Mini cars

Slightly random topic here. No, I'm not especially interested in cars, but have enjoyed learning more in recent months about this (possibly) unique aspect of Japanese culture. Up till this year we've owned larger cars in Japan, in fact we'd driven eight-seater vans here since 2010! If you could see the size of many roads here in Tokyo you would think that that is an act of bravery!

But now it's just the two of us we've not just downsized our living space, we've downsized our car. We now own a four-seater car of the type that is called a "Kei car". It's the smallest category of expressway-legal motor vehicles in Japan. Literally "light automobile", it's a category of car created by Japan in 1949 to stimulate (according to Wikipedia) car ownership and the growth of Japan's car industry. The government specifies the maximum dimensions of the vehicles (3.4 m long x 1.48 m wide x 2 m tall) and the the size of the engine (less than 660 cc). The engine size number doesn't mean that much to me but a little research tells me that 660 CCs is the same as a mid-weight motorcycle and around 44% of cars in Australia are 1400 to 2000 CCs. Just a little more powerful!

However, as you might have read back here, we loaded our little blue car up for a camping trip in October and not just drove on 120 km/h expressway, but also up mountains, and the engine size didn't seem to be a problem!

What's intriguing is that the manufacturers took those dimensions and built cars to suit: making cars that just fit inside the maximums.

Driving around in Japan you see a lot of Kei cars. They are easy to spot: they have yellow or black number plates. In 2018 seven of the top 10 selling models were Kei Cars. Our car, the Honda N-box, has been the top selling mini for nine consecutive years, many times in those nine years it's also been the top car overall.

Other benefits from owning a Kei car, aside from fitting better through narrow spaces and making parking a breeze, are the financial incentives. It's cheaper to register them, to get the two-yearly roadworthy certificate, and even cheaper on road tolls. It was much faster to get our parking permit from the police too (required whenever you buy a car in Japan—they confirm that you actually have a place to park it regularly).

Many Japanese people who live in the city don't use their car for regular commutes to work or to take their kids to school. This (small) 2000 survey said around 60% of students and workers use public transport for their daily commute. Among the students surveyed (I presume university-aged students) 18% ride their bikes and 7% walk. Elementary-aged school children in Japan almost all walk to school.

It's a very different scenario to Australia, where the top 10 cars are mostly SUVs of varying sizes and where more than 50% of people drive to work and more than 50% of kids get driven to school. From experience very few people use bikes to do daily stuff like commuting or shopping.

I'm still learning about this country I live in. It's good to stay curious!

Flashback to some transition craziness in Australia

Looking back at my blog post at the end of June and I’m amazed—there was so much going on. It's probably no wonder we've hit a bit of a wall today with energy, after two very busy months with so many decisions and transition.

One thing I mentioned in the above linked blog post was uncertainty about cars. Here’s how it turned out:

Our car, that we bought second-hand in August last year, cost us quite a bit in repairs over the year. It really didn't turn out to be a great purchase. As we looked towards transferring ownership to our eldest son, we decided to fix a ding that was caused during a hit-and-run incident while David was supervising a learner driver. This took several weeks at the end of June and early July to fix at the insurance company's preferred provider.

Thankfully we'd purchased a second car a few weeks previously, with the intention of our middle son taking ownership of it after he got his licence. We were able to use that car while our main car was getting fixed.

The day we moved all our stuff out of the house (which was a huge day without complications) was the same day our first car was available for collection and it turned into logistics challenge and a race against time as we tried to organise two drivers to be at the panelbeater shop before they shut. That also turned out to be the day we handed our second car over to our middle son.

Our eldest son was moving to Townsville (17 hrs drive north) only a few days after we left Australia and needed our larger car to carry all his stuff, so we planned to transfer ownership of our first car to him. So, a few days after we got it back from the panel beaters—and only four days before we were due to fly out of the country—we borrowed a car from the people we were staying with and put our first car into a different "shop" to get a road worthy certificate (an essential step in such a transfer). We already knew that there was an oil leak, due nearly wrecking the engine during our journey north a few weeks earlier, when our oil completely ran out one morning. We just weren't completely sure where or how expensive it would be to fix. Turned out that it would be an expensive fix and one that we (and our son) didn't have time for, so we retrieved our car.

On our last night in Australia we handed the keys to the car that was still in our name over to our eldest son and left him to deal with the mess, while advising him to sell it on our behalf as soon as he could once he got to Townsville.

His car was an older Corolla sedan that was in pretty good shape and actually passed its roadworthy pretty easily. He transferred ownership to his youngest brother who is due to do his licence test later this year.

