year to blog at least once a week. But every now and then in my job I run into a quiet patch and have more time to do things like write here. It's an interesting phenomenon as I deal with many deadlines every week. I'm in the interesting position that many of these deadlines are set by me, so I do my best to keep things relatively manageable.

It helps, just now, that I'm not trying to "get ahead" due to any upcoming holiday time. Preparing for and recovering from holidays can be significantly stressful! These last two months have been busy with preparing for holidays and dealing with different family needs while they're all home here. Until this week I've also been going slower in the mornings and getting up at least an hour later. All of which means that I've been cramming more into less time.

Menu list
One of my summer goals was small: for reference when menu writing, to make a list of all the meals that I regularly make for dinner here. I had a list I wrote in pen many years ago, before I had teenagers. But it's a bit outdated and, as it lives on the side of our fridge, it is fading. 

Earlier this week I wrote up the list. I was surprised to find that I could think of 47 meals that I make at least once every few months. If you consider that I only usually cook five times a week (the other nights are usually left-overs), that's quite a lot of variety. I eat the same breakfast six days a week and that's the way I like it, but I prefer to have a lot of variety at dinner!

A favourite meal: wraps. Usually chicken
with simple salad. People make their own
(which I suspect is part of the fun).

Perhaps you'll be interested in the list, so I've posted it below. I don't actually make much Japanese food, there are only four or five below, though there are others I occasionally cook. I find many Japanese meals are time-consuming to make from scratch (which is how I prefer to do most of my cooking). But perhaps some of you could give me some helpful hints? And of course, living in Japan, when we eat out we often have Japanese! Eating out in Japan is relatively cheap (especially if you don't take teenagers with you!). 

My criteria for cooking dinner is that it can't take much longer than an hour and that most people in the family like it. For keeping a lid on the budget, my weekly menu usually consists of only three big "meat" meals and, for the sake of variety, those are usually each different meats (i.e. not two chicken meals in the one week). Other meals often include smaller portions of protein like bacon or eggs or both.

There's probably a number of things on the list that you don't know, either. I'm happy to explain or even share recipes! The notes in brackets are recipe book nicknames.

Looking after the customers

A notable characteristic in Japan is looking after the customers. We've seen a great improvement in this in Australia over the years, but I think it's mostly done there out of fear of being abused by the customer (or sued). But Japan goes way beyond Australia's version of customer service, it seems to be embedded in their culture, not a product of fear.

Last week I rode to a newly opened grocery store in our neighbourhood. I was amused to find three "guard men" in the car park looking after customers.

In the photo, you can see half of the car park and about an eighth of the bike park. It is not large! But three men were helping people park their cars and bikes. The bike park was pretty full when I arrived and one of them directed me to an empty slot.

I bought a full-load of stuff, and it took a while to load it all into my baskets, so I got to hear them interacting with customers. The man closest to me in the photo was thanking people as they left to store as well as helping with bikes. The two at the entrance were greeting people. I got an extra blessing of "Be careful" as I rode out with my well-loaded bike!

I shared this experience with a couple of Japanese friends the next day. One of them later shared a video with me that includes a hilarious section about these "guards" that I include here for your enjoyment (it's a 17-minute video, the "guard" part is 30 sec at the 4-minute mark).

Though it may seem a bit over the top, you really do feel looked after and I have to admit that there are times I miss that in Australia. A classic time was trying to find my way through complex roadwork on my bike in Brisbane a few years ago. There were no signs, no people to direct or even to ask. I had a moment of homesickness for Japan right there.

Fun with bread

On social media a couple of weeks ago I shared this photo of a bread loaf I made in our breadmaker. A friend wanted the recipe, though I've never tried transferring a breadmaker recipe to a hand-made version, it probably would work okay.

Thus, the ingredients are as follows:

450g bread flour

30g sugar

30g butter

12g skim milk powder

9g salt

340ml water

2.8g yeast

My guess would be that you combine the yeast, sugar, and water and leave it till it froths (about five minutes?). Then add that to the rest of the dry ingredients and knead for a while. Then leave it to rise for an hour and knead it again and leave another hour then bake. I'm really guessing here, but an intelligent guess based on this recipe I've successfully used for bread rolls.

I was on a MYOB (make your own bread) streak for a while a couple of years ago, I documented some of that in this blog post. That was mostly fancy stuff, not the basic loaves that I've been making recently.

The truth of the matter is that Japanese bread, in our opinion, is quite sweet and lacking in substance. In more recent years you've been able to buy non-white bread, but it's quite expensive when you're feeding hungry teenage boys. So we generally make our own and we love it.

Last year a colleague passed on to me the legendary OMF German Bread recipe (apparently any Japan OMFer worth their salt as a baker has this...). This one is super easy, with no kneading required. It's also very yummy, with some nice crunchy bits in it.

German Bread Recipe

500g white bread flour

1 cup brown flour

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

a handful of chopped nuts or other things like pumpkin seeds

2 teaspoons of sugar

2 teaspoons of salt

3 teaspoons of dry yeast

3 cups of lukewarm water

largish dash of oil

A slice of German bread. Small, but yummy!

