Dark Underside of Great Japanese Service

In Japan we receive amazing customer service, something we miss when we're in other countries. 

But there is a dark underside to this. Here's a great post about it by someone who'll be an OMF missionary in Japan soon, quoting one who already is.

A great photo

I just had to share this photo with you. 

This was our son's second pin on Saturday. He achieved this only 2 seconds before the end of the second 3-minute period and the end of the bout.

You can see that the ref (the guy lying down) has his hand in the air and is looking over towards a guy in blue with his hand in the air. There are three refs on each bout and two need to agree to score a point or call a pin. Their hands in the air mean they are agreeing and he is about to slam that hand down on the mat, signalling a pin and the end of the match.

To pin an opponent you have to hold them so that both shoulder blades are touching the mat, that is why the ref is on the ground.

I won't bore you with any more wrestling today, just had to show you this photo. Good photos of wrestling are hard to take, especially by a parent (too emotionally involved), so I'm so happy to have this moment captured. I'm thankful for Isabelle who took this one.

Payback in Panama

This was a book I read on my Kindle over the holidays. It is a suspense novel, where the main character is trying to nail a major crime boss, but at the same time is hunted by that same target. The question: “Who will get in first?” holds you right to the end.

The writing is a bit clunky in places, and the story does get complicated with lots of little bits that I struggled to hold in my head. But the suspense was strong enough to keep me flicking over the virtual pages. I’m always a bit leery of romance elements added to a story like this, but in this case it worked fairly well.

Disclaimer: A complimentary electronic copy of this book was provided to me for review by Thomas Nelson Books http://BookSneeze.com. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Word of the day: Lassitude?

Our family loves words. At present our computer's screen saver is "Word of the Day" which consists of a number of words, usually fairly unusual words, floating across the screen, and all the boys love it. Every now and then one of the words of the day are defined on screen. It's led to some very interesting conversations. My eldest was almost late for school today because he paused to see what the next word's definition would be! David and I have played Scrabble games continuously for most of our marriage (made easier these days by electronic versions).

And of course I'm a writer, so I like to say what I mean. I'm feeling a little out of sorts today. It's hard to describe, but like I'm lacking my usual mental vigour. I went looking for an unusual word to use, how about: 

Lassitude

weariness of body or mind from strain, oppressive climate, etc.; lack of energy; listlessness; languor.

The word doesn't completely cut it, though. It is also a post-excitement let down: we had such a full and exciting day on Saturday. 

The five Marshalls watching wrestling on Saturday.

Then yesterday for me was also full: a social meeting over coffee for the magazine (ah, the things I do for "work"), followed by a stimulating prayer meeting, and a loong bring-and-share lunch with some other parents from 9th grade. The evening was defined by the usual struggles over homework and instrument practise, but overshadowing all of that was a huge blow-up between two of our sons at dinner time, that took some time to recover from (it had a really good resolution, though).

I remember feeling like this last year (I went back and read this post: Discombobulated). At least I haven't yet signed any emails "Donald", or at least I don't think I have... 

But as I was back there, I found this post, a favourite of mine:

Still recovering from wrestling, I read a blog post by another mum also struggling with the exhaustion that comes from watching your kids compete in sports. Great post, but even better was this comment that came afterwards, I really relate, to this, even though we don't yet have a high school wrestler who has such long meets:

I just read your post after a very long day in a high school gym with a bunch of sweaty, stinky boys. My son was wrestling and that is not for the faint of heart. Every Saturday from mid Dec until 3rd week in Feb is spent at an all day tournament. They start at 8 am and go until 7 pm or later! We are exhausted at the end of the day. Wrestling is so INTENSE! In fact, our school t-shirts say “my son is killing me 6 minutes at a time.” That is so true. They wrestle with all their heart and effort for 6 minutes and I swear that I lose a few years every weekend. On a Saturday, my son may wrestle up to 5 times in the day and it’s crazy! But I wouldn’t miss a match for anything. He is amazing to watch and when the hard work pays off, what a great feeling.

This totally resonates with me!

Well now I've got all those words out of my system, I'd better knuckle down and get back to the other things I'm supposed to be doing today!

Funny English Hunt

On New Year's Day we tried to go to an All-You-Eat restaurant, but it wasn't open until 3pm, so we went to a local shopping centre and "hung out" until we could get into the restaurant. 

The shopping centre was a busy place. Like Boxing Day in Australia and Black Friday in the US, New Year's Day is a popular day for shopping. Shops sell "lucky bags". A bit like a lucky dip, except you just pick a bag and hope for the best. Apparently you can get some great bargains. The Lego shop had $200 worth of Lego on sale for $100, but of course you couldn't choose what was in the bag, so it is a gamble.

Anyway, our boys don't do well "hanging" in a shopping centre, especially on a busy day, so we were struggling to figure out two spend two hours there! 

I suggested we keep our eyes open for "strange/funny English". Here are some things we found:

Our 8 y.o. took this label literally and thought it odd till we explained that it is supposed to conjure up images of fondue for lips!

This isn't so much funny English as bad English: "3 pieces bowl and tray". Found in the Disney store!

A little hard to read, but the last instruction is to "Keep our reach of children."

Gloves.

These were just a strange product: Matchmaking cards.

The list reads as follows:
Who seems good cook
Who seems glamorous (fair enough so far)
Who seems wheedling person (there's a compliment for your girlfriend!)
Who seems coquetry person (this is a word?)
Who seems likeable as pet (wow?!?)

I like this one. Throwing cards arbitrarily is considered uncivil!

I saw this caution on several different products: "Child fewer than 4years old directly disable." Hmmmm!

