All chocolate bars are not equal

Yesterday we farewelled our son to go to Guam (see the map). He'll be back next Tuesday, all things going well. He's there to run in a cross-country meet (see here) for his school.

A short conversation between two north Americans on Saturday got me thinking. Guam is actually a US territory.

Here's a tiny bit of it's nasty history over the last century:

As the largest island in Micronesia and the only U.S.-held island in the region beforeWorld War II, Guam was captured by the Japanese on December 8, 1941, just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was occupied for two and a half years. During the occupation, the people of Guam were subjected to acts that included torture, beheadings, and rape,^[7][8] and were forced to adopt the Japanese culture.^[9] Guam was subject to fierce fighting when U.S. troops recaptured the island on July 21, 1944, a date commemorated every year as Liberation Day.^[10]

Today, Guam's economy is supported by its principal industry, tourism, which is composed primarily of visitors from Japan. Guam's second largest source of income is the United States military.^{[11] (From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam)}

About a 3 1/2 hr flight from Japan. It actually took
them longer to get to the airport from here (100km)
 than it took to fly, because of line stoppages due
to yesterday's typhoon.

So when expats get thinking about going to another country, especially their own, they think about what they can bring back that they "need" or "want". Food especially comes to mind.

So I got thinking about what from the US that we might want our son to bring back for us. I couldn't think of much. We get a taste of the US when we visit US bases here for sporting meets. Their shops are like foreign shops to us, more foreign than Japanese shops. Especially the sweets (or candy, as they would say it). It turns out that most junk food is pretty localised to the country-of-origin.

Our son loves Mars Bars. He'd run a few miles to get one! So, I thought, Surely you can buy a Mars Bar in the US. But I soon found out that what we know as a Mars Bar is not what Americans know. You can read about the murky history of the Mars Bar here.

It turns out that the Australian/British Mars is very similar to the United States Milky Way bar, which Mars, Inc. produced (not to be confused with the European version of Milky Way, which is similar to the United States' 3 Musketeers).

Which kind-of explains why we can get Snickers and Kit Kats here, but not Mars Bars. Japanese tend to import American food, rather than Australian. I wonder why . . . But it doesn't explain why the Milky Way here is pretty much the same as the Milky Way we get at home, not at all like Mars Bar. Ahhh, the more I think about it, the more I get confused.

Nonetheless, I doubt we'll be getting any chocolate bars out of our son's visit. He may, or may not figure out the differences. He may or may not buy some to bring back. But even if he did, I doubt that he'd be able to hold back from eating any he bought!

A cancelled day

9am Lot's going on here . . . and nothing. School's been cancelled for the day due to a large typhoon that's skimming our coast, so the myriad of things that we'd planned to do are now either cancelled or up in the air.

12pm Yep, instead of going downtown for an important meeting this morning, I've been pottering around the house. Answering sewing questions from our 8 y.o., answering overseas travel and packing questions from our 14 y.o. who leaves for Guam this afternoon, and encouraging our 11 y.o. to complete given homework. In between I've been monitoring email and gradually adjusting my/our schedule as things change. Oh, and I did vacuum the house too.

Trouble was it was a day that had been finely tuned, schedule-wise. It was an unusually complicated schedule from 8.30am through to 7pm. When you're talking a family of five, one

This little boy is now 14 and can see over
my head without difficulty. I can't believe that
he's going overseas today for six days without us!

change can domino into multiple changes. In this case, all because of a typhoon. The typhoon passed to the east of Tokyo, though I wouldn't have liked to be along the coast, it got quite gusty this morning here and we're a fair way inland.

I'm having trouble concentrating on anything, not in the least due to a headache that is threatening to overtake my head. We'd even planned to have dinner at CAJ's concession stand this evening prior to the guys going off the karate, but the volleyball the concession stand was for has also been cancelled, so now I have to come up with something to eat for dinner!

