News snippets from Japan

Here are some news snippets from Japan:

Dengue in Tokyo
Batman in Japan

New cycling policy in Tokyo? Interesting in that it notes that the majority of cyclists in Tokyo are women with children:

The majority of Japanese cyclists are “regular people” riding mamacharis on the sidewalks at speeds less than 30 km/h for distances of less than 2 km each trip. Compared to these cyclists, the roadies, mountain bikers and bicycle commuters make up just a small percentage of the total number of cyclists.

Roundabouts are making an appearance in more places in Japan. I know of two that have pre-existed this announcement, but you can understand that this "new" phenomenon may make drivers and pedestrians nervous.

OMF Australia's National Conference 2014

Friday 
The morning was spent travelling, we left home at 6am, snagging some breakfast on the run out the door, and in the car. Actually we ended up grazing most of the morning on the healthy food we'd packed for breakfast and snacks. It was a long morning, ending with a significant wait at the airport for the van to the conference centre on the other side of Sydney. 

Thankfully we had some "new" friends to keep us busy. A young man, 12 months of age, needed some help in staying patient. His parents were headed to the same conference as us, so it was lovely to "be family" to them. No one told our boys off for playing handball next to the luggage carousels (when they weren't in use), bonus! 

Actually it is much more pleasurable travelling with older children. I bought them some puzzle books (logic, sudoku, etc.) as travel entertainment and it worked like a charm! I love it, though it has been quite a wait.

Then from 2pm till 4pm we had a home assignees gathering. There were 17 of us. Most of the others we'd never met, so it was interesting sharing stories and praying for one another.

From 4pm for an hour we "experienced missionaries" got to share advice with the appointees (those who've been accepted by OMF Australia, but haven't yet gone to the field because their waiting on clearances like finance and medical).

Then we spent a couple of confusing hours getting our luggage and selves 1.3 km down the road to the conference centre, finding our rooms, locating my parents who'd flown down also, and getting some dinner from a local take-away shop. In the midst of that we discovered that we were supposed to bring towels, but must have missed that communication.

Oh, did I mention that it was cold and the younger boys managed to get soaked from the waist down, including shoes, within minutes of seeing the ocean?

We had a meeting that night, worship time plus a message from OMF's General Director, then supper (Australian for late night snack time). I was so tired, but there were many people to meet and talk to. Lots of old faces and some new ones. The main reason I persevered was the promise of towels, and I was desperate for a shower. Eventually at 10pm, we got towels and I showered and crashed.

Saturday
This was the big day. 200 stayed in, but 100 visited for the day on Saturday. It also was the morning that we had to do our 5 minute presentation up the front (if we went overtime we got shot by a water machine gun). 

After lunch we ran two back-to-back workshops about support ministry. I enjoyed that much more than the 5 minutes up-front. It is always risky partnering with a seasoned teacher in up-front things, however, they tend not to want to plan things in detail and then just run away with things once they are up front. At least in the workshop we could confer a little, but in front of 300 people there is no margin. It's scary!

While we were running the workshop, I was simultaneously trying to dry out some of the boys' clothes in the laundry next door. Most of Saturday it drizzled and we were quickly running out of clothes.

Saturday night we ran an origami table at the 150th anniversary party. Our boys are so good at this that I actually had free time to go and sample other Asian crafts. We also dressed up in our summer kimonos (as I mentioned yesterday). It's the first time we've

done that as a family, the boys aren't usually up for "dressing up on demand" it was fun!

Thankfully in between the previous two paragraphs we had some free time. We hunkered down in our room and recharged.

Do you remember what it was like when you saw relatives at an event after a year or two when you were younger: "Oh, how you've grown!" Well the weekend was full of that kind of thing, in fact this whole year is a bit like that. People who've not seen our boys for five or ten years usually start with a comment like that!

Sunday
This day was a bit more laid back, but still there were many people who wanted to talk with us. Thankfully, though, we had no official duties to carry out, so we could relax. After lunch we headed back to the airport and made it home by 7.30.

Phew! What a weekend. It was hard to get up and get going on Monday morning. I was starting to feel a bit more normal this afternoon. Hey, I even did some baking, gardening, and we ate dinner at home (first time in five days).

It's exciting, but also weird being a part of a "special" group of people called "missionaries on home assignment" at an event like this. The sad side of it is that if you're not part of the "elite few", but once were, you can feel very sad. 

There was one former missionary there who's resigned from OMF (as far as I know, anyway). I'm not sure of the reasons she's returned to Australia, but I do know that she was upset on Sunday morning. Re-entry is very hard. She felt like she was a "failure" and said her heart was still in her country of service, not Australia. I prayed with her and hope that some people in her local area will reach out to her in this grieving and adjustment time.

The difference in a home-side conference and a field-side conference is that the field-side ones are supposed to be refreshment, fellowship and teaching in English. The home-side ones are more reporting-back and recruitment. We certainly didn't get much refreshment!