Are you confused yet? This was just one of the things going on in the midst of us changing countries, for example, at the time I was still recovering from dental surgery. It's probably no surprise that we're weary today.

David started work a week ago and I've been gradually getting back into things. The heat and humidity is quite draining, even though we have good air conditioning. Our apartment is close to being completely set up and we're so thankful for that (and that we could move in so quickly after arriving). But we've made so many decisions and dealt with so much change these last couple of months. Transition is tiring. I'm glad we're on the other side. It's easy—because we've done this so many times and we've moved back to the same neighbourhood in a country we're familiar with—to race onwards and forget to take rest and be kind to ourselves. So it's good to take a moment to remember the craziness that was happening in those last few weeks in Australia!

Settling...and a car

Today it's four weeks since we landed in Australia. A lot has happened in that time. I wrote this Facebook status last night:

Tonight it’s a month since we left Japan. That means we’re about ⅙ of the way through our time in Australia. A bit of a shocking figure! I mentioned this at dinner and the boys were shocked too. We’ve worked hard to get as settled as we can, but still feel a bit rocky. I suspect we might not really get much past that this year.

My parents visited us last week and were surprised at how well set-up our home appears. They correctly guessed, though, that we've had experience in getting set up fast and, because we don't have much time to "fool around", we needed to set up fast. We also don't have a lot of stuff here in Australia, so it's not been that hard to organise it all. Also, most of our furniture is borrowed, we're not bothering to work hard at getting things exactly  right, or even stuff that's good quality. We're making do, and that's fine. On top of all that we had a lot of help at the start: a bunch of people moved all the furniture and boxes in before we even set foot in Queensland, without all that help (and especially the friend who coordinated all the people donating furniture), we'd be a lot further behind.

What's harder is getting emotionally settled. That's something that you can do a bit about, but in the end a lot of it is out of our control and just takes time. And because we're a family unit, one person's emotional stability struggles often affects us all. It's hard to write much about that without violating people's privacy, so I'll leave it to your imagination.

But really, I started this blog post wanting to tell you about one of the big things we have to be thankful for from the last month: this car.

No, this is not our car in Japan, it is our car to use in Australia. Very similar in looks, and, in fact, this was manufactured in Japan. A Christian couple has lent this to us for six months. We've so grateful. It's going to get quite a work-out, with some of our family living more than 800km away from our home base, as well as all the driving that our job entails (we're driving to Toowoomba for the day on Wednesday, about 200km of driving, and then back there again for the weekend on Friday).

We're in the car so much more than we are used to. That's just daily life in Australia; driving a boy to school each day, getting groceries in the car . . . actually pretty much anytime we go out, aside from a stroll around the neighbourhood, it's in the car. That's so different to our daily lives in Japan, and one of the many things that we're adjusting to.

I was grateful to have coffee with some local friends this morning. I wasn't there as the "returning missionary", I wasn't the centre of attention, I wasn't there in a work capacity. It was nice to just be accepted and welcomed. Driving home afterwards I felt just a little more grounded in the current place than I had before.

So though there are things that I'd like to be different, for us to be more settled, I am thankful, also, about so many things.

Here's a prayer I'd like to dwell on:

16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3, NIV)

To deeply know the greatness of God's love for our family at this time, that's what will help us through.

Adventures in Manila Part 2

Yesterday I spent all day getting from the OMF guesthome in Manila to my home. You would think with only a 4 ½ hour flight between Tokyo and Manila it would take less than 15 hours to make the journey, but neither the guesthome nor my house are close to the airport (in terms of travel time), plus in air travel there is a lot of waiting around. Travelling on your own can get boring! So to fill in time, I pulled out my computer a couple of times and wrote this:

I’m sitting in the boarding area at Manila airport. It’s a noisy place. Unlike some airports, there is no carpet, only tiles and vinyl or metal seats. There is a constant stream of people walking past. This terminal seems strangely small for an international airport (there are two other international terminals that aren’t connected). I can only see about 10 boarding gates and yes, I can see them all, if I lean around the big round pillion to my left. I think this terminal only services Philippines Airlines.

Talking about social media and using it in our work.

Reflecting on the workshop

I’m really glad I came. I wondered in this post back here, whether I would be “on the edge” again, but it seems that I was fairly well positioned to be doing this workshop. In fact within OMF, Japan is one of the leading countries in social media, especially amongst the fields. 