Another Day of Wrestling

Yesterday began early, as you can see from the time tag on this screen shot on my phone. It also tells you it was pretty cold outside.

We didn't bother feeding the boys breakfast. I had a little, and our bus driver (David) had a full breakfast. In lieu of that we packed a whole bag food: from fruit to nuts and dried fruit, to bread rolls, cheese, and eggs. Later on in the day we pulled out chocolate (and some coffee for mum) too! 

This was on one of the infamously blocked-up
roads, Kampachi Rd. It isn't an expressway, but
it was about 6am on a Saturday!

In fact that bag was one of the keys to getting through our long day, we had food on hand whenever someone felt peckish. It's something we've gotten used to in sitting through two years of long wrestling meets, often there isn't much time to be going off to find food (if there is any food to be found, school gyms aren't always close to somewhere to buy food). So it is advantageous to bring small easily consumed and somewhat nutritious food.

Driving through Tokyo streets in the early morning was illuminating. The traffic still seemed heavier than it should at 5.30/6 on a Saturday morning.

We arrived at the base at 7.15, in good time.
I was amused to find that this gate is called
"Womble Gate". We know the Wombles as a
show from our childhoods, but it turns out that
Rear Admiral John P. Womble lead the first
landing at this spot on Honshu.

I know this is hard to read: it was through a
slightly foggy windscreen (still cold outside) while
we waited for clearance to go through the gate.
I was struck by the not-so-good English here.
Number 3 reads: "The Driver must open all doors
and compartments (hood, trunk, cargo, gas cap,
glove box, etc.) and then upon completion of
inspection." You'd think an American Naval
Base could have good English at their front
door, wouldn't you?

Here is a blow-by-blow version of our son's wrestling results, as I proclaimed on my Facebook page.

About 10am: Our son won his first bout with a pin. Yay! 

About 11am: Then he lost in the second round by a pin. He was strong, but the other guy got the upper hand. 

At about 1pm: Third bout he won by a pin only 2 seconds from the end. That's 5 minutes and 58 seconds of parental agony folks! So glad I'm here though. 

A bit later: Okay. His (wrestling) day is finished with four pins: two for and two against. Not a bad showing for his first high school tournament.

So, he had half and half success. It turns out his last wrestle he lost on a big mistake, he'd already won on points and the bout would have finished there if he'd let his opponent go, but he persisted in trying to pin him and ended up getting pinned himself.

But, as I've written before, they often learn more from their losses than they do from their wins, so a couple of losses are really his gain. They also serve as a basis from which the coach can teach him how to improve next time.

We spent most of the time in the stands, but when our
son wrestled we huddled down next to the mat like this.
Most especially in order to get good video footage without
people walking between us and the mat, but it was
great to be close to the action.

By far the most exciting (from our perspective) was his third wrestle. As I wrote above, he pinned his opponent only 2 seconds before the end of the six minute bout. His opponent had more points when they came to the end of the first three minute period. Then our son turned the tables in the second half. It was agonising to watch, because it seemed than either could have won, almost to the very end. Watching the video, I realise that with only 28 seconds left on the clock they were called to their feet and set in action again. They were tired, but I think our son has fairly high endurance and was able to pull his opponent down into a pin in just 26 seconds.

I'm going to have to revise my supporting strategies, though. From the video I was obviously shouting a whole lot of stuff (some helpful, others not), but our son tells us he hears nothing, occasionally something from the coach, but not from us. After 6 minutes of yelling, I didn't have much voice left for a bit. Probably not a great use of my voice! But what to do? It is very difficult to watch without shouting something...

A former team manager came along to support the team (students do this as a voluntary thing, and it seems it is always girls who do this for the wrestling team; they help the coaches with various tasks, including scoring). She was sitting with us when we watched this 6-minute monster and taking photos (I hope she got some good ones). She turned to me at the end and said, "Wow, he's so good! And he's only a Freshman, I can't wait to see him when he's a Senior." My mummy heart was glowing!

Just across the road from the school was a small
indoor food court. We enjoyed Subway for lunch.
A rare treat!

Yesterday was the first time we've had a wrestler in a large high school tournament (there were over 100 wrestlers there yesterday, 16 in our son's weight category). All of the middle school tournaments we've been to in the last two years were of the larger variety, but the CAJ team was in a serious minority with only two or three wrestlers. It was the first time to be at a large tournament with a 17-strong team. It makes a difference. I think it gives more perspective to a loss and provides the individual with more resilience. 

Enjoying milkshakes at 4.30 after the tournament 
was over. Last year the same tournament 
finished at 8pm . Needless to say we were so 
relieved that it finished earlier this year. 

Even though it was a long day I thoroughly enjoyed being there with them all. Thankfully the younger two also enjoyed the day. We didn't have any major meltdowns. After lunch I took the younger two out and we played a version of handball against one of the outside walls of the gym. Good exercise in the midst of a long day of sitting (eight hours on backless bleachers isn't a joke).

And moving back in the opposite direction, in 
the dark again. It took it nearly three hours to 
drive the 70km home (including some expressway 
driving). This is the same notorious road
as the one above.

However I'm glad the next three meets are much closer to home. It's been a challenging week, first week back after holidays. But yesterday was a fun, if tiring way to finish it.

Long but good day

It's been a long day and we aren't finished yet. We got up before 5am, we'll before sunrise, drove for nearly two hours  and spent about seven hours watching wrestling.

Now we're on our way home via Tokyo traffic and sunset.

But, it's been a good day. But I'm going to make myself carsick if I blog about it all while we're driving. 

So you'll just have to wait till tomorrow when I'm stationary again!