Our long-weekend

We've just had a long weekend. It was the end of Japan's "Golden Week", ten days or so that contain a cluster of public holidays. However CAJ had just one day off.

On Friday I chose to do what I didn't want to do: watch two superhero movies (Ragnarok and Infinity War). One a DVD, the other an outing to the cinema. I decided this out of a desire to continue to keep a little bit of a connection with our teenagers' worlds. I'm not sure how effective that was, but I keep believing that I need to continue to make the effort because I'm sure that they are not going to.

Saturday we did the usual for this time of year: went to a track and field meet. It was the middle school finals. We had gorgeous weather. The sort of low 20s, clear-sky day that is a dime-a-dozen in Queensland, but much rarer here. We didn't even get a nasty wind in the afternoon, as has been usual in recent weeks.

The meet was on what I think is an artificial island on the edge of Tokyo harbour. It's in a park, which we haven't spent much time in, given that the only time we go there is to watch our boys compete. However with only one boy running and throwing on Saturday I had a bit more spare time than usual (and I forgot my book), so I went for a bit of a wander a couple of times. It really it quite pretty. Again, hard to believe that close by is major roads and cityscapes.

We didn't see one cloud all day: very unusual for this time of year!

Sunday was a usual day, with church in the morning and resting in the afternoon, as well as some baking for the week to come. 

I finished off this book. If you're interested in Japan and don't mind well-written historical fiction, it is worth a read. It's a story about Japan's most famous revenge story, where an illegitimate daughter of a Lord seeks to avenge her father's forced suicide.

The book is actually quite insightful. Japan has changed a lot since 1702, when it is set. But there are elements that persist in the culture. One striking thing was the language in which they referred to themselves, it was very self-deprecating. For example, "I'm but a stupid fisherman, Your Honor, whom fate has rowed far offshore." There's a good deal of tension as the protagonist is in grave danger the whole book and only escapes through a good deal of cleverness as well as amazing skill. She's quite the hero.

One final photo from the weekend. Yesterday marked eight weeks until we leave Japan. I surveyed the cupboards and found some unopened food that is expired, or that we won't use before its "best by" date. So I took a couple of photos and offered them to local friends using Facebook. 

It's a fact of life when you change countries, you have to repeatedly go through the process of reducing your "pantry" and then building it up again  Thankfully this time we don't have to quite get it down to nothing, but can keep the non-perishables that have long use-by dates. But I do need to empty the fridge and freezer so we can turn them off.

I wanted to include this photo, because it does show how mixed our pantry contents are: Japanese, American, and Australian foodstuffs! (I know you can get peanut butter in Australia, but this is an American brand and size—from Costco.)

A day out and some more

On Friday the weather was dry (unlike most of the week) and I was well, so I loaded up my bike and took off for the day.

I first rode to my favourite park, my first ride there in more than four months. I find the first thing to go out of my life when I'm busy is exercise and alas I've done little exercise since January. So it was great to be out, and in lovely temperatures too (mid teens).

I was disappointed to find that the majority of the cherry blossoms weren't out, a few early bloomers were, and they were wonderful, but only constituted about five trees.

I love the blue sky! Reminds me of Australia. Look at these buds just about to burst out of their winter confinement.

What caption is needed? This is a type of cherry blossom, though not the most famous version.

I think these are almost my favourites. Their colour is so vibrant compared
to the famous cherry blossom, and they bloom a bit earlier.

I've got no idea what this is, but there was just a single bush.

This looks a bit like a relative of the Australian wattle.

I didn't so so great at getting the right angle on these either, but they
were quietly blooming in the semi-shade.

After the park, I kept going, stopping for lunch in a little community park and then on to a coffee shop. There I pulled out my computer and worked on a couple of articles that were promising to be a couple of the harder ones on my current to-do list, and the sorts of jobs that are easy to procrastinate on. My strategy was to sit there till I'd decently tackled them. I left there feeling pretty satisfied with the work I'd been able to get done.

