Pondering our uncommon "walking around life"

Before we went on home assignment in 2023 I was reading a book called Uncommon Ground, a collection of essays brought together by Tim Keller and John Inazu with perspectives from people thinking deeply and working daily to live with these times. Here are some of my reflections on that in light of our upcoming time in Australia:

Home assignment means meeting
up with people for various reasons.
On Saturday we met up with a 
member of our church in Tokyo,
someone we'd never met before.
We got to walk for the first time on
this cool bridge across the Brisbane
river.

In the case of a missionary on home assignment, we have to "translate" overseas mission and Japan to Australians. In general people we encounter there don't clearly understand what we do or where we do it. If you've followed my blog for a long time, you'll know that our work in Australia is composed of answering a lot of questions.

Much patience and diligence is required in translation. Much attention to detail as well as sensitivity to the wider picture. My work as an editor is also translation to some degree. I have to ensure that the writer's intent is accurately and appealingly translated into words that the audience will understand and not stumble over. And of course, as a writer who writes about cross-cultural life, I am translating my experience, life in Japan, and missionary life, into words so that others can understand. Pretty similar, in a way, to what we do on HA, except that as a writer and editor, I can hide behind my screen, rather than have to engage people face to face, or stand up in front of an audience with no time to edit my answers. (from here)

In the midst of another home assignment, one that is far more fast paced, the thoughts about still resonates with me. I'd definitely rather be working behind the scenes, but alas, God has given us this thing to do and we're getting on with doing it.

These last few weeks, when I have some free time and energy, I've been gradually making my way through A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene H. Peterson, the author of the Bible paraphrase: The Message. A Long Obedience. It is a book that I heard about early in our time in Japan but have only now gotten my hands on a copy. I didn't realise that it was a book on discipleship based on the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120–134. It's a good read!

The chapter I read on Tuesday was based on Psalm 123 and in it Peterson connects it with Romans 12:1–2:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (The Message)

Below is how I more commonly recognise this passage: 

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2 NIV).

The Message version of the passage stands out to me because the intro that I'm giving to our formal presentations includes a series of statements about what our ordinary lives in Japan looks like. Our "walking around life". We tend to think of service to God as the extraordinary stuff, not the stuff of ordinary life. As we talk from the front of churches and other gatherings I'm deliberately framing our stories as being from the place where God has set us down. (From the quote that Alistair Begg uses from his mentor Eric Alexander: "There's no ideal place to serve God, except the place he sets you down.")

And of course the other thing that stands out is the observation about culture. As we move between our two "home" cultures, we see things that people who are immersed in them don't necessarily see so clearly. It doesn't make us experts in either culture, but it does give us a unique perspective. Perhaps not fitting so well into either culture is an advantage, helping us to focus our attention on God as Paul instructs us to do?

I'll continue to ponder this and other thoughts in this book while I go about my "walking around life", which, this afternoon includes the joy of hanging out in an Australian library :-) and even borrowing some physical books!

Ordinary obedience is overlooked

I've continued thinking about the same topic I wrote about ten days ago: what to share during our home assignment. Some friends have been encouraging me to talk about ordinary life-stuff. One of them wrote: 

"...real impact often grows out of ordinary obedience, lived out over time." Just read this sentence in Martyn Iles' intro to his latest "At the Crux" podcast episode....referencing Daniel whose "faithfulness, integrity, and consistency were already visible" from the beginning (not just in the lion's den incident).

It's thought provoking, but also encouraging—that if we are faithfully seeking God and seeking to serve him in the everyday, it will shine through to others, even when we're not specifically speaking about our faith.

Here's an "ordinary" meal we had one 
night. I did make the bun from
scratch, though.

Therefore, I need to ponder: is it meaningful, as a missionary reporting back to supporters, if we talk about the ordinary things we do? Do we actually need extraordinary stories, or is reporting back about our daily life and work actually more meaningful and more encouraging? I'm thinking it might even be more relatable to those we speak to. After all, we're doing work that is more like what the majority of Christians do: working as a teacher and administrator, an editor and team leader, not church planters or evangelists. And on Sunday we're just a part of a church, much like most Christians are on a Sunday.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote this in our monthly news/prayer letter:

Here are some small ways we served others in March:

Wendy drove a car full of people to a women’s retreat. During the retreat she helped her roomie who was sick and held a colleague’s baby while she went to the toilet. She listened to a friend talk about her concerns about her boyfriend. The nights before and after the ladies retreat we hosted a young Australian lady who rode to the retreat with Wendy.

David drove a bus full of students to an athletics meet, hung around all day and into the night, before driving them home again.

We attended our church’s Wednesday prayer meetings, listened to and prayed for various church members.

David led worship on March 22nd and Wendy played. Later in the week one of the other pianists told us that the song “Meekness and Majesty” had been playing through her head all week (it was new to her and most in the church).

