Another campsite to discover

I'm a bit excited, we've got our next camping expedition booked. It's at a campsite on a lake at the base of Mt Fuji: Lake Sai, about two hours drive from home. 

We're heading off on the long weekend of American Thanksgiving, the fourth Thursday of November. Perilously close to being officially winter! We've camped several times before on this weekend at a campsite a bit north of this one (see here for last year's camp roundup). That campsite has spectacular mountain views but last year we discovered that a couple of the things we really enjoyed about the campsite had disappeared: a big swing and the flying fox (zip line). So we decided to try a different campsite this year.

This one has advantage of not being on the side of a mountain, so hopefully it will be a little less cold. I loved the view at the previous campsite so I'm hoping that this one isn't a disappointment. Lake views can be great, though, and by the looks of what's on the website the lake is surrounded by mountains that appear to disappear straight into the lake. Plus there are other attractions like a mountain biking course, canoes to hire and nearby "bat caves". So we'll see if it is worth the swap. 

Check out the camp's website:

http://www.pica-resort.jp/saiko/special/

Acute culture shock

 

Every week we put out at least this much
clean plastic, most of it wrappers off
food. It's great that this seems to be
"recyclable" rubbish, but prevention
would be better! Part of the problem is
that portion sizes are small, so we get
through so many small packages being
a family with big appetites.

A few days ago I came across a blog post by young American lady who has been in Japan only a couple of months. She's suffering from acute culture shock. Lots about Japan is strange and abhorrent to her (she's also promised a blog post about the things that she loves about Japan, I can't wait to see that). We still struggle with some of the things she mentions but generally we've gotten used to them or have found ways around them. 

But it's nearly 16 years since we first arrived in Japan and it's hard to remember how strong those feelings were at the beginning. Of course we as a missionary couple with a young child we had different stresses, but we also probably had more support around us than perhaps this lady has. My biggest impression of the first 2 ½ months of life in this country was cold and snow: we arrived in Sapporo in December! One of the snowiest cities in the world.

But part of me wishes I could get alongside this girl and help her with some of her concerns, like finding water fountains and trashcans. All are available, she's just not finding them. I'm not sure where she is shopping, because she's having trouble finding cheese and decently priced fruit and vegetables. She just needs a few pointers and a bit of encouragement.

Other things she's concerned about makes me want to shake her and say "get over it", like Stamping: in Japan you rarely sign, you use a personal ink stamp with your name on it. It's not worth getting worked up about. Squat toilets: I actually don't mind them, they're not as bad as she's suggesting, life could be a lot worse. Sorting "trash" also isn't so bad, just a little tedious at times. Actually now I'm so used to it that it is hard to throw it all into the same receptacle back in Australia.

I agree with others that she mentions, like smoking indoors, excess packaging, and carrying around a soggy towel in your bag because there often isn't anything to dry your hands on is pretty gross and I avoid it if at all possible. The cash society can be an issue, in fact we had a problem with it just this last week. But with some planning ahead to ensure that you have enough in your wallet and it doesn't have to be a big issue most of the time. In fact this is something that we wouldn't have noticed if we'd come 30/40 years ago, because that's what the West was like back then too.

In any case, it is good for us "old timers" to be reminded of what it feels like to be new to all this. It's easy to judge her but I think compassion is probably the better response. And if you know a new missionary, prayer is the best response. Because adjusting to a new country without all your old support structures is really hard. Even harder when you're considering committing yourself to this for longer than a year or two.

Relaxing yet productive day

Today was a slow day. They cancelled cross country so we got to sleep in. So nice. I read for quite a while after that too and breakfast for me was very late. I surely needed the rest, I've been feeling very tired recently. Today bears that out, I've relaxed and it just seems to have made me more tired. That ever happen to you?

Oh, it also was clothes-sorting day. Fortunately the boys
were cooperative on that front today: enjoying trying on
clothes that fitted at the end of last winter but
 don't necessarily still fit, evidence of growth!

Cherry Blossoms on my route home, they've nearly lost all their
leaves. Early bloomers and also early "fallers" (what's the opposite
of blooming?.

Yesterday was a busy day, I spent nearly three hours on the trains, had a three hour meeting (that was stimulating and enjoyable) then a quick lunch with my boss. I also had to take my middle son back to the orthodontist so they could have another go at getting an impression of his lower teeth for when his braces come off in a fortnight, an hour and a half venture. I was out of the house from 8.30 to 5.30.

