Japanese construction workers wear interesting clothes

Here's one I prepared earlier. I don't know how: I had an awful headache at the time! 

It was the day we had a meet and say farewell day at the park in Brisbane in June. We spent a good portion of the day at the park talking to people, I can't remember how, but the topic of the interesting clothing of construction workers in Japan came up. Check this:

http://www.awesome-robo.com/2012/08/tobi-art-of-japanese-construction-wear.html

Lately it's been slow around here

School starts again two weeks tomorrow. Our days are quite lazy at present. The boys' bedtimes are close to ours and breakfast is mostly happening between 7 and 9. We've just endured eight consecutive days at or over 35˚C. (See this report.) It's no joke, 55 people died. The weekend brought cooler weather, back down under 35˚, but still daytime temps over 30˚. 

Being a Queenslander I'm used to heat, not continuous days of 35˚C+ with choking humidity. That left me like a puddle with minimal motivation. On top of that I've still got the asthma symptoms brought on the cold I caught a couple of weeks ago. Bleh!

Nonetheless various things have been happening. Here's a sample:

1. Feeding the clan, including grocery shopping on my bike. 

2. We had guests for dinner one night last week: a new teacher and her family of four children. That was a fun night, seeing our kids reach out to new kids and meeting new members of the school community. 

3. Encouraging physical activity for the boys. Most days our eldest has been out running at 5pm. Often he's run with either his next brother or with others from school. Especially with two new teacher's kids who've just arrived. Sometimes our youngest has ridden his bike with them. Last night our middle son went out riding on his own for 45 min. Our wrestler has also done some training with his Japanese club. 

4. We went to a secondhand shop last week and bought a second screen for my computer work. It's fabulous!

5. I had an afternoon out on Wednesday, getting a haircut and catching up with my language exchange friends. 

6. We've had at-home movie nights. So far we've seen the first four Star Wars and the first Harry Potter. I've been mostly working on my crochet skills at those times, but a tiny bit of cross-stitch and even colouring-in too. 

This is a balloon finger puppet. One of the quirky things
you can find at Tokyu Hands.

7. David spent some time helping out other teachers and students with various things. Today he went into school to do some preparation for his own work. 
8. Lots of reading, and to be honest, playing word and card games on my phone.

Shopping for fun!

Last Friday we decided to get everyone out of the house for the day. It wasn't easy (temps that day reached 37.7˚C), we weren't motivated at all and there was much grumbling. 

However the day turned out better than expected (except that I ran out of energy and felt quite unwell towards the end). We rode the trains into Ikebukuro, our nearest "inner city" location. We hung out at a favorite store: Tokyu Hands. It's eight stories high (floors aren't large) and full of quirky stuff. 

The boys were a bit hesitant at first, after all they aren't used to browsing in shops. But we ended up spending more than an hour there (could have been longer, but we got hungry). The boys bought some things for their dice/tiny rubber animal collections and I did some Christmas shopping for family in Australia. 

After that we had lunch at an American all-you-can-eat restaurant. Shakey's Pizza. It was fun. A cool basement restaurant with character and it was quite affordable too. 

Lunch: the top slice is a usual type, but the next two are
dessert pizzas. The middle is like apple crumble
and the bottom is bananas and chocolate.

Then we hiked into the bottom of Sunshine City, a high rise complex that consists of four high rise buildings. 

Sunshine City is a commercial complex that features a variety of facilities including an office building, aquarium, observatory, and shopping center. It is conveniently located in the heart of Tokyo and is just a short walk from Ikebukuro Station.

You can walk between the buildings without going outside, creating a large indoor shopping space equivalent to an Aussie shopping centre (but no groceries). We found ToysRUs and had fun browsing there too. All in air con. That was a key objective, with such heat outside. 

We returned home happy. Better than we left. I think the hot nights (mostly over 30 degrees, we went to bed at 10pm with it at 34˚C two night running) have been making our sleep lower in quality. Hence grumpiness. 

Today our youngest son's very good friend returned to Japan after their holiday in the States. He's come over to play and it's wonderful to hear. Our son's been missing his friends. 

I'm looking forward to seeing my friends too. And having energy to do stuff. I'm tired of being bowed down by illness and the heat. 

My children's behaviour is not necessarily a reflection of my parenting

This is something I've been trying to remind myself of for many years now. Particularly in response to bad behaviour, but occasionally I have cause to say this in response to good behaviour. People sometimes find this difficult to stomach, especially if they've just complemented me on the behaviour of my child.

Here's a reflection on a doctor's visit by a writer who had five boys and now a girl. Her girl's behaviour at the doctor (and she's not saying that girls are good and boys are bad, it's just a comparison of two of her children): http://testosterhome.net/2015/08/todays-ten.html

All of us parents could tell you similar stories, I'm sure. We can also tell stories of how sometimes we've handled the misbehaviour of our children well and other times we've handled it badly. I think the key is to understand our kids as well as we can (and for some it is easier than others), learn from our mistakes, and be kind to ourselves.

For example, this morning we had behaviour in church that was about to explode badly. It was very subtle, but one boy was progressively getting more and more upset about smaller and smaller things. I was headed down the, "Let's take you outside and deal with this," path when I remembered that he likes a back rub these days. (I also knew that a big fuss of taking him outside would probably not produce anything good, just the both of us missing a big portion of church and his anger increasing.) 

Thankfully me putting my hand on his back quickly dissipated the anger to the point of him being able to relax and listen to the Japanese sermon again. Noting that his Japanese isn't great. 

I'm reluctant to tell you this, because it looks like I'm boasting about my superb parenting skills. I'm not. It's just an example of a difficult situation that I managed to resolve because I've studied my son for many years and learnt ways to parent him. It could easily have not worked. Then I'd need to seek to learn from it and be kind to myself. I think it also helps to remember that in many cases the kids aren't doing whatever they are doing just to annoy you (though it often feels like it).

Camping in Japan again

It's hard to believe that it's nearly two weeks since we returned from our latest camping trip. We had a rough start, boys were uncooperative and tentative about bugs. One boy got stuck in a particularly good book and didn't help much at all in the setting up camp. That, and the frequent whinging was disappointing. 

However after we got over the initial woes, it turned into a good camp, with a couple of notable exceptions.

We've gone around a corner in the last
year. Now the boys are mostly happy
to make their own fun, especially to sit
and read or play games rather than
needing us to have activities planned
while camping. It's a very pleasant corner,
unless we do indeed have an activity
planned and we have to do significant
work to get them up and going.

Bugs
They were large and numerous. We arrived just after some rain and there were plenty of miniature frogs out looking to eat the bugs too. The toilets nearest us were full of bugs and frogs. I don't have much of a problem with bugs when camping, unless they're in close confinement with me. . . like in a small toilet cubicle. In the end I found some much cleaner toilets that I could hike to a little further away.

Airbeds
Three out of four airbeds had small holes. Small elusive holes that let our beds down slowly, but wouldn't be found. Our bed was one of them. So, for four nights we slept and pumped, slept and pumped. 

Fireworks
On our second full day of camp we drove 40 minutes to the west coast and met up with some missionary friends we'd met at CAJ via the homeschooling division. We went to church with them and hung out at their house all afternoon. About 5pm we packed up our gear, including noodles for dinner, and hiked to the seaside (I'd say beach, except that I never saw the beach). 

We settled down on large tarps positioned at 4am that morning by our friend. That is the time that the security guards allowed everyone who was queuing to put down their claim of territory for viewing that evening's fireworks. It is a curious system. The one who gets their property down first is the one who gets the territory for the day. No one messes with it, even though that tarp is left unattended all day.

We arrived about two hours before the show began and the flow of people into the area hardly slowed to a trickle in that time. We were told between 30 and 50 thousand were expected to watch the 1 ½ event! Fireworks are really more than just a show, they are a community festival.

After the spectacular event we filed out of the area, with thousands of others. A huge crowd! The reason we walked is so that we could get out faster. We were moving faster than the cars that dared to venture into the area. 

I made a bad judgment, though, of wearing thongs (flip flops). Very quickly I ended up with blisters between my toes. To add to the woe of my left foot particularly, where I already had lost skin when the water cooler back at camp fell on my toe earlier that day. I ended up walking a couple of k's in bare feet. 

We finally got home to our tent at about 11. It was a long, but memorable day.

A large park we discovered about 40 minutes away. It was underpopulated
and great for getting cooler. The water was too shallow to hold our big
boys' attention for too long, though.

Calvin and Hobbes
An unexpected benefit of visiting our friends was their library. Like most isolated missionaries we've met, they've built up a large library of English books. One of the things our boys have been doing since arriving back in Japan is rereading favourite comic books we own (not having access to the school library until school starts). 

It turned out that our friends had all the Calvin and Hobbes books. These were pored over and our camp was thereafter resplendent with Calvin and Hobbes quotes. Our middle son was particularly notable in his lengthy monologues, stringing together many different scenes.

Onsen

It's not the done-thing to take photos of the
inside of onsens, for obvious reasons.
This I took in a very underpopulated
campsite-onsen in Hokkaido a couple of
years ago. This is the place you wash
with soap, then you immerse yourself in
the large hot bath, with whomever else
is around (single sex).