We spent several hours with a colleague in OMF leadership, enjoying fellowship and sharing one another’s burdens over food and games.

Wendy baked for our monthly church morning tea (David washed up).

David helped missionaries access the storage facility OMF rents not far from us to help meet the furnishing needs of various missionaries who were moving.

Wendy listened to a lady at church whose husband has recently had significant surgery and another lady who is seeking God’s leading in her career and personal life.

Most of this doesn’t seem all that significant. We’re not bragging about these things and definitely aren’t looking for applause. You have probably done similar things this month. It is good to remember that Paul told us to “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2 NIV). John Stott’s commentary on that verse is, “To love one another as Christ loved us may lead us not to some heroic, spectacular deed of self-sacrifice, but to the much more mundane and unspectacular ministry of burden bearing.” Let’s continue to love another in the small things. 

 Most people can relate to the above fairly ordinary activities. It's not all we did in March and I haven't listed the things that fall under our usual job responsibilities. But these aren't extraordinary and it's almost embarrassing to list them out like this.

What do you think? I'm sure that most of us don't realise how much of Christ is shining through to others and in many ways it's probably good that we don't, otherwise we might think it's because we're pretty special and get big heads! 

But it begs the question: are we metaphorically putting some actions on a pedestal and hiding others away in a drawer? That kind of dichotomy is unhelpful, I think. It encourages us have a dualistic system in our head: going to church and talking to someone about my faith is more important than faithfully serving my friends and family in practical ways. 

And it probably also means that we think of some jobs are more important than others: that a pastor is more important than an electrician, that a worship leader is more important than the church cleaner. And thus "missionaries" are elevated unhelpfully...ah, but now I'm heading into my own hobby horse territory, a topic that I'm writing about in my (possible future) book.

And so, we continue to ponder what we're going to share during our 11 weeks in Australia, when we take on the temporary role of "missionary speaker."

Ordinary deeds are not so ordinary?

Many people don't think of missionaries as ordinary. I've blogged here for many years in an effort to show that I really am just quite ordinary. Somehow we put big titles on people that makes them seems greater than ordinary. It's not just us. If you say someone is an actor, or a rocket scientist, or an Olympian, or _____. There are plenty of other titles that you could put into that space that makes us go "Wow, that person is pretty special" and quietly to ourselves say, "compared to my very ordinary life".

Image by Thomas Mühl from Pixabay    

Somehow we attach great significance to these things and little significance to the more usual things. I read an article by Tim Challies this week about this, about how some dream of being rich, of being convinced they could do big things if they just had a lot of money. The author suggested we've got it all wrong. He suggests thinking on Galatians 6:2 "Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ" (NIV). 

Challies quotes John Stott's commentary on that verse: "To love one another as Christ loved us may lead us not to some heroic, spectacular deed of self-sacrifice, but to the much more mundane and unspectacular ministry of burden-bearing."

What does bearing one another's burdens look like in my life this week?

I had two single ladies at church separately tell me of their burning desire to be married. I listened and promised to pray for them. (And followed through on that promise.)

I had a friend confess that she's sad. She's had many goodbyes recently. I shared some of my own goodbyes and sadnesses with her and we commiserated with one another.

Another good friend told me and a mutual friend over a text-chat about some choices she has about how she spends her time, about her heart for a specific group of ladies at her church, and wondered if God was calling her to do something practical for them. We listened and promised to pray.

I had an unexpected opportunity to have dinner alone with a new-ish friend on Monday. She asked about my boys and kept asking and listening...I told her more than she expected to hear from that simple enquiry. I was blessed by being able to tell some of our story and to be amazed again at what's happened for us in the last few years.

Also on Monday (it was a huge day!) I had coffee with a colleague who told me he felt flat as a result of various events that are happening to others in his life. I listened, and prayed for him.

I simply hugged several people this week. This isn't usual in Japan, most of those happened at a mission event where I caught up with a few people I haven't seen in a while. I've also discovered a Japanese lady at church loves hugs and so I'm leaning into that.

These are just a few small examples of bearing one another's burdens. They aren't worth bragging about and I certainly don't deserve any accolades or applause. These are things that any of us can do wherever we are. What have you done this week that will go unnoticed and perhaps be forgotten by even yourself by the end of next month? (And no, you don't have to tell us, just think about it!)

Feeling very ordinary

I don’t like being in a season where margin is almost non-existent. I try not to go there, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Thankfully I have daily and weekly routines that help sustain me through them, but it’s not a healthy place to be. 

It feels like that for weeks I’ve been dwelling in the land of the urgent: dealing with what’s most urgent each day. And important things have had to wait until they are urgent before they are dealt with. As I look at the weeks ahead, I hope that that crazy season is coming to an end for now and that I’ll be able to take a few more breaths between the urgent tasks.

