Culture shock–grocery shopping

It is common for missionaries to talk about the re-entry culture shock of grocery shopping. Japan to Australia isn't as bad as from a country like the Philippines. Check out this missionary's photo comparisons:
http://www.djiboutijones.com/2014/08/culture-shock-in-pictures-grocery-shopping/

This is one of the stores I regularly shop at in Japan. There
are usually more bikes than cars in the "car"park.

Our experience isn't quite as stark, but it still is a challenge. To go from almost no choice on some things to large amounts of choice is hard. 


What makes it harder is that you actually "want it all". When we're in Japan there is food we miss. There is food we dream about. Choices we wish we had. Then, all of a sudden, we are presented with all the possibilities of our dreams. It is tempting to buy it all.

Then there is the financial challenge on a couple of fronts.
1. We're used to how much things cost in Japan, especially most groceries. We know what a good deal is and when something is too dear. We don't know that anymore in Australia. Not only are we not used to dealing with Australian currency any more, prices have changed while we were away. It is no longer clear what is a good price.

There are four aisles this long, way smaller than
a large supermarket in Australia. But then, they
don't stock everything I want. But they do have all
the regular things I need, so I'm happy.
The shopping trolleys are small too.

2. There are a lot of set-up costs involved in moving country. We had a lot of help  in setting up the large items in our house, and I mean stacks, to the point that we now have two microwaves, two vacuum cleaners, three printers, and seven mattresses in our house. Despite this we found ourselves reeling a little under the various other things that we needed to purchase, including school uniforms and books. Setting up the pantry has been an expensive deal too, even though I'm a cautious buyer. It's been important to me, because I know that a well set-up pantry will save us money in the long run. This is especially as I look at prices for take-away and restaurant meals in Australia and realise that feeding my hungry family of boys will really eat into our budget, if we rely on take-away meals too often.

Some people suggested early on that to deal with the stress of grocery stores I should go to smaller ones with less choice. Unfortunately those smaller stores are usually more expensive, which would have exacerbated the financial stress I was already feeling.

I'm not writing this to complain. We have enough. We have a lot more than some people in this country! I am very thankful. But I'm writing this as a portion of what my lengthy answer would be to the question: "How are you settling?"

Sort your rubbish?

Today has been more planning for presentations. Boring stuff to write about on a blog, really!

Rubbish collection station around the corner from
our house in Tokyo.

The fun thing was talked about over lunch, however, was an idea we've had for some time but haven't had time to put it into action. Aside from talking in front of groups of people in formal-type situations, sometimes we get the opportunity to do some more interactive things with groups. These are so much fun! In the past we've done slipper relays, chopsticks challenges, origami, a Japanese receipt game, and a language learning activity. 

This time we want to do a Rubbish Sorting Game. Sorting the rubbish in Japan is complex but a game based on this has the potential to make a fun activity to give people a feeling of culture shock. It's just that there are so many ways we could do it. We've been bandying around ideas for months now, but not gotten very far.

We talked in more detail over lunch about it today, though, and David's actually written some things down. Perhaps we'll make some progress on this soon?

It certainly takes our mind off the internet troubles that we continue to experience. Today we were supposed to have someone come, supposedly to "connect us up", but it didn't happen. The "outside team" that would make sure there was a connection that came from the street (as far as I understand it) didn't show up so the technician that did had nothing to connect up to. 

And so we continue to wait. But we're not in too bad a way, as long as we can continue to use this mobile internet out the back in our "patio office" it works pretty well and decreases the incentive to work at night-time when it's coolish out here.

Photos and a yucky surprise

Just wanted to share some photos with you today (especially as the computer and Blogger are cooperating with me on this front).

Today we've been working outside. This patio is at the back of our house and is very private. It's sheltered and well lit by the sun at this time of year. It is the best place for internet too. We're still waiting on connection to the network and are meanwhile reliant on mobile internet (maybe our wait will be over tomorrow). Additionally, it is simply warmer (about 5C warmer here than inside) and more beautiful here. 

What are we working on? Deputation plans. We have various speaking opportunities coming up. 30 minutes here, 40 minutes there, 6 minutes somewhere else. All these need planning and putting together. These earliest ones are the hardest as we've not road tested any of this term's stories yet. Next April/May our planning will probably exist as a short conversation: "Which stories will we do tomorrow?" "Hats, Wrestling, Mrs M, and March11 okay?" "Sure, let's go."