Our campsite had no bathing facilities. So, as a "service" we were given free daily passes to the public baths down the hill. Oh, the luxury! The cost of the campsite was less than we'd pay if we were to take the family to the onsen. Wow! (You can tell we're part-Japanese now...)

This is one of the fun things for me about camping in Japan, you never know what surprise you're going to find. A surprise like this is worth coming for. 

By the way, we haven't yet encountered a terrible Japanese shower/bathroom at a campsite (terrible toilets, however, yes). That's one huge plus Japan has on Australia in the camping realm.

Rain
The final hours of our camp are probably the most memorable. At 3am I woke and went hiking to the loo. I experienced one or two drops of rain on my as I returned. Inside the tent, however, David was already awake shutting windows. Pretty soon the rain grew heavy and things started to go awry.

I never did get back to sleep. By 3.30 the thunderstorm was raging, our awning collapsing and it was dripping inside too. Everyone was awake with little chance of getting back to sleep soon. We decided at that point to break camp a few hours early to avoid getting too saturated.

My feet after cleaning them up when we got home. I hobbled
around packing up camp in the mud with open wounds on
both my feet. You can see remnants of mozzie bites there too.

Under pressure the boys did a fantastic job. The contents of the tent were packed up at an amazing speed with little supervision. Once we got everything out and into the car I realised that David was still in his PJs. I tried to dig around and get him some clothes, but brilliantly managed to drop his only clean shirt in the mud.

Nearby was another great feature of Japanese campsites: the camp kitchen. Large troughs where you can wash up. These generally have roofs and this one even had a large table undercover. We moved our kitchen over there and cobbled together our first breakfast. Then the clouds cleared and some of us went back to pack up the tent and awning (everything else was either in the car by then, or undercover at the kitchen area).

Mud!

We got that muddy job done (there was precious little grass around, mostly dirt and moss). Then came back for a second breakfast that a couple of the boys were cooking. The rain came down again while we were eating the second time.

By 7am we were on the road home. Taking with us many memories.

It took us a couple of days to finish cleaning up the mess. Tokyo was hot and rainless. But we have no yard to put up the tent to dry it. It got strung off our second floor balcony. I vacuumed the dried mud out of the car and we worked our way with all the other equipment that came back less than clean.

It was satisfying to go to a completely new area of Japan. All in all it was a good camp and we've agreed that we'd like to go back there sometime. (See here for a map of where we went.)

This frog was hard to capture in a photo but he or she was about
the size of my thumbnail. We saw many like this.

One moment of an amazing 1 ½ hrs of continuous fireworks.

Something of a glimpse of the crowd waiting for the fireworks to begin. The large blue tarps were waiting for their owners
to arrive and claim them.

Hango, or Japanese camping rice cookers. Love these!

It was a gorgeous area with many vibrant green fields of rice growing.

Home. You can see how muddy it would have gotten when the rain began.

A road block at the check-in counter

One story from our transition that stands out was a scary encounter with Japanese immigration.

We flew on five planes in nine days, three of those flights were international ones. Every time I go through an immigration check, I feel nervous. Anything can happen. Usually nothing does, but this time something did. However it happened before we got to immigration.

36 hours after we arrived in Tokyo the first time we hauled ourselves out to the airport again, via the train. We were so tired, but it was onto the next thing.

We weren't prepared for a road block at the check-in counter.

First the lady checking us in asked for the credit card we'd booked the flight with. However, that card had been cancelled a couple of months earlier by the bank because they suspected the number had been stolen. Thankfully David managed to remember the number was recorded and we happened to have that piece of paper with us (note to self: keep record of old numbers).

The second problem was bigger, and scarier. Our eldest turned 16 in Australia, while we were away from Japan. His visa was in order, they all were, but 16 is the age when foreigners are required to update their resident's card with a photo and carry it on their person at all times, just like the rest of the adult foreign residents. Visas are electronically linked to residents cards. But of course we hadn't been in the country to do get a new resident's card for him. Of course we did have that 36 hrs, but . . .  we thought we had six months to do this. However it appears you can't leave the country during that time.

For a bit it looked like our family would be separated. Three of us flying to the conference and two remaining behind to satisfy red tape. Meanwhile, everyone else on the flight (including several of our mission colleagues) were flowing normally thorough the bag check-in process. They left us all behind, but I asked them to pray.

I can't fault the helpfulness of the Japanese staff. The lady checking us in made several lengthy phone calls and eventually arranged for someone from the immigration office at the airport to come and escort our son and David to their in-airport office to sort it out.