Last Friday I was able to combine a household responsibility with being a friend and being heard by a friend. I drove, with a friend, to Costco (about 45 minutes from here). Lots of time to talk in the car and over lunch, punctuated in the middle with the practical task of acquiring items for each of our households. This is something we do every 2–3 months. Noting that we don’t talk while we shop! I need my wits about me at Costco, and shopping is one thing I struggle to multitask on.

On Saturday the most urgent thing seemed to be to rest, but there were a few “household” things to do also. As an adult, and a mum, and a wife, many responsibilities don’t simply fall away when you are tired. But I managed to have a pretty restful day, nonetheless

Ironically, one of the urgent things I’ve been plugging away at these last few weeks is the working on latest issue of Japan Harvest magazine. The theme of the issue is “rest”! I’ve got a pretty cool job, in that to do it involves learning and thinking about life in ways that are often quite personal. This magazine issue has been both helpful and confronting, as I've read about other people’s journeys and thoughts on the theme of rest. When you work on a magazine you work first on the bits, but then gradually the bits come together to form a whole and it can be a surprise to see the final result. I’m looking forward to seeing what it looks like as a whole. 

Now I’ve committed something of a writing crime here—I started this blog post, not knowing where it was going or what I really wanted to say. What’s my purpose in writing this? My goal to writing one blog post a week propels me onwards (and I missed last week), but my overarching goal for this whole blog, what I’ve been doing for nearly 13 years now, is writing about my “ordinary” life. Trying to give you, my readers, a glimpse into what the life of this person, who’s called to be a missionary, is like. Too often people called missionaries are put up on pedestals and believed to be something beyond ordinary. I feel pretty ordinary at the moment. I’m tired. I’ve got some very ordinary responsibilities weighing on my shoulders, as well as a few more unusual ones. True, my life as a missionary means I face some less-than-ordinary things, but I face them as an ordinary human.

My ordinary life last week included being a single mum. David was away in Kyoto helping with the accreditation assessment of a school there. We were not able to talk while he was away as his schedule was so full. …. So my lot has been all my own jobs, plus his, plus a busy week of work, plus looking after my boys (who are older and easier in many ways than when they were younger, although emotionally I think harder). Thankfully David got back on Thursday evening, and we both fell into bed exhausted.

This week has been a lot slower paced. School had its long-weekend, so called "winter break", which meant a five-day weekend for students and less for teachers (David got about three days off). Because I was still tired, I also worked minimally on Monday and Tuesday morning and I'm glad I did.

This morning I took one of my sons to a doctor's appointment at a hospital. It wasn't local, so took up most of the morning. It was also stressful for a few different reasons, so I took my time over lunch. It's really strange, after so many weeks of only having time for the urgent, that this week I'm finally out in front and able to take a few deep breaths. I'm thankful.

I won't lie to you, I've not been a bundle of cheerfulness this week. But I recognise that with the burden of frantic busyness lifted for the time being, I've got time to process some of the emotions of the last couple of months that have been pushed aside along with the other important and not-so-urgent things that I haven't had time for.

I was brought to tears by a post from Proverbs 31 ministries yesterday morning: 

Oh friend, we see you. We know you’re tired. We know you’re worn out and weary. We know your circumstances are weighing you down, with a heaviness on your chest that never seems to ease up.

It may feel impossible to keep going when the circumstances we face each day don’t seem to let up. But there is good news for us today: God is strong enough to carry us through these hard times.

Psalm 24:8 describes God this way, “Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle.”

Our God remains strong and mighty through every battle we face.

When our hearts are heavy, our eyes are tired and our souls are worn down, we can have confidence that God will hold us up and keep us going.

His strength will never fail us, friend.

This morning as I faced that hospital trip, I was trying to cling to the promise that God gives us strength. No idea how that works, but it's clearly there in his Word. I tell you, I'm leaning into this promise, and not just for this morning:

He gives power to the faint,
    and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
    and young men shall fall exhausted;
31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:29–31 NIV)

On the edge of ordinary on the medical scene

Looking at July and August, all I've written about on this blog is holidays and camping! Anyone would think I've done nothing else. I actually only had 16 official days of holidays in those two months. Since we got back from holidays in mid July I've been at my desk most of each work day (aside from those two days of camping a couple of weeks back). It's always a challenging time of year to work, although as the boys grow older it's become much less of a problem. They are no longer running around the house during their holidays, demanding my attention at random times, so I've got a lot more headspace to devote to work.

David went back to work officially on Monday, so this week is looking more like business as usual, except that I've got two big boys sleeping away much of the day (yes, they are pretty nocturnal at the moment). When I say "officially", David's actually been in and out of school many days in the last fortnight. And he's been on his computer doing email and other admin things for a period most days, not to mention three Zoom meetings/training with OMF last week. Plus, he's been working on a project of digitalising a portion of his work that has existed on index cards that have been collected by dozens of teachers over the last few decades. So, I've not been alone in working at home here!