Then I reversed my journey, though it was getting late and some dark clouds had come over, so I didn't go back to the park. I still had grocery shopping at two different stores to do, so I stopped at one on the way home. Then rode home, unloaded the bike and went to the second store. I was happy to have pretty comfortably ridden nearly 20km.

I had the added challenge of extracting my bike from this jam in the free bike park (pay for parking and you get a better
experience!).

It was great to get out. It enabled crossed off several things that give me joy:

• a ride on a day with some blue sky
• the park
• photography
• a coffee shop
• crossing things off my to do list

Yesterday was spent at an athletics meet, another great day out (warmer weather than last week). 

Today was church, then I rode the long way home, searching for more blooms to capture (but not with my big camera). 

I love the apparent wild abandon of this early bloomer. Not a cherry blossom.

After lunch we spent a pleasurable hour chatting with our eldest. Then some rest, reading. 

And now it's preparation for four days away in Hokkaido at our mission's national conference. I'll see what time I get for mobile blogging while we're away. Maybe once or twice?

Touching base

After  a very quiet week last week (i.e., I left the house once, in the car), we had a big day on Saturday at the first track meet for the season. Not to bore you with the details, suffice to say it was fun to watch our 15 y.o. run again. Sprinting is his thing and it's good to see him doing it. 

He ran well too, in his first high school meet, considering he's done little pre-season training, his times were good and we're looking forward to improvement as the weeks go on. So most Saturdays between now and mid May will be spent like this (although most will be warmer!)

I was wrecked at the end of the day. It was a cold day. Though it was sunny, there was a sneaky breeze and it didn't make it up to 10C, so it was hard work keeping warm, which is tiring. But the sun was strong enough to burn!

A tree near the track on Saturday, just getting its spring clothes on!

I had fun taking photos too, still working on what the best settings are for various situations and subjects. I suspect photography is a continuous learning process as you gradually refine your skills! And because I don't actually practise that much, it will be a slow process.

Sunday was a quiet day, in which I took a nap. Now today, I should be ready and raring to go, right? Well, it's been a busy day. Much more exercise than I've done for over a week (two grocery shopping trips on my bike = over six kilometres of riding).

I'm still coming to grips with the weather, it's jerking us around, and requires more thinking than mid-summer or mid-winter does. Last week we had some 18/21 degree days, and then 9C on Saturday! Today was supposed to be warm, but I was wearing a scarf at midday and thinking about gloves when on my bike, but an hour or so later the sun tried to peak out from the clouds and the temperature increased briefly (or so it seemed to me).

But thankfully the temperatures have been high enough to trigger spring blooming. The cherry blossoms are on their way out, along with various other blooming trees and flowers. I'm looking forward to all the joy that their colourful appearances brings to our weeks.

My cold seems to be better, but I'm still blowing my nose. I wonder if I'm developing some spring hayfever allergies? It's a common ailment in Tokyo. My asthma flared last week, but is gradually settling down with medication. I'm thankful none of us got the flu this season. Indeed our family has remained remarkably healthy, compared to many roundabout. I'm thankful!

We've got four days left of school until Spring Break. Next Monday we're flying to Hokkaido for our all-Japan OMF conference. I'm wondering what to pack—as it is still quite chilly up there and snow is still lying around, yet we'll be in a hotel the majority of the time, a very warmly heated hotel. Hmmm.

Not a very earth-shattering post! But just in case you wondered how things were in our house . . . 

Saturday's Finals

Time is racing fast these days and I've just realised that I haven't written about the Track and Field finals on Saturday. 

Final straight of the 400m for our middle son.

Discus is hard to photograph without a telescopic lens. We were behind
two fences.

It was a gorgeous day, sunny and very warm (upper 20Cs) at least for these Tokyoites who've been freezing for what seems like ever-so-long. So warm we had to be careful not to get sunburnt and many were retreating to the trees scattered around the track. We sat under umbrellas a lot of the day as there was no roof on the stands. 

It was a 12-hour day for me, a bit longer for the team who left earlier than I did. I left, with a car-full of people at 7.30am and got home at 7.30pm. Of course we stopped for dinner on-base at the American fast food court. I enjoyed Subway (the chain is in Japan, but none close to our house).