It was a gorgeous day for our local primary school's
sports day. It was postponed from last Saturday
 because of rain. Surprisingly it wasn't noisy. I'm a
little disappointed, I didn't get to hear the final
performance of the trumpeters who've been
"serenading" us for the past few weeks.

After lunch today I rode to get groceries I didn't have time to get yesterday. It was gorgeous out. About 23 degrees, warm in the sun, cool in the shade. I rode home along the two rivers I showed you yesterday, just to absorb the gorgeous sun and cloudless sky (the latter being very unusual in Tokyo). Thankfully my eggs survived, they haven't survived that trip before, it is a little more bumping than my usual route home from the grocery store!

Then I baked. A good fairly relaxing activity for the afternoon. But I really had trouble getting my head into the game, more than usual. However I did manage to make enough for our family's snacks this week (and hopefully into next) as well as snacks to give towards feeding helpers as we set up for CAJ's Thrift Shop again this week. Unfortunately I'd also scheduled a "busy" evening meal: Tuna Lasagne, so I collapsed on my bed after dinner, quite done in. I'm feeling a bit better now.

I'm thankful that tomorrow is also a slow day, aside from going to church, which always tires me out (something about listening to a sermon in Japanese does that).

Photos of our city #2

Here is where the two main rivers of our city join, less than 1km from
our house.

Continuing my posts about our city and trying not to get carried away with detail (I can drown in stuff like this). Today I'm writing just a little on the geography.

Higashi kurume city is mostly flat, which makes cycling a very easy way to get around. I discovered today that it's located on a large tableland called the Musashino Plateau. I knew it was part of the larger area that Tokyo's situated on, the Kanto Plain, but the existence of this Plateau is news to me. 

Apparently the Plateau "consists of an alluvial fan formed by the ancient River Tama with a layer of volcanic ash, many metres deep" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musashino_Terrace) which would explain why is it such a fertile place for growing. You'll see I've included another photo of urban and primary industry side-by-side down below.

We also have two main rivers, the Kurome and the Ochiai rivers. Their banks are both well reinforced on the sides and have walk/run/cycle paths on one or two sides. I love riding along these and often use them even if it is the longer way to my destination. They're a definite joy to living here. The Ochiai river is less than 200m from our house.

Can you see the two rivers? The top one is Kurome and the bottom one Ochiai, they're both flowing towards the Arakawa, a very large river that flows into Tokyo Bay.

The city has a rather odd shape. It is bordered by several other cities and a prefecture (Saitama). The other cities are Kodaira, Higashimurayama, Kiyose, and Nishitokyo.

I ride past this local fire station and field at least twice a week doing my grocery run.
I love the lush green carrot crop at present.

Looking down into one of the rivers in our city from the bike path.

Gagging on a day

I blogged the following post in 2010 when our boys were 11, 8, and 5. Friends who have little ones I want to encourage you: it isn't like this very often any more, but it used to be, and we survived!

"The mothers agree that indeed the years do fly. It's the days that don't. The hours, the minutes of a single day sometimes just stop. And a mother finds herself standing in the middle of a room wondering. Wondering. Years fly. Of course they do. But a mother can gag on a day." Jain Sherrard  

I really like it and it describes today - I gagged on today and in fact, many of our recent weekends. 

I could describe the awful behaviour that we've been suffering, but I won't spoil your day. I'm just praying that our boys will move through whatever stage it is that is making them so poor of hearing, so rude of speech, so short of patience and so full of complaints, that it makes them extra difficult to live with at the moment.

It is a pity, really. Today was a gorgeous autumn day and we even took the time to go on a picnic (and it took time—driving around Tokyo on a Sunday is a pain). Unfortunately we didn't really enjoy the outing, mostly because parenting is just painful at present. 

And that takes me back to the quote above. I couldn't help but long for these painful formative years to be over, to long for days when we can take a picnic and enjoy being together instead of struggling in random directions and in the meantime hurting each other. It is, of course, a longing for what cannot be until heaven, but that doesn't mean I don't still long.

Originally post here: http://mmuser.blogspot.jp/2010/11/gagging-on-day.html

Cheerful sunshine

I'm basking in sunshine as I type this. Yesterday was a horrible grey day that never made it up to 20 degrees. As a result I didn't resist the urge to retreat to an inside coffee shop at a local shopping centre. Though someone forgot to tell them to turn up the air con, it was chilly in there too, but at least it wasn't grey! 

Today, though, I'm basking in the sunshine that only comes into our house in autumn and spring. In mid-winter the house behind ours blocks the sun, it's sad. 