We do as much of our medical care as we
can in Japanese, but for some things we 
really need English service providers for.
We're thankful for the doctor near this
station who has been caring for one of our
sons over the last 2 ½ years.

In addition to that, we've been doing a few medical things. I wanted to write a bit about one of them—a visit to a dermatologist.

When you live in your home country you don't think about how the medical things that happen there are (sometimes) specific to your country. Of course you might think about how accessing medical care in another language is hard (and it is!), but I've got a different type of example you might not have thought about.

Skin cancer isn't common here

Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world for men (not women, though we're close to the top of the list). Japan is not even in the top 20 countries in this list. But Japan is third on the list for stomach cancer and Australia doesn't feature in the top 20. (This data is from here.) 

These are interesting statistics, but the rubber hits the ground when you are not living in your home country. In Australia skin cancer is high on the list of things that your local GP will check if you ask them to (and in fact we've been told that the average Australian GP is better informed about skin cancer than the average dermatologist in Japan). Plus, there are many easily accessible skin cancer clinics that will give you a regular full body check. By contrast, in Japan, there aren't such clinics. And at annual government-funded medicals in Japan, they check for bowel and stomach cancer, but skin cancer isn't on the radar.

It just so happens that my husband has a family medical history (and now a personal history) of skin cancer, and so this is definitely on our radar as he gets older. I'm very grateful, therefore, that we live in one of the largest metropolises in the world. It's possible to find unusual services, like a doctor who has read up on skin cancer in Australia and is willing to "colour outside the lines" with foreign patients who have different skin and had different environment growing up to most of the Japanese population. It's not covered by our Japanese health insurance, but it's an awful lot cheaper and easier than going to Australia. It really is another example of how we live "on the edge of ordinary".

And life continues on...

Aside from all that, we're living pretty quiet lives here and trying not to be too stressed by the news of what's going on in the rest of the world. The pandemic is raging in Japan (between 15,000 and 20,000 new cases a day in the last few days, around 5,000 of those in Tokyo) and we're doing essentials, but otherwise at home. We're thankful that Japan is working hard to vaccinate—nearly 50% of the population has had one jab, that's 60 million people since they began in mid February. Maybe by summer next year Australia will welcome us back for a couple of months without requiring us to quarantine in a hotel at our own expense?

School (CAJ) starts the new school year for students from next Tuesday. I'm still coming to grips with the fact that we'll only have one at school this year. We're not sure what the year will look like for our middle son, but we're glad we have the means to be able to support him at this transition time of life, to give him a chance to figure things out.

Getting back to "normal" gradually

Looking back at the last several days, I can see that we’re gradually getting back into a rhythm of life that is familiar. Indeed, Friday and Saturday were hectic, but full of “normal” stuff like errands on my bike, grocery shopping, cooking, helping out at a wrestling tournament, and interacting with various people in the international community. Sunday was slower, but again “normal” for us in Japan: church in the morning, our usual Sunday noodle lunch, and relaxing in the afternoon and evening.

Friday morning I went to another CAJ prayer meeting, it was an encouragement to pray with other parents for the school and surrounding community. Then I headed off on, what turned out to be, a whole morning of bike-riding as I did various errands and grocery shopping. 

I ran out of energy mid-morning on
Friday, so bought this iced coffee.
Not as nice as a hot coffee when it's
under 10C outside, but it helped when
I needed it.

After lunch I took an hour to rest on the bed, knowing the next day and a half would be very full. After that I put together Japanese curry rice in the slow cooker for the refs and coaches’ hospitality room the next day at the wrestling meet CAJ was hosting. Then I took our youngest to the doctor with a suspected case of the flu. We sat at the doctor’s for 2 ½ hours (it’s a show-up-and-you’ll-get-seen-eventually clinic). He was given a flu diagnosis on symptoms as his temperature had been rising quickly through the afternoon.

Saturday I spent about 10 hours at the CAJ gym. It was great to be there, but I felt fragmented in many ways as there were several things I was involved in: 

• Helping with the hospitality room—bringing food, checking the room periodically, helping solve any problems that emerged, then cleaning up at the end.
• Helping with the administration of the high school event—there’s a lot of writing involved as wrestlers are listed in their weight classes, inserted in a draw, results recorded, bout-sheets written up, etc. All by hand! I didn’t do a lot, but just bits and pieces.