Some photos from our conference weekend

We were in Sydney from Friday morning until yesterday, participating in OMF Australia's National Conference. Many different people came, quite different to a Field Conference where it is only missionaries who are invited.

There were people we hadn't seen for five years there. People who've known us throughout our journey with OMF. And there were many we met for the first time, including two couples hoping to go to Japan in the next year or so.

It was a wonderful time! It was a stressful time! I plan to write a bit more about it tomorrow, but here are some glimpses today (sorry for the limited number and quality of photos, I actually couldn't find our camera for the entire duration of the conference, only to discover it in David's backpack when we unpacked last night at home):

A workshop we ran about support ministries.
If I'm going to be put up-front for something, I
much prefer an interactive-style event.
This was fun.

Saturday night was a party night: 
OMF's 150th anniversary
party (a year early, but why not!). 
There were a variety of activities
going on, we ran an origami table, 
that turned out to be very popular.

It was also a dress Asian night, 
so we pulled out our summer
kimonos (which as ambitious, 
because the temperatures were
in the teens), but thankfully 
they put the air conditioner on.
Did you know that if you wear tights 
under a kimono, no one
can tell?

A TCK from the Philippines getting into her origami.

After we checked in our luggage at the airport on the way home
we found that several other "parties" who'd been with us at the
conference were waiting for planes too. It made for a fun
"after-party".

Tokyo is huge

Tokyo is huge. As confirmed by this blogpost with some cool maps: http://tokyodesu.com/2014/08/26/every-country-highlighted-on-this-map-has-a-smaller-population-than-tokyo/

Culture shock while clothes shopping

I spent this morning shopping in an Australian shopping centre. Most of that shock about that has worn off now. 

But I'm still a little shocked at the clothing sizes. In Japan I usually need to look for L or XL sizes (photo proves it). Here I'm buying 10s and 12s plus one 8 today, depending on the brand and how tight I'm happy to wear. These are probably M or even S sizes. That's a bit shocking, but a good shock! I'm not a large person, so to have to buy such apparently large sizes in Japan is a bit of an indignity.

I wasn't shopping for jeans or long pants today, but if I had that's when I would have run into difficulties in Australia for my legs are often shorter than the short-legged pants here. Whereas in Japan, when I can get pants that have the right waist size, are almost always a perfect length (see here for an example of shopping in Japan for trousers).

So, it was a joy to have the time to shop on my own this morning for clothes and now I have some new clothes to welcome spring. I took a couple of boys shopping this afternoon for a brief period at a second hand store, but that experience is probably best untold! The morning's session was far nicer.

Caring for Missionaries

This photo is not related at all to this post, but it was just such a
stunning view (minus the power lines) from our front verandah
last Wednesday that I just had to share it with you.

I'm writing our prayer/newsletter again today. We write pretty regularly, but I'm aware that many missionaries struggle to do this. If you support missionaries who haven't contacted you for a while, how do you pray for them? 

Meredith of "The Key to the Door" blog wrote a good post a few months ago about Caring for missionaries you haven't heard from in a while. I recommend you check it out.

The main thing I would add to her post (I wrote it in comments on her post) is that you can pray for the psychological health of missionaries too.

A day in the life of a missionary on home assignment #1

After spending most of yesterday yawning, today David and I gathered the energy to do some "work" today. We dove into the miriad of email communications we've received from our mission headquarters here in Australia about our National Conference in Sydney this weekend. 

We're now closer to being prepared for all that's required of us on Friday afternoon (several informal sharing times) and Saturday (a 3 minute sharing time in front of a group as big as 300 people, twice leading a 40 minute workshop about support ministries, and a fun culture evening where we're helping people make origami). Thankfully nothing on Sunday that we know of, except people wanting to talk to us whenever and wherever.

Then late-morning I caught a train for the city, to meet with one of my new Japanese friends (I wrote about them here) for lunch. We had a lovely time, chatting for a couple of hours, in both Japanese and English. The idea for us meeting is "Language Exchange". It is a rare thing for me to find someone to chat to in Japanese here in Australia, so this is a golden opportunity. 

Language Exchange is always a challenge however, because one or the other language can take over the whole conversation. Or you can get lazy because both languages are known in part by both people, you can end up mashing the languages together. I think we did okay today, but I did miss my Tokyo language exchange partners. 

Meeting in the city was interesting too, I haven't been in there very often in the last decade. I found it strange to walk past a Japanese fast food burger chain (Mos Burger) and find people all around me eating "sushi rolls". I guess in that environment, it wasn't so strange to sit at a cafe talking in a mixture of English and Japanese. 

On the way back to the train station I walked into a purportedly "Asian" grocery store, but found almost nothing Japanese. I think it was mostly Korean food, so I walked out again.

The rest of the day was spent riding home on the train, buying a couple of extra things from the grocery store at our home station, fending off a charity looking for donations and all my personal details, and getting dinner on the table.

Such is the day of a missionary on home assignment, in case you were wondering what we do between "ministry".

Now I'd better go and iron my summer kimono and work on my origami skills in preparation for the weekend...