Outside is brilliant too, because we've got large trees and many bushes close by. Lots of bird noises. We were visited by four kookaburras too. This one on the fence was only about 10 metres from where we were sitting.

And I want to show you the photos I was trying to upload for my blog about the weekend yesterday. These two are from UQ. Yes, David and I went to uni "in a park", or at least that's what it seems to our eyes today.

Wattle: Australia's national flower and where our national
colours come from.

Gum leaves with the lake and fountain in the background.
Alas my degree never brought me to this part of the campus,
so I rarely got to enjoy this.

But just in case you think life's been all joy, here's a little fellow I found . . . in my muesli the other day. I didn't appreciate finding him there, especially as it was muesli that I'd been eating for several weeks. We bought it at a large grocery store in Cairns the day we arrived in the country and the packet is long gone: no one to complain to! Thankfully though, I've not suffered any ill effects. I'm sure there are people in the world who would have thought they'd found a treasure.

How was your weekend?

Saturday
Well the weekend slipped away from me and I never did get back here. Our Saturday mornings are generally taken up with wrestling training (and getting to and from that, which is about half an hour away).

Saturday afternoon, though, was a lot quieter than the previous weekend. We were at home, though our youngest had a friend over to play for a couple of hours. Yet another friend who doesn't have brothers (we tend to attract these types of boys, it seems). But other than that we stayed here. 

I indulged in some more baking and David did some gardening with a couple of the boys. They're working on a veggie garden up the back. Hopefully we'll have some homegrown produce in a month or two to supplement to weekly grocery shopping.

Sunday
On Sunday morning we worshipped at our former home church, which is now a new denomination, with a new name and "new" building. Thankfully there were a few people there we knew. Even one person from the church I attended during the early '90s when I was a uni, but haven't see for 20 years.

After church we were warmly welcomed by many in conversation and actually had trouble getting away to our next destination: Open Day at our Alma Mater, the University of Queensland (UQ). On the way there we ate onigiri (Japanese rice balls) that I'd made. I have to admit that this is the first time I've attempted making these in a loooong time. They are staple fair in Japan (think what a sandwich is to a Westerner and that's what onigiri are to Japanese). But because they are so readily available at convenience stores (and so yummy), I just never bother to make them myself.

However, because wrestling training butts into meal times twice a week (dinner on Monday and lunch on Saturdays), I'm finding I need to find healthy portable meals. Onigiri is a great choice, if I can get it so as my fussy "Japanese" boys like it.

The Open Day was great, at least the part we saw of it. UQ is huge, 114 hectares of it! To our Tokyo eyes it looked like you'd be going to uni in a park! It also has more than 45,000 students. 

We only saw the engineering/science part because that's what our 15 y.o. is interested in studying. It's great how these explorations of tertiary education over the last few weeks have sharpened his focus for the future. He seems to be pretty clear on what he wants to do and where now. I didn't expect such fast decisions, and of course that could change, but for now it's great to see him matured enough to think ahead like this.

I do have to say that the science and engineering folk did a pretty good job of providing entertainment for even those who aren't looking at studying there in the near future. While David did a tour with our eldest, I wandered around various displays with our 9 & 11 year olds and we found plenty to keep us interested. From patting a crocodile and wombat to learning about soil, having fun with balloons to learning about a new form of energy that could be used to fuel cars in the future, we had a great time.

Though we did poke some fun at dinner time last night about some of the representatives there who didn't seem to be able to talk in language that the layman speaks, or be able to interact with two younger boys in a meaningful way (doctors don't have the field to themselves in complicated terminology). Many did a wonderful job, however, and just treated us as people who were interested to hear what they had to say.

We finished off the day by wandering through the famous Great Court, seeing a bit of an Asian drumming performance and the UQ Sports department suiting people up in sumo wrestling suits to have a go (we were short of time and so didn't try it out). We also dropped by the UQ Bookstore and bought David a t-shirt and hoodie with the UQ logo on them.

And that was pretty much the end of the weekend. Not too bad. Almost no shopping (unfortunately a feature of re-settling in a new place), not too much "work", and a bit of rest too.

Alas it marks the end of our settling-in period. From here on we will have more and more meetings and opportunities to talk to groups about mission. We still have a lot of preparation to do, but the tempo is going to ramp up.