I also tried to meet the parents of new wrestlers as well as cheer for the CAJ wrestlers when they were out on the mat. I had a number of great conversations (as far as the fragmented wrestling-day conversation goes), and met two new families (new to the team as well as to the school). It was especially great just “hanging” with some of our longer-term wrestling-parent friends and also talking with a mum who’s been around at the school ever since I’ve been there, but with whom I’ve struggled in the past to connect to. On top of that I had my own kids to stay in touch with. One with the flu and the other feeling his way around just being on campus at CAJ again. 

It was a satisfying, but tiring day. But it did feel so normal. I had couple of people do a double take as they saw me for the first time in six months, but momentarily forgot that I’d been gone. Obviously we’re such fixtures that it seemed normal to folk to see us!

I’m gradually gaining in stamina. Last week I found myself going too hard at times and then petering out before the end of the day. My emotions are gradually settling down, but I’m still a bit all over the shop on that front. I keep reminding myself that we’re in the midst of transition and that’s going to continue for a while yet, though gradually tapering towards a more steady normal. That’s a good thought.

Today our 10th grade son started back at school. That was another big marker towards getting everyone more established in a normal routine. Our youngest is still out with the flu, but this morning I’ve had downstairs to myself as he slept in and, I presume, has been reading in bed. It’s very pleasant to sit at my desk with no teenagers around at all.

Now I have to get motivated to ride out for some more groceries. It’s a lovely blue sky out there, though I know it is under 10 degrees, I also know that I will be adequately dressed to cope with it. 

Actually that has been a big surprise. I thought that I’d struggle with the significant change from mid-Brisbane summer (around 30˚C) to a mid-Tokyo winter (single digits), but I’ve actually been quite warm. I’ve got no idea what that’s all about, perhaps God’s special grace to me at this time. The other surprise is that three of the four members of our household have come down with colds/flu and I have not. It’s generally me who gets all the colds and the others rarely, but not this time. Of course I might still get it, but I’m thankful that thus far I’ve remained well.

Well, it’s off to put my jacket, scarf, gloves, and ear muffs on.

Joy in the small things

Writing yesterday's post made me very sad for several hours afterwards. So today I want to tell you about some joy I had yesterday. 

I don't like housework and spend as little time on it as possible. However, I've found over the years that if I vacuum and clean toilets regularly, I expend less emotional energy in the long run and actually get a reasonable amount of satisfaction at having those two things under control. I've also discovered that routine is also something that also reduces energy spent, so I've developed the routine of doing these two mundane, yet important jobs on Wednesday mornings. It is the morning that school has a slow start for the students. They start at 9.30 instead of 8.30, so the morning is a bit different anyway, with them here later.

Routine is something that was almost completely missing from our six months in Australia. It's a big thing we missed. And, try as I might, I never established a routine for vacuuming and cleaning toilets.

So yesterday morning it was with strange delight that I got reacquainted with my cute Japanese vacuum cleaner. I have yet to meet a vacuum cleaner in Australia that I like as much as this little machine. I even took a selfie with it to show you how tiny it is. Oh, and I cleaned the toilets too. Which, despite most of my house being around 6˚C, wasn't a hardship as I was warm anyway from vacuuming, and then used warm water to clean.

And then I sat down with coffee that I made with my Baccarat stovetop expresso maker (another item that I missed in Australia). A little piece of routine reclaimed and with it, joy. I savoured the moment.

Ordinary life over here

I like the calmness of break-time. Not having people going all directions
is really nice (though less common as they get older and have their own
plans with friends). I took this photo as we travelled back to Tokyo last
Tuesday after our day in the park. I always find these signs amusing and
slightly scary (especially if you aren't sure where you're going). But
they are also a nice metaphor for life with older kids!

In "ordinary life" over here, everyone has started back at school and work this week. We're nearly to the end of first semester and between now and the end of the school year (June 12) we have but one week of school holidays. That one week won't be restful either, as we're attending our Japan conference in Hokkaido for four of the days. So it's going to be a long slog till June, but not as bad as when the boys were little. They do have more stamina for these long school terms than they used to. 

The big regret for them this year is that they'll not get a long summer break, not in the middle of the year, nor at the end of the year. They'll have to wait a long 24 months until they get a longer-than-one-month break from school! (Though perhaps over Christmas they might get closer to six-weeks, the details haven't been sorted out yet.)

Yesterday I was at a mission meeting and today done some computer work (email and editing), I've gotten some exercise, and done some shopping (mostly for groceries). Yep, life's back to normal again.

Contrary to what you might expect moods have been pretty good (that might change when the sleep deprivation kicks in in the next day or two). In fact in the last couple of days we've had the sort of interactions over a meal that I'd like to bottle and reproduce for daily enjoyment! The moodiness that teenagers experience is not just a pain to them, but to those who live with them.

What lies ahead of me in the next few weeks is causing me to feel a bit tight around the chest. There's a lot to be done. But I'm trying to stay calm. Tomorrow I'll write about the words from the Bible that I've been repeating often to myself.