Indeed, I think it is the first training I’ve done with OMF that has mostly consisted of people who are involved in non-front-line work within the mission. It’s nice to be among others who aren’t so different, though there were no other editors in the group as far as I know. We had a handful of Aussies too.

My mind has definitely been stretched. The workshop has been challenging in that there is a lot I don’t understand and will probably never have the time to be involved in.

I took brief notes, but mostly about things that are relevant to what I am doing now and can foreseeable do in the next few months. Just like when you move to a new location, you first learn about the streets around you, and gradually the circle of local knowledge that you have expands to include places further away. That’s how I feel about this field. It would be too overwhelming, and indeed impractical to try to do or understand everything all at once. I’m starting where I am and will build up as I can.

At this point I’ll be working on getting into a good rhythm with the Japan blog and our new Facebook page too (some of you will have received an invitation to “like” the OMF Japan page, I’ve sent that to many of my friends, that’s one aspect of using social media for mobilization: getting the news of what we’re doing out to as many as possible). 

On the Facebook page I’d like to post not just links to the blog, but interesting information about Japanese culture as well as general prayer points and even photos. I’m happy to receive suggestions if you find things you think might be of interest or even have photos that I could use for prayer “memes”. 

On one of our jeepnee journeys I was directly behind the
driver. It's a little hard to see, but he's got a Peso
note in his hand. On the little ledge in front of him is
a bunch of coins from which he gave us our change.

I'm going to attempt to figure out some kind of rough schedule for that too, like I have the OMF Japan blog, so I have a bit more control over my schedule. I need to do some work with the lady who's in charge of our Twitter account, so that we can get some consistency going. That’s probably enough to start with, considering the pace I’ve been working at recently! Anyway, enough about work.

Out on the town

Last night we went out for an end-of-workshop meal at a lovely Filipino restaurant. The food was delicious, but probably what will remain with me is the journey to and from the restaurant: on the quintessential jeepnee and, unexpectedly, a “motorized tricycle”.

A jeepnee is like a mini bus that you board from the rear, with bench seats along the sides. They are naturally air conditioned, with no glass on the windows. Amazingly the driver deals with the fares and giving change while he drives, with passengers handing the cash up to the front via other passengers and then the reverse for the change . . . all while the vehicle moves. I guess the less time he’s stopped, the most income he generates?

The motorized tricycle is a covered sidecar on a motorcycle, although not a low sidecar. We fit three people on ours: one behind the driver on the motorcycle and two inside the sidecar, though it was a challenge for two Westerners to fit on the seat inside the sidecar, though neither of us were large. It was a bit scary because our driver drove fast—he was zipping past other bikes and vehicles.

Both there and the way back we traveled around a 10-lane roundabout. Though it was large enough that it mostly felt like a single-direction road on a curve. What was amazing was watching our jeepnee driver make his way from the inside lane to the outside lane to exit. Somehow, I didn’t notice the return journey around the roundabout. I’m pretty sure we did do it, but I was jammed between two locals on a tiny edge of seat and because you’re sitting with your back to the outside, visibility isn’t great.

I’m sure it would take a while to figure out how to ask when to get off a jeepnee, because it seems they can drop you off anywhere along the route and there are no announcements! Nor could I figure out how you know how much you pay. Thankfully we had some locals in our group that kept us from getting hopelessly lost.

There were a few small birds inside at the Manila boarding area!

Another overwhelming impression was how thick and polluted the air seemed. I felt like washing out my lungs after we arrived at the restaurant.

More public transport

The adventures on public transport continued this morning as I made my way to the airport with my roommate, a lady in her 20s from Malaysia. We used Uber, something I’ve heard about, but never used. The car we rode in was a very comfortable sedan. The traffic was pretty horrid, though, it took nearly two hours with lots of stops and starts. I have a lot of respect for the driver. Actually, all the drivers. The traffic just seems to flow in and around each other, very close at times—though the lanes were very fluid no one collided. It reminded me of driving in Bangkok and Indonesia.

I’m going to have to put this computer away now, it’s time to squeeze into the metal tube they call a plane and wing my way north to Japan again. Hopefully I’ll make it home in reasonable shape. I’m really quite tired.

A bit later in the air

Yes, I hopped on the plane, but it took two hours from doing that until it took off. If we were told why, I didn’t hear the explanation. It’s so frustrating, knowing that all I want to do is get home into my own bed.

I’ve said before that travel isn’t my favourite thing. It’s exhausting. Even though this is just a 4 ½- or 5-hour flight, it’s going to be well over 12 hours from door-to-door.