Method

1. Mix the dry ingredients well. 

2. Add water and oil and mix well.

3. Let it sit to rise for 30 minutes.

4. Stir lightly.

5. Fill two tins.

6. Leave to rise for 10-15 minutes.

7. Bake at 190˚C for 50 minutes.

German bread before

German bread after

Oh, and I haven't made bread rolls for some time. I should get around to that again. Bread rolls in grocery stores are also pretty new in Japan—we're seeing them more and more here—and they're getting bigger. Until recently you've only been able to buy tiny dinner rolls and even then not in every grocery store. By the way, since I did that blog post I linked to above about bread rolls, I've discovered that if you bake them with an oven tray on top, that keeps them nice and flat, great for burgers.

Now this has made me hungry . . . I'd better get on with making dinner soon (and hope that it's not as disastrous as last nights was!). 

Mabodofu: one of the meals I cook in Japan

It's been ages since I wrote about the sort of food we eat here regularly (2011, before we had any teens, I did two posts—1 and 2—about a whole week of meals). Our meals aren't vastly different from what I'd cook in Australia. Generally, the biggest difference is that we have fewer cuts of meat to choose from and a few limitations on the ingredients that we can find or afford. I don't cook many Japanese dishes, mostly because I find they're often a bit fiddly and I struggle with the ingredient lists (poor excuse, I know). If you want to eat good Japanese food, my feeling is that you should go out and get the experts to do it. However, the upside of making Japanese food at home is that it's often very cheap, because, of course, you're using readily available ingredients that are cheaper.

But here is a meal I cooked recently—mabodofu—that is a fairly new addition to my repertoire. I call it a Japanese dish because it's common here, but it actually is Chinese.

Apparently, there are packet mixes readily available in the shops, but we are not fans of packet mixes, primarily because they are often too salty for us, but also, it's often cheaper and healthier to do it from scratch. And the below recipe is so fast, you might almost be making a packet mix! It took me about 20 minutes.

Someone gave me this recipe when I shared about finding one on my Facebook page a year or so ago:

Mabodofu

4 tablespoons of oil
4 tablespoons of chopped shallots (green onions)—I use much more than this
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon hot bean paste (pictured, for those in Japan looking for it, it's called トウバンジャンtoubanjan）
4 tablespoons low-salt soy sauce
dash sugar, pepper
2 tablespoons of wine or mirin
220g or more of tofu
300g or more of mince (US=ground meat)
1 tablespoon cornstarch, water

1. Heat four tablespoons of oil. 
2. Stir fry shallots, garlic, and hot bean paste until fragrant. 
3. Add meat and stir fry until cooked. 
4. Add soy sauce, sugar, pepper, wine, and tofu then bring to boil. 
5. Reduce heat to low and cook for three minutes.
6. If desired, add cornstarch to thicken. 
7. Remove and sprinkle with more green onions if desired.
8. Eat over rice.

Mine cooked for a little too long when I made it last week, I think. It was a little dry, but tasted just fine (except it was too hot for our tastes, but then I used double the amount of hot bean paste mentioned above). Because tofu is so cheap here, it is a good meal for the budget too!

Sport and transition

A fun option at the gym are these trampolines. Our youngest, particularly,
has enjoyed them. My neck is currently giving me some stick, but I'm
hoping I'll be able to give the trampolines a go soon.

Supporting our teens through this transition has been harder than perhaps we expected or you might realise.

One big thing we continue to struggle with is finding an appropriate outlet for our sporty boys. In Japan through the school it's built into the school year. Actually school-based sport there is quite intense, with practises most afternoons and competitions most Saturdays. When we take them out of that and into Australia it's a big misfit. Most sport seems to be private clubs, with only a little bit at school, but generally not starting in July and finishing in December! And of course as teenagers they are quite opinionated about what sport they'll do. We can't just throw them into cricket or rugby. They have no experience in either, and no interest in being newbies either.

And of course we've got one boy homeschooling, which includes no sport at all. The deal we agreed on with him when we said he could do homeschooling was that he got out and did some exercise. He's found that that was a harder thing to do than he anticipated.

Last time we were in Australia we tried to solve this sporting dilemma by having them all join a community wrestling club. It worked well for one or two of our boys, but not so well for the third. This time they are much more opinionated about what they want to do. 

We first tried an athletics club, which started out promisingly, but was a significant commitment as it was from 6.30-8 two nights a week about 20 minute drive from here. This was significant as I needed to work our meals around it and at least one of us needed to be plan to spend that time driving and being present. We were prepared to do all this. But we had a lot of trouble with this plan: especially with boy/s bailing at the last minute—either at home before we left, or once we got there. Some families might cope with this, but we didn't. It was upsetting and stressful for us all. We were prepared to go with the plan, but not if they couldn't make a solid commitment to doing it and the following through with that.

Plan B was to go to a local gym that is much closer to us, in fact we pass it on the drive to school. Not perfect, as it doesn't include much running, and that is really what our guys like to do, but it's flexible and we can do it at times that are much easier to manage (straight after school). David and I can also get involved here and get exercise ourselves.

So this is what we've been working with the last three weeks. Most days it's working, but not every time. We're paying per visit, rather than being locked in to a period of time.

Things will probably move up another level from October as our youngest plans to rejoin the wrestling club in preparation for joining the CAJ wrestling team in January when we return.

The stress of dealing with this is not something you might think about when thinking about the life of a missionary. It's been an element of this transition that's made it hard to feel settled as our lives are pretty lacking in routine anyway, and struggling to get a routine going for exercise has only added to the challenge.