As things stand now, it is three weeks and six days until I board the aeroplane with our eldest to take him back to Australia for the start of his university studies. A deadline that is looming. 

It is also now less than six months until I board a plane with the rest of the family to fly to Australia for the rest of the year.

This Saturday we have a wrestler on the mat again. It's a shorter middle-school tournament. It will be good to get mat-side again. I'll try not to bore you with too many wrestling posts :-)

The remainder of my week includes, aside from working at my desk, a language exchange time over coffee and a trip to the orthodontist. So I should be able to get a good amount of momentum going on my desk-work.

So, back to ordinary life. At 5.30pm it has been dark outside for more than half an hour, and though that says "winter", it has felt like a spring day, with a heat wave of something like 16 degrees! Soon I'll be in the kitchen cooking up some chicken, and cutting and grating salad so people can add them into tortillas for dinner tonight. And ordinary life continues: tidying up the kitchen, showers, relaxing, reading, bed.

Looking back five years to a day in our house

Five years ago this month our lives had been shaken up, literally. The below blog post was written ten days after the earthquake/tsunami. 

At the time I was newly appointed as the (temporary) managing editor of the next issue of the magazine, designated as a "disaster edition". School was still out: unreliable trains, plus many families who evacuated due to the uncertainty of the nuclear situation made it impossible to hold meaningful classes. So we all were at home. The boys were supposed to do some kind of homeschooling and David was doing online assistance for his own students. It wasn't easy. 

Packing the "disaster" edition to post out.
We did a record run that issue, printing
more than 3 ½ times our usual run, and we
sold out. I don't even have a copy in Japan
of that issue any more. We could have printed
many more.

It's good to look back and remember. God sustained us through all this. Now we can see that through this disaster he's opened doors to ministry in this area. I know, we've just sent a 40-page issue of the magazine to the printer that focuses on where we are five years later. 

Have a read about our day, the 21st of March, 2011:

Our new normal day

We're coming to the end of another day. A day of juggling three boys, pseudo-homeschooling, two computers and two part-time jobs. A grey, rainy, chilly day. Another day where we had very little framework to hang our day on. I guess that has been a constant of the last ten days. Almost nothing in fixed in our diaries, and yet things that needed getting done. Something like summer holidays, except a feeling like we should be accomplishing things. 

I write "pseudo-homeschooling" because for the most part it is only an attempt at home schooling. We don't have a curriculum. We have few things that really need doing. It is more like filling the days with educational-value activities, than a real attempt at schooling. The trickiest part is juggling computer usage. Many of the suggested activities involve computers attached to the internet, and with only two computers with that capability it truly can be a juggle with five people in the house. (Not to say that we aren't thankful for the blessing of actually having two computers.)

My job as household manager remains. So sourcing groceries, previously known as grocery shopping, remains. 'Sourcing' giving the impression that groceries that you are looking for are not necessarily in the places you think they'll be or in the first place you look. After yesterday's encounter with a petrol-station line, we're even more reluctant to use our car. Stories of people waiting 2 hours for 10 litres of petrol are pretty common, even here in Tokyo. For now we'll keep our car with its 3/4 full tank for emergencies only. So, that meant grocery shopping in the cold rain in full rain pants and jacket on my bike. Thankfully it wasn't too bad I didn't use gloves and my fingers didn't freeze off, but on this public holiday (Spring Equinox holiday) there were very few others out on their bikes.

So, it really is a "new normal" that we are operating under. Grocery shops are not back to normal. I haven't been able to find bread flour yet. Milk, bread and noodles are still in short supply. There remain conspicuous gaps on shelves. People don't seem to be panic buying, but perhaps it is the lack of fuel that is causing difficulties with delivery vehicles? 

Today, with an assurance of almost no chance of a power outage, I've finally been able to use my slow cooker to cook up the very unusual spare ribs that I found before this all happened. I've never seen them before in Japan, so it will be a nice treat.

I haven't yet taken up the cleaning challenge that is building around me. The dust bunnies in the corners just haven't seemed all that important in comparison to all the other things going on recently. I guess I've got it coming. I'm dropping strong hints to the boys who merely raise their eyebrows or roll their eyes. 

The school had various "open" things going for the morning, but that still required a parent for supervision. David ended up taking them and toting his computer along, trying to fit in some curriculum planning (or other science department stuff that I don't understand) along the way.

I stayed home and got my three articles for our mission's international magazine finished. That is the first piece of on-demand journalism I've ever done. Must say I don't think I'm cut out for fast paced journalism! But it was nice to get that done, even if I felt as though there was so much more that I could have said, unfortunately with the deadline and word limit, I just couldn't.