I get really nervous about wrestling, but generally haven't with track and field. Maybe because my boys haven't had super lofty goals. However this time one of them did. 

Before the 400m and 100m of our middle son, I was just as nervous as I am at wrestling. But he did really well. He ran or threw personal best scores for all his events, even the relay team he was in ran a team-best. And he got three top-eight finishes too, which meant ribbon awards at the end of the day in 400m (5th), 4x400m (3rd), and discus (4th). He wasn't completely happy, his goals were higher than that, especially for the 100m (in which he came 10th out of about 100 runners from eight schools). But I was happy.

Finishing the 1,600m in first place surprised us all.

Our youngest son's overall placings weren't spectacular, which we expected, because he's competing against boys up to about 16 years of age—if they're in middle school, grades 6 to 8, they can compete. This seems grossly unfair from the perspective of an Aussie where athletics is conducted in one-year age groups. However he did produce an exciting finish in his 1,600m heat. He's pretty new at this event and didn't pace himself quite right, however he pulled out an amazing finish in which he closed a gap of about 60m in the last lap to win the race by about three metres. That went some way toward making up for the disappointment in not getting PRs or great placings.

Not too many years ago I was a "never wear pink"
gal. I'm reformed!

I'm really happy that our middle son placed in his events. This is something his brother hasn't managed to do in track and field, so this is "his" thing. I want each of my boys to find what they're passionate about. Seeing them achieve in those areas is very satisfying.

So now we have about four months of no sport on Saturday. I'm looking forward to some nice sleep-ins. But not looking forward to having to motivate my sporty boys to get out and get some exercise of their own volition. Strangely, they usually don't naturally take the initiate yet in that area. But if they don't, they get unhappy and restless. Hopefully they'll start to recognise that about themselves and take initiative more often these summer holidays.

I loved seeing these two younger siblings in the wider CAJ family
 have a wonderful time playing under the trees behind the stands.
You can't see it clearly, but there are soft "friends" placed in the tree.

Cross-cultural sporting experience

Here's a post I wrote in May 2011, yep, six years ago, when we first began attending inter-school track and field competitions in Tokyo with our eldest son:

Yesterday we spent all day at our 11 y.o.'s track meet. Throughout the day I couldn't help remember...those years when I was a participant, not a spectator at such events. And also on the differences between the way Americans seem to do school sport and the Australian way.

Australian schools, in my experience, generally have three different streams of sport going at school. 

1. They have PE classes during school time, the number of which varies from school to school. This is compulsory for much of one's school career, or it was for me.
2. Once a week they have an afternoon dedicated to sport or some other non-curricular activity. There is a mixture of interschool team sports as well as within-school options like Ten Pin bowling, cricket, netball, soccer etc. During that time I even participated in activities like chess, film appreciation (really - that is the first and last time I saw "Psycho"!) and Tai Chi. These options generally change every term, four times a year.
3. Our high school had four different annual events that directly related in interschool events. They were the swimming carnival, athletics carnival (which involved track and field), cross country and ball games (the latter comprising of team events like captain ball, tunnel ball etc.). Each of these were all-school events where classes were cancelled, the first two being all day or day-and-a-half events. They were conducted as competitions between school "houses". A great deal of school spirit was involved in each these events, though many fellow teenagers chose to just be physically present, rather than spirited! These events, especially the first three, were primarily concerned with choosing the best athletes to represent the school in later regional events.

Our experience here within the international school arena in Japan is quite different. I don't know about other schools, but this is my understanding of CAJ's system.

1. PE classes extend from Kindergarten through to Year 12. And more frequently than we (that is my husband and I) had in state schools in Australia.
2. The elementary school has an annual Field Day. This is relatively non-competitive and encouraging event. It has no long-term goal such as selecting the fastest or highest or strongest for inter-school competition. Middle and high school have no such event. No swimming carnivals or all-school cross country events.
3. The international schools have interschool competitions in various sports organised during out-of-school hours. These sports include basketball, volleyball, soccer, cross-country, track, field hockey and wrestling. They have three seasons - "fall", winter and spring. 