We’ve got a very tired and grumpy toddler in this section of the plane. Actually, I was sitting with her and her mother, but because the plane isn’t full was able to move one row forward to give them a little more space. Hearing the screams doesn’t make me nostalgic for those years that we travelled with little ones.

Postscript

It took me until just after midnight to get home. Thankfully I was able to lie down on three seats and rest for quite some time after I wrote the above. That gave me the stamina for the two-hour train journey home, during which I stood a good portion of the time.

The key

I did a simple thing this afternoon. I got a copy of my house key. But it is symbolic of much more. I will give it to my youngest son this evening. It is like a rite-of-passage. One that I never had because I left home before I had independent transport to and from the house (i.e. in rural Australia, a car).

My youngest son doesn't have a car, but he does have legs, a bike, and ready access to trains. He rarely travels to and from school or anything else with me these days. 

We've given all our boys a key to the house when they've hit middle school. Because from middle school they are involved in more extra curricular activities and we aren't necessarily here when they come home (though I usually am). 

For example, we might all be at school at a sports event and he might desire to come home early without us (a journey of 300m), now he can do that without asking for our keys. Or sometimes both David and I have to leave the house on a school morning before the boys do in the morning and up till now one of the older boys has had to wait until their youngest brother is ready to leave so that they can lock up after him (you can't lock the house without a key). Now they're not tied to him.

On Monday night I drove to a bus stop to pick up a former OMF Japan kid (now an adult and teaching at CAJ) as she returned from summer holidays in the US. She would normally have caught a train home from the bus stop but had too much luggage. We talked on the way back to her apartment about how independent kids who grow up in Japan are in terms of getting themselves around. When we were in Australia it was an adjustment to have to drive our kids to youth group, to school, and to friends' houses. They actually felt it more than us, they felt restricted, their freedom curtailed.

So the key is a symbol of growing up and increased responsibility. My son is only 11½, so I'm not leaving him alone too much, however this will allow him some much coveted independence (he is the youngest of three after all, and he's looked on in envy at his brother's freedom for some time now).

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.

City Transport Profiles

It is normal here for shops to have bike parking.
This is a local department store.

I came across and interesting survey of transport in various large cities around the world (published last year). You can see the reported stats here.

It highlights how daily life in big cities is a vastly different experience depending on which city you live in. Just by looking at transport usage alone you see one element of difference (of course there are many others).



Tokyo (inner city part of Tokyo. This is not where we live, though I don't think it would be vastly different, perhaps more private transport?)


Pop: 9.1million
Area: 623km square
48% rail
23% walk 
14% cycle
12% private transport
3% bus

Sydney

Pop: 4.8 million
Area: 12,368km square

6% rail
18% walk

Our local train crossing. With so many trains, there are lots of these to
negotiate if you drive (or even cycle).

?% cycle
68% private transport
6% bus
4% others (?ferry/cycle)

The only two other cities in the report with over 50% private transport: Chicago and Toronto.

Public transport is big in Bogota (53%), Guangzhou (49%), Hong Kong (81%), Mumbai (52%), Prague (43%), Seoul (65%), and Singapore (50%).

Cycling and walking are big in many cities, but not in North America or Australia, no surprise there. Cities in those places are often spread out. Central New York is obviously the exception.

It seems that people in Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijin, Guangzhou, and Seoul don't walk! 

No cycling recorded in Guangzhou, Sydney, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, or Singapore. Some other places had 1% recorded for cycling.

Fascinating. I could fool around with these stats for ages, but other work beckons!

A very important button

I don't drive a car anywhere near as much as I did in Australia (where it was often out of the garage multiple times a day). Here it isn't unusual to not drive it in a whole week or even two or three.

Even though we don't use it as often, we're very glad for our car. It enables us to go camping, go on holidays without hiring a car, take kids (ours and others) to inter school events, and go to Costco every other month to stock up our pantry. And provides an alternative form of efficient transport when we need to get to hospitals, conferences, retreats, or even, like today, to the shop when it's pouring rain. Put simply, it gives us more options and flexibility.

There is a very important button in our car (and probably most Japanese cars).

This button flattens the side mirrors against the car. Without this function, it would be hard for us to get out of the car into our house, or to get our bikes in and out of the carport. The width of the carport isn't great and we have four adult-sized bikes parked on either side of the car.
 

Public car parking often rely on you using this button too. There isn't always much room between cars and without people performing this public service of "retracting" their mirrors, it would be hard to negotiate ones way between parked cars.