Then I've continued making connections, sourcing stories and networking. I went into the CRASH command centre mid afternoon to have a meeting about the upcoming edition of Japan Harvest. I'm somewhat relieved as some of the responsibilities for the edition have been taken off my shoulders, but we're aiming even higher and wider now in quality and purpose, so in some ways I'm not totally relieved. There is a lot to be done in four weeks - our tentative "send-to-the-printer" date. I still feel a little bit like I'm a sixth grader doing university-level work. However I'm gradually making progress and have found another editor to help with the stories that I'm finding.

We received a phone call from our mission's home office, just checking that we were okay. It is great to feel cared for. That has been a real sense we've had from this whole affair - that people back home do care for us. Even in normal times we send lots of information back in the form of prayer/news letters, but because life is busy we often hear very little back, that is generally okay, but sometimes discouraging. It has been very encouraging to hear from so many who regularly read our news and pray.

I was encouraged to hear people at CRASH command centre talking about taking a day-off. We mostly took yesterday as our day-off. I still checked email, but didn't really pro-actively work. Today I feel somewhat refreshed. However people at the command centre are working about 11 hours a day, 6 1/2 days a week. It is a very busy, intense and frequently changing workplace. They are working hard to get things set-up and with so many people in need, I can understand the urgency. We also fear for people's ability to keep this pace up.

Well this has been a rambling kind-of post, thanks for sticking around. I hope I've given you some insight into our somewhat unusual days. 

Before I sign-off I want to remind you of those in Japan who have greater needs than ours. That there remains, according to a report I read this afternoon, something like 2.3 million Japanese without running water. Many are able to access water via a community tap (like a village well), but not where they are residing.

Cycling works in Tokyo

I've written about cycling and bicycles quite a lot on this blog (for example here I wrote about bike parking). Below is a great video about the cycling culture in Japan. 

You can carry an awful lot pretty easily on
a mamachari. This is my bike.

Unfortunately it's not quite representative of cycling in Japan. Most of the people interviewed are wearing helmets and talking about "commuting cycling" and "lycra cycling" rather than the usual cycling that the majority of people are doing. Most cycling trips would be a local i.e. a kilometre or two, rather than several kilometres or more.

At least one of the translations aren't quite right either. Then there is the issue of what the words are translated properly, but do they really mean what they said. An older lady in the first minute of the video says she's only been riding for a year. But I think she's probably been riding since she was a kid, just not seriously. But if you listen to the narration, it is explained that riding goes under the radar in Japan. You don't say you're riding to the shop, you just go out the door and hop on your bike. As natural as most Australians hop in their car.

Despite all that it is still worth watching. 

The Gaman Spirit: Why Cycling Works in Tokyo from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

You know when you've been away from your home country for too long when you struggle to know whether someone has an accent from there. The foreigner speaking (Byron Kidd, Urban Cycling Consultant in Japan) may be Australian . . . what do you think? Here is his blog, Tokyo by Bike, with lots of interesting stuff about riding in Japan. Here is a post about mamachari, the standard getting-around-town bike that most of the 85% of people who own a bike use.

Today's ordinary

Riding along our local "river".

Today, the last day before school starts up again, we designated "odd job" day. We pulled the Christmas decorations down this morning. David did a few maintenance jobs, I took myself and one son to the doctor for some routine matters. Both David and I also ran some local errands.

It was deliciously warm for a January day, it was 15 degrees at 1pm (average maximum here this time of year is 5.2˚C). It was a gorgeous day to be out on a bike, so I'm thankful that I was able to ride, not drive, to get some time out of the house-of-boys-on-holidays as well as some exercise. 

One of the super things about our little corner of Tokyo is that there are two "rivers" close by that both have pedestrian/bike tracks along them. They're great if you're going in the right direction.

I was able to organise my errands so that I did a circuit taking in both rivers, riding a bit over 11km. I got rid of some rubbish (milk cartons and polystyrene trays), posted a birthday present, bought some wool to make a scarf while watching wrestling these next six weeks, and did some grocery shopping.

My route today, 11.35km.

My son and I walked to the doctor later (another 2km of exercise). It no longer seems strange to me that doctors and other medical clinics are generally closed for walk-ins from 12 to 3 each day. Just having "walk-ins" instead of appointments even seems normal to me these days!

I sat down for a while this afternoon to read/play games on my phone. And made dinner (this amazing recipe) which we're about to eat. Oh, I also got my last sleep-in for many weeks as well. Not expecting any sympathy on that front, though, I have too many friends who have young children or who just can't sleep-in anymore.

To finish off a productive holiday-day, I've got some ironing planned for this evening.

The boys mostly hung around here, though our eldest had wrestling training for a couple of hours this morning and went for an hour's ride with a friend this afternoon (he's trying to lose weight again, deadline is Saturday morning).

Tomorrow it is back to school and work. I'm a bit sad because it is lovely to not be tired and dragging myself out of bed at the behest of an alarm. But it will be good to see the boys get back into a more healthy routine (there's been a lot of screen time in the last two weeks).