A minor point, but for the first time ever, it was planned that an Australian university rep. was to visit CAJ today. That too was cancelled, there are no students there today. Minor point, as I said, but all of these things mess with my brain. It takes me back to the days after the March 11 disaster in 2011, when everything seemed to be constantly changing and being cancelled, that was a greater sense of loss than today where it is just one day.

Ha, if I lived in a different country I'd have to get used to this kind of thing and be more flexible. For the most part, Japan is very organised and reliable. I like that.

Here's something of an interesting aside of something totally different. The creator of Anpanman, a long-term popular cartoon character and series (first created when I was a baby) died on Sunday at 94 years of age. http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/104896.php

Sons of Korah fans

My boys have become firm fans of an Australian band—Sons of Korah. I must say I'm a bit mystified as to why, but I'm not unhappy.

This is what the band writes about themselves on their website:

Sons of Korah is an Australian based band devoted to giving a fresh voice to the biblical psalms. The Psalms have been the primary source for the worship traditions of both Judaism and Christianity going right back to ancient times. With their unique acoustic, multi-ethnic sound Sons of Korah have given this biblical songbook a dynamic and emotive new musical expression.

They do have a unique sound and it obviously resonates with my boys. We had two albums that have been played repeatedly for months now, so over the weekend I bought another, "Rain" and that is also now being played repeatedly. I love Psalms, they are such great material, so raw and honest and full of emotion, so it is no hardship to listen to these again and again.

Here's my favourite Psalm (139), which appears on "Rain".

We have two ancient iPods and an old CD player, so both boy-bedrooms have access to all the music that we own as a family. It's been great, actually, to see them move on from "children-specific" music to musicians like Michael Card, Jars of Clay etc. They're not taking on classical music so much, but that's okay.

Here's a video of a live performance of Sons of Korah (Ps 117), some impressive guitar playing here:

Healthy and sporty?

Today is Health and Sports Day in Japan, a public holiday first held in 1966 to commemorate the Tokyo Olympic games two years previously.

I discovered last month when I was doing some research for this newsletter, that the 1966 Olympics were held late due to Tokyo's difficult weather.

 It had to be just right to accommodate athletes from both warm countries and cold countries. And compared to other cities that had hosted the Games of the Olympiad until then, Tokyo was very rainy. The summer months are hot and humid, moreover, while the weather in spring tends to be very unstable. Early autumn is the height of the typhoon season and is marked by heavy downpours.

So the organizers of the Tokyo Games asked meteorologists when would be the best time to hold an outdoor sports event. The answer was mid-October, since by then, the typhoons stop coming, and the skies turn a deep, clear blue. Based on this recommendation, the organizers chose an unusually late date for the Summer Games. Much to the organizers' relief, the Opening Ceremonies were staged under a brilliant, cloudless sky. From http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/explore/calendar/october/sports.html

I wonder whether they'll hold it in October in 2020? Editor's note: a friend on Facebook told me this is no longer an option in our media-crazy era. Apparently they have to hold it in August, despite the very trying conditions that that will mean for outdoor sports (and spectators).

This was the view when I looked up from my bed yesterday
morning, yes, that's our neighbour's roof! But it's the
blue sky that I love, Australia has an abundance
 of that and at times I miss it. It isn't so common in Tokyo.

And indeed, today is a beautiful still day with blue skies. We had some hot humid weather late last week, but that has settled down to very comfortable low 20s (Celsius) at the start of this week.

What's up doc?

Yesterday we attended our last cross country meet for the season. Our son ran a personal best again. Though he didn't reach his goal, known as his "ice cream time" (the coach buys them an ice team if they beat this time).

The start of the boys high school varsity race (top
seven runners from each high school).

On Wednesday he'll fly with the team to Guam to attend the Asia Pacific Invitational meet on Friday and Saturday. Due to flight difficulties, they won't get back till next Tuesday. So it's going to be a bit of an odd week for us.