So, I sat with our younger two sons, gazing at our lonely pile of luggage, and waited. Thankfully we were stranded near a coffee shop and I ordered us all some caffeine/chocolate drinks to help with the fatigue. Having something to do helped me avoid being too anxious.

Sooner than I expected David and our son returned. One hour, $30 dollars, and a bit of official paper later, and we were free to leave the country, with the option of returning legally. It was an uncomfortable hour.

It's like stepping into another movie set

This is the metaphor that's been in my head these last few days as we've arrived in Japan and began to resettle.

I wrote that title and the first sentence a few days after we arrived back in Tokyo.

An Australian friend describes it as stepping into a different chapter in your life. She knows, she has a life and a family in one town and currently works in another town, and consequently has developed "a life" there too. She goes between her two "movie sets" far more frequently than we do.

Continuing along the grocery store line, this is my little local
store. It's a familiar place.

We backed ourselves out of Australia in June. That is really what it felt like. We were settled, had routines, and life could have gone on there (except that we had employment issues . . . ). We uprooted ourselves by gradually saying goodbye, closing doors, and stopping. It didn't feel natural. And it wasn't easy.

We hopped on a plane and six hours later landed back in Tokyo. It was as if we'd only been away a little while. It was as if we'd stepped into another life, but strangely it was ours too. It had different props, many familiar ones. Routines that had been ours a year ago returned to our lives and it felt strangely normal. People, places, and things we'd left behind when we backed out of Japan 12 months ago were here to greet us (most of them, anyway, there are a number of people who aren't, and that is a grief).

It is hard to get my mind around, but we really do have two lives. Two movie sets. And the Japan one is more familiar, because we've spent four times more time here than we have in Australia over the last decade and a half.

And with all this comes mixed emotions. I miss people, places, and things in Australia, but I'm happy to be back in my Japan "movie set" with the people, places, and things that are familiar here.

Grocery shopping: the same, but different

Grocery shopping is one thing that is the same . . . and very different about my two lives (in Australia and Japan).

In Australia for the last year my pattern has been a big shop, usually at the start of the week, with a smaller shop later in the week. Usually at a one large grocery store, a fruit and veggie shop, and a butcher. No bulk shopping, no shopping over the Internet, and little running around to multiple food stores (though I know Australians who do all these, though not many). 

In Japan my weekly routine isn't too much different. I shop two or more times a week for fresh food: dairy, fruit, and veg. But the bigger picture is different. 

1. I have multiple choice of about half a dozen small shops within a km or so of my house. 

2. None of these has everything we need (unlike the large grocery stores in Australia).

3. All of these I would usually access on my bike, which has a capacity of about 3 1/2 green environmental bags (sorry non-Australians). I rode home with 25 kg of groceries the other day, that was pushing my limits. 

4. One store I visit two or three times a week, it is most consistently the cheapest on many things I buy regularly. I go to the other stores for things my regular store doesn't stock, for example: capsicum, condensed milk tins, peanut butter (though see the next point on this), tinned peaches (cheaper elsewhere), deoderant, etc. 

5. We buy in bulk too. From a foreign import shop online and from Costco. Things we buy there are

• not available locally, like cheese, granola bars, larger cuts of meat, brownie packet mix. 

• special treats, like pizza, big seedless grapes, chocolate muffins. 

• but mostly just cheaper, like peanut butter, tomato sauce, washing detergent, plain corn flakes, choc chips. 

Bulk shopping happens less often, Costco is about every 8-10 weeks. Online import shop only two or three times a year. 

6. There are other things we buy from specialist import shops, like golden syrup. One of these shops is a slightly longer bike ride away.

7. Nearby we have a flour mill, so we buy our flour (plus icing sugar) directly from them in bulk . 

8. Again, slightly further away, but still easily accessible by bike is a store that also sells larger amounts of meat, but also more unusual things like evaporated milk and condensed milk tins, pizza bases etc. I go there periodically, maybe once a month. 

It comes down to a lot of local knowledge, gained by experience and word of mouth (the latter was how we found the number 8 store, but not for a couple of years after moving to this area). 

I'm not sure if I spend more or less time on grocery shopping here. A trip to number four store takes only 30 to 45 minutes, four to door (on my bike). A lot less than a trip for groceries in Australia. Some things also get picked up on-the-way to or from other things, like I used to get milk on the way home from the gym, it was only an extra 10 min in my schedule. 

It does mean you need to think ahead a little. Some things can't just be picked up at the local store. But in other ways many things are very convenient. Especially if you eat less foreign food (though there's a surprising amount of foreign ingredients easily available if you're willing to cook from scratch).