Today's not the only amazing weather we've had, most days have been warm
and some just remind us of home (it's the blue sky that does it in this photo).
Last week I took some time out to ride to the big park 6km south of us.

Back down to earth (maybe)

Warming up on the practise mat. Wrestler being flattened
by his coach :D

So we've come back down to earthly levels again. Alarm went off at 6 and we dragged some sleepy boys out of bed an hour later. No matter if you're a National Champion or brother of one, you've still got to get to school. 

I'm actually happy about the timing. Though they'll all be tired, at least it was a great way to distract us from the reality of school starting and the negative thoughts/behaviour we saw associated with that last term.

The two younger boys are tired because we didn't get the travellers home until after 9 and then there was a lot to catch up on, as well as two videos of wresting bouts to watch. It took a while for everyone to calm down enough to sleep.

According to my husband, the Queensland team looked
the smartest of all the teams, with their maroon and
grey uniforms. My son was heard to mutter this morning
as I drove him to school (with his "winter term" tie on)
that he wished school uniforms could be as comfortable
as these were.

I've mentioned before how I think wrestling is an honourable sport. Listening to the video, you would have thought we were at a music performance or a tennis match. Not really the polite applause, but it certainly was orderly and quiet.

Here is the Code of Conduct we/they had to agree to to enter this competition:

Code of Conduct • I/my child shall behave in a dignified manner at all times and shall not do anything that may bring Wrestling Australia Inc., wrestling or myself into disrepute.
• I/my child shall respect the spirit of fair play and non-violence towards all other competitors, officials and spectators.
• I/my child shall abide by any lawful direction and respect the authority of any official who has authority to conduct any element of the competition.
• I/my child shall be accountable and accept responsibility for my/their actions.  

Examples of Unacceptable Behaviour are:
• Sledging other athletes, officials or event organisers. Sledging is defined as a statement that is deemed to denigrate and/or intimidate another person.
• Publicly dissenting the decision of the referees or other officials.
• Creating a public disturbance, or acting in a way that becomes a public nuisance.
• Causing damage to another person’s property.
• The use or encouragement of drugs and banned substances to enhance or inhibit performance.
• Engaging in any harassment, sexual or otherwise.
This list is not exhaustive, but is intended to provide a guideline to what is considered unacceptable behaviour. 

David said there was one incident where a coach was having trouble controlling himself, but the situation eventually calmed down without any drastic action (like the coach being removed from the building). 

I've seen (in Japan at an international schools competition) a wrestler who was so upset that he had to be practically wrestled away from the mat by his coach into a dressing room. That is unusual. Generally the conduct is much more controlled. The coaches at CAJ are very strict on this.


But I wander. There probably aren't many of you who really care about this . . . 

Back to the "earthly levels" that I began with. The boys have just arrived home, that's my call back to ordinary life.

How was camp? Awesome!

I went to the beach twice, some went three times. It's great
being at the beach now that our boys aren't so small.

I loved it! In fact I'm suffering withdrawal today! I'm particularly missing the interaction between leaders: a combination of lighthearted Aussie banter and some serious (but generally short) conversations. But here's a list of other things.

Favourite things from camp:

Can you see these cute ?whales that two of the girls made?

• seeing my inadequacy used to enable a younger leader to step up and use her skills
• being able to totally engage with everything (in the past I've been sidelined because my kids needed me to supervise them)
• surprising the campers and my own kids at my athleticism (yes, I've still got some)
• realising that parenting has equipped me in many ways for dealing with kids, even those embarking on teenage years
• watching all my boys engage with camp at an appropriate level



David pulled in his science teacher skills and had the kids
(and some leaders) make stomp rockets.

• My eldest was a junior leader, he willingly helped whenever he was asked.
• My middle son, initially reluctant to come to camp, got so involved we hardly saw him all week.



The dining area. A source of much great tucker.

• My youngest son was about 1 ½-2 years younger than the youngest campers and he kept up with everyone. He was virtually a camper (in size too, he wasn't too much different in height to the smallest boys).
• stimulating conversation. With leaders and often with kids too. My habit of asking questions at dinner (at home) to start conversations came into good use, particularly in sitting with girls who didn't always know how to connect with one another.
• eating such delicious food that I didn't buy, cook, or cleaned up.
• and, as I wrote (here) before we left, being somewhat anonymous. The kids didn't really care what my "day job" was, though if they did find out we had some interesting conversations.

Least favourite things from camp:

An extreme trampoline. So much fun, but
the harness was a little painful around the waist.

• realise I'm old in their eyes (yes, even the eyes of the 22 year old leaders)
• feeling zonked after only one day of camp

But really there wasn't much I didn't like. I'm just wishing it would be less than four years before we get to do another one!