Meanwhile school is off tomorrow, it's officially "Fall Break" at CAJ, even if that only means a 3-day long weekend. Having our son involved in a meet yesterday and in cross country (and wrestling) training tomorrow we weren't going anywhere this weekend. But hopefully we'll be able to have an at-home break tomorrow.

Then next week from Wednesday is CAJ's Thrift Shop again. I've cleared my schedule and I'm bracing myself for four days of volunteering again.

What else is "up doc"?

This difficult situation seems to have abated, or possibly even largely been resolved for the time being at least, thankfully.

Running? The fun run's been cancelled, I found out yesterday, so I've got no goal anymore. However my "training" hadn't been going all that well anyway as my knees were complaining about even the small amount of pounding the pavements that I managed (no soft training tracks around here).

And so life continues. My desk is piled high in a virtual sense, with editing and I have volunteered to go to the zoo with the 3rd graders on Friday. We have a visitor dropping in from Australia on Thursday night too.

But for now, I've got to go and heat up some left-overs for Sunday night dinner.

Music trains your brain

Every since I worked as an assistant music teacher for my piano teacher when I was in my last two years of school, my philosophy has been that, as a parent, I would never force my child to learn an instrument. And I guess that overflows to any sort of extra curricular activity. I saw too many piano students who just hated piano, but were forced to learn.

That has been put to the test in the last few years as I've had boys who've gotten to the age of potential instrument learners.

This is our son practising.

One boys has not shown any interest in learning an instrument (aside from a fleeting interest in guitar that has gone nowhere due to the lack of a guitar teacher). Nor has he shown any interest in choirs (and CAJ has some excellent choral teachers and divine choirs). We've never pushed him in this area, but he's shown an interest (and passion) for sports instead, so we've encouraged him and supported him in that.

Another boy was passionate about learning the piano early on, so we let him, yet pushed him whenever he wanted to quit. He's been learning for over three years now! He's also shown interest in joining the elementary choir, which he's finally been able to do this year.

The third boy who had a go at violin for a while when we were in Australia, but couldn't continue that in Japan due to the lack of an English-speaking teacher and never got up the enthusiasm for anything else, not even choir, until the opportunity to take up percussion this year. This, he has taken on with a great deal of enthusiasm and get-up-and-go. It is new for me, having someone practising thumping, but I'm glad he's able to pursue this.

I met a friend for ice-cream the other day. She is a flautist and, like me, has a piano-learning child. It was encouraging to share our common frustrations as musicians who know-how-to-practise and try to pass that on to our kids!

I also mentioned to her this blog post by another musician friend. It is exciting to see how my personality was shaped and potentially those of my children are being shaped, by learning instruments.

Positives of learning an instrument, according to research mentioned in the above blogpost, include:

• improved reaction times
• better ability to stay focused
• heightened awareness of their own actions
• spotting mistakes more quickly and accurately

Fourteen years into parenting and I still say that it is important that the passion (at least initially) to learn an instrument comes from the child themselves, though this is controversial and I've nearly ended up in arguments when I've expressed my opinion ill-advisedly on occasion. But the positives for those kids who do have the opportunity and passion to learn an instrument are exciting, to be sure.

Interesting Japan-related media

Interesting Japan-related "media" I've seen or read recently:

1. This is the testimony of a Japanese career woman who came to the Lord, primarily out of
her dissatisfaction with her lifestyle.

2. An article about a film made by and about people who have one Japanese parent and the other parent a different nationality. The film director, Megumi Nishikura, said, "People treat me like a foreigner, Japanese people look at me and say, 'You don't look like a Megumi.'"

Such experiences inspired the half-Japanese, half-American documentary maker to join forces with Laura Perez Takagi, a half-Japanese, half-Spanish documentary maker to create “Hafu,”touted as the first feature-length film about persons of mixed-Japanese descent.

3. A joint testimony of a Japanese couple who divorced, yet both came to the Lord and got back together again, more than a decade later.

4. An inflatable concert venue. An innovative response to a lack of live music venues in Japan's disaster zone.

5. This video is about giving ex-prisoners a fresh start in employment: