Complicated trains made a bit easier

I've written here in the past about Tokyo trains and how complicated a journey can be. One thing I didn't mention was one particularly helpful tool that you can use to help you get around, and indeed I don't know what I'd do without it. It is a website called www.jorudan.co.jp/english/ (there is at least one other, but I can't remember what it's address is).

Here is how Jorudan works. You input the station you want to depart from and where you want to go, and the date, and time of departure or arrival. And then you press "Search".

Then sometimes you get this extra screen if there are several stations similar to the station you inputed, like here we have "Ichikawa" and variations on that.

Then it usually gives you several options of routes. Courtesy of the huge network of trains, there is almost always more than one route you can take. The information includes cost, time on board, total travel time and distance.

I've shown you the four possible routes it came up for my trip this morning across "town" to our OMF headquarters. "FE" means fast and easy (it is usually the route I take).

Route two, strangely, this time doesn't have a designation.

Route 3 is "E" or easy.

Route 4 is "LE" Low cost and Easy.

Today I took Route 1 and I caught all the trains I was supposed to catch, without any hassle. I didn't get a seat until my third train and nearly an hour into my journey, but it was a good journey nonetheless.

I've come a long way since I wrote this post nearly three years ago, but this journey to OMF headquarters is one that I've done many times now, so I'm comfortable with it. Ask me to go somewhere else and I can foresee that I'd be a bit more challenged, but no where near as uptight about it all as I was back at the beginning of 2011.

Put it in a bag!

The Japanese custom of always wrapping something or putting it in a bag before giving something to someone, still trips me up.

For example, in June I lent last year's school year book to a Japanese friend on the day of graduation because she wanted to know who she knew of the graduating class with the idea of giving a gift to their mums. I just gave her the book, my natural response. When she returned it, it was in a recycled opaque plastic bag. I'm not sure how Jaanese people feel when given things that aren't wrapped. But it isn't the way they operate themselves.

I guess it a pretty helpful thing to do, actually. Today, in this bag, I received back a small clothes-hanging thingy that we'd lent friends. It was handed to me at church, but because it was in a bag, no one commented on the slightly strange "gift".

Perhaps this all comes comes from their tradition of using a cloth, furoshiki, to wrap things. See this video (fast forward through it, if you wish, it is a bit slow, but at 2 minutes there is a different method shown):

Even better than a plastic bag is a paper one with a handle. We have a collection of preused one for this purpose.

This isn't something I've read or been told that is important in Japanese culture, not like shoe removal, still it's something that's here, no doubt about it. Just a little thing that occasionally reminds you that you aren't in your natural environment.  

Struggling with pride

I was recently introduced to a lady in her 50s at an English-speaking Christian women's gathering. She'd only been in Japan for nine weeks. Within a couple of minutes I was shocked as she admitted, "I came to Japan on the condition that I be allowed to buy all new stuff."

Huh? Many of the women at the gathering were missionaries, and I'd assumed she was too. My first reaction was one of judgement, What sort of attitude is that to have about being called to Japan? As the conversation progressed I realised that she possibly wasn't a missionary, and I had the opportunity to ask this later when we prayed together. She was the wife of a businessman. Still, I had trouble stilling that internal voice of contempt at the blatant materialism.

You see it is so far from how we and most of our colleagues live our lives, where we survive on a lot of secondhand and hand-me-down goods. I love new stuff as much as the next girl, but it simply isn't the first route that we choose for getting most things we need, particularly the larger items.

As I baked this afternoon my thoughts drifted along lines of where I had gotten a lot of