Here are some things I find strange about the system we find ourselves in:

• The number three (above) competitions are totally extra curricular. You only "go out" for them if you want. The teams are selected from those who try out. I find this particularly strange for athletics - how do you know that you have the best athletes representing your school? How do you even know if you have your athletes doing their best events. 
• No weekly sports afternoons. If you want to pursue a sport you do it in your own time. This makes it hard if you are struggling to achieve academically or struggling to get homework completed. Though I do remember that my high school inter school sports teams did sometimes have after school training.
• They train very hard. High school teams train five days a week for two to three hours each day during their season. Middle school teams at CAJ are limited to three times a week. Even that was a lot when it was basketball training and it started at 6.30am! Consider that a number of students travel for over half an hour or an hour to get to or from school and there is a lot expected of those who take on sport.
• It has taken a while, but early on terms like "Varsity" and "Junior varsity" were very confusing. For those who don't know. Varsity is the school's best team. Junior varsity is like the B team.
• There are no age levels in the cross-country and athletics events. So our 11 y.o. was competing against all middle schoolers - some of whom are 14 or 15 years old (and looked it). Same for high school.
• Finally on the comparison front, I don't ever remember driving for two and a half hours to go to a simple inter-school event. We did that yesterday to watch our son run and throw. It was only 36 km, but very orderly Tokyo traffic includes hundreds of traffic lights in that short distance.

Whoa, this is already a long post. My thoughts yesterday didn't just encompass the above. You see, I was a runner. I even was a part of Little Athletics club for a few years.

My thoughts yesterday roamed into sympathy for the longer distance runners (400m and above). Been there, done that. In sympathy for the hurdles runners who slammed into hurdles. I never did like that form of the sport. I flinched as people jumped over the high jump. I remembered how I used to "eat up" the track when I ran and how that feeling suddenly began to fade at around 14 years of age. That was a strange feeling. I remembered running in a school relay race against Cathy Freeman (famous Australian Olympian now). My claim to reflected fame!

At the end I remind myself that it is just different, not wrong. Another thing to get used to that is not particularly a Japanese cultural difference, but because we're in Japan and have our kids at an international school, that will be what we have to work with for the next X number of years.

Since that time we've gotten much more used to the way it's done here. But I still field questions like: "What sport did you go out for in high school?" Just yesterday I had a conversation with a Japanese man about how he did javelin, yes, just javelin, for about seven years during school and uni. That's how they do it in Japan. Each country has a different philosophy of education and it's good to remember, when we start to compare and contrast the systems, that no single system is the "right" system, there are good things to be found in them all.

Track meet #2

Taking the first leg of the 4x100m. He's decided to drop
this event for the next meet this Saturday and give the
1,500m race a go. He's quite a good all-round athlete,
so I'm betting he's not going to do badly at that distance.

On Saturday we went to the second track meet of the season (for the middle schoolers), the high schoolers have had a couple more). The weather was definitely better, though in lieu of rain we had wind. Hence it was a slow meet for the sprinters and our boys were disappointed with their times. However, this young man, our youngest, came first in the individual 100m and 200m (if you only count 6th graders).

Our middle son had bad starts in the 100m and 400m, so today he and the sprint coach are working on learning how to use blocks, so hopefully that will make a significant difference to him.

Our middle son finishing strongly in the 400m.

Definitely a bad-hair day. The wind was forecast to be about 30km/hr. I was glad for this stadium as it has shade for it was difficult to keep my hat on—I chased it several times. The rest of the season is at Yokota Airbase and there is no shade over the grandstand.

This little guy wandered into my space during the morning. I love ladybirds, but I've never seen a light-brown one before.

And as always, hanging out with other parents makes the day much more fun. Track and field can be a boring sporting event for spectators. In Tokyo you can travel over an hour to watch your child run for 12 seconds (if it is the 100m). The school's team is big this year and that means more parents too!

This Saturday I'm not going to the meet, I'm one of the key volunteer at the school's final day of Thrift Shop so I'm going to skip this one. But you can be sure that I'll be hanging out for the stories from the boys, and the results when they come online the next day!