My desk is right next to a big southern-facing window, which is great when the sun is shining in on a cool day, but not so great when it's cold (or hot) on the other side of that glass. So even though today is an inside, desk day, outside is coming in and cheering me. Love it!

Some observations about how life is changing for us

The rhythms of life are gradually changing for us. In our early to mid 40s we now have boys who are in middle and high school. When I wrote back here about giving a house key to our youngest son I knew it was happening. It's a little different living it.

The changes are gradual, but worth noting. Here are some things that have been changing gradually or more suddenly over the last few years:

Our boys are getting big. I've only got about 2 inches
over our youngest son now!

Bedtimes

Of course this is obvious, but it does effect the flow of life at home. We used to have a great rhythm of getting the boys into their bedrooms soon after dinner and then had an hour or more to ourselves. That has definitely changed. The youngest still goes to his bedroom after dinner (though not straight after dinner), but his light is often not out till 9pm. The other two are often in bed after us, though we try to get them to come upstairs by about 10pm if they don't have school work that they need to get finished that night. The key being that we only allow them to have computers and electronic devices downstairs in the shared spaces of our dining room and lounge room. 

David and I still take time out from parenting most nights and watch a 45-minute episode of something like CSI in the lounge room on our own. But the boys are still there when we're done. Parenting is a much longer affair these days. Dealing with homework issues at 10pm makes me very tired. Once or twice a week I also read the Bible with one or two boys at this time of night. The bonus is that I often get a back rub out of that plus good talking time, but it really wears me out.

Time without them in the house

Yes, this has changed too, currently we have no boys home three afternoons a week until after 5pm. That's a big change to overseeing homework and music practise. One I'm trying to utilise by planning things myself at that time, like visiting a new friend whose little kids are resting at that time or going to the gym. Today I'm at a coffee shop working instead of staying at home on this gray, dismal afternoon.

They're also involved in other things like youth group, playing games at friends' houses, sports events etc. that take them away at various times when usually they would have been with me. 

They're more self-sufficient at home

That means we can leave them alone at home at times. That means things like yesterday, a CAJ and public holiday, when four of us went across Tokyo to an OMF event and left our eldest at home to work and rest. I don't know that he got a lot of the former done, but it is good for him to be learning to manage his own time when there's no one home to oversee this.

This point and the one before means that at times David and I have gone out for longer than 30 minutes on various errands or even dates without the boys, leaving them all at home. That is relatively new. Some families manage this earlier, but our combination of boys, ages, and personalities have meant that we've waited until relatively recently to indulge in this.

That means also that they're doing more chores around the house. So I rarely wash up or hang up washing. I don't clear the dining table. I don't make their beds and some meals they are making themselves. I don't take out rubbish or tidy their rooms. I don't pack their bags for overnights and try not to double check that they have sorted those details (more so for the older one than the youngest ones). I don't supervise showers or toilets (though I do still tell them to get out of the shower at times and are still at times reminding boys to go to the shower). I don't cut finger or toe-nails, and a myriad of other details that used to take up my mental space. All of that means that I have more time.

Emotional changes

It's hard to compare this now to before. They're a lot bigger, so I can't physically force things to happen. They've always been very self-willed, so I can't say that it is particularly easier now, although they're gradually learning some things aren't worth fighting over. Now I can, mostly, reason with them, which wasn't the case when they were little. Communication has gotten more complex, as has strategies for dealing with them. One has to be even more clever these days than I used to have to be (see this post about the challenges of parenting smart kids that I wrote three years ago).

There's more at stake in as they go up in school. This we've noticed in high school especially. Failing to complete an assignment has more riding on it than it used to, which raises the emotional stakes for all involved. We're also getting closer to releasing a boy to live independently, that's scary, there's not much time left and it's hard to not get worried about that.

It's interesting to see them gradually figure more complex things out, especially about themselves. One of our boys discovered some years ago (because we told him) that he was an introvert. That colours how he views the world now, but especially helps him to control himself and be more understanding.

Coupledom

Moving beyond being a family-with-children-at-home is getting closer and that colours our thoughts of the future. We're now dreaming of things we'll do once they all leave home (I turn 50 a couple of months before, Lord willing, our last child graduates from high school).

This, I guess, is middle-age! It's good to reflect now and not be bowled over suddenly later on when we realise that all these gradual changes have snuck by and all of a sudden our kids are all grown up and our daily lives are irrevocably changed.

PS. There are more I haven't included here, after I put this online I kept thinking of more I could have added, like how celebrations have changed and how spontaneity has become easier in some ways. All you middle-aged mums and older, feel free to add more in comments!