How was your weekend? Anything unusual or interesting?

A task completed

This is one element of our news/
prayer letter sent out today.

This morning I finally sent out our news/prayer letter. This is something I've been doing 11 times a year for the last 15 or so years (it's actually a requirement of our job as missionaries). 

It isn't generally a big deal, but in recent months I've encountered more and more problems. Not the writing itself, but the sending. Particularly people inexplicably "falling off" our list and then in the last couple of months, being unable to send the email with its attachment to 200+ people in the one email. It had turned into a shamozzle.

So I did some research and discovered that Mailchimp would suit our budget and purposes and hopefully eliminate the above mentioned problems.

But that meant cross-checking two lists of email addresses: our Excel file of supporters and our list of contacts on our email program. I also had to figure out Mailchimp, export the names and addresses, and actually write the newsletter. That's taken about ten days to complete (amidst the other things that we've had to do in that time).

Finally this morning, I held my breath and hit Send. I've had a few people email us back saying it worked fine, which is a relief. It's the ones I don't hear from that I'm concerned about, particularly those who are less tech-savvy as well as older folk. Any change can be a challenge for these people and this is a change from receiving a basic email with an attachment, to an email with a link that takes you (hopefully) to our letter in a browser. 

In any case, I'm glad it's done. It was a big project that's been on my mind for a few months now, but only now have I been able to get it completed. 

By the way, if you'd like to check the letter out, I can send you it to you. Drop me a line using the email address in the right-hand column above.

Differences in Education Systems

Being Australians in Japan with four out of the five us involved in an American-style international school, educational differences are pretty much in our face all the time. Therefore I found this an interesting article. It is written by a Japanese person who went to college in the US. She's identified three main points of difference between Japan and the US educational systems, all of which are interesting. 


However the last, "You actually have to attend class" doesn't correlate with the tertiary Australian scene. In the US, I learned on Sunday, they take attendance at lectures. They don't in Australia, at least I don't think it is common. That doesn't mean you don't need to work hard, though!

Interaction differences
But what's most fascinating is a fundamental difference she's pointed out between western and eastern (to generalise) education. In the west we're encouraged to ask questions, and to participate. We're also required to do lots of presentations and group work. In the "east" the opposite is true. 

I noticed the difference when at the World Occupational Therapy Congress last month, the Asian presenters generally had pretty poor presentation skills (and poor English). That's not to say that all non-Asians were fantastic (powerpoint presentations were more often bad than good no matter who presented), but it was clear that Westerners had had more practise in doing up-front presentations.

Another thing that seemed to stick out to me was that many Japanese research projects were focused on very detailed data analysis, but many non-Asian research included broader questions that weren't so easily analysed. I wonder if that is another difference? I don't have anything to back up that thought, except for the understanding that in Japan and other Asian educational systems, rote learning is of high importance. In Western cultures, there is a greater emphasis on process, rather than regurgitation. Related? Perhaps.

Differences between US and Australian systems?
People sometimes ask us about differences between the US and Australian systems. There are lots of small differences, vocabulary, for example, and the way the calendar is set up. But there are probably more similarities than differences, especially as compared to Asian vs Western styles.

A few superficial differences we've noticed in our switch back this time are:

• shorter day (our boys are at school for about an hour less in Australia)
• more subjects available in high school (though this might be a function of CAJ being a smallish school)
• uniforms (of course!)
• campuses are much more outside in Australia (a climate thing, lockers are on verandahs here, at CAJ they are inside where it is often heated or cooled)

Occasionally during this transition our boys are trying to compare cultures and decide whether one particularly thing, place, institution, or custom is better than another, my answer generally is, "It's different, not better or worse." That's the best perspective to take when in the midst of cultural adjustment.

But still, it's interesting to compare.

Cheapest flight ever

Recently we visited a new shop in Australia, Daiso. This is a very familiar place to us, what we call a "100 yen shop" in Japan. 

David's comment after a stroll through was, 

"That's the cheapest flight I've ever taken. Everything is the same as in a Daiso shop in Japan."

The one thing that isn't the same is the price. 105 yen (which is what you actually pay, after tax, or is it 108 yen now that consumer tax has increased...) equals about AU$1.09. But the price is more than double that at the Australian Daiso. Good thing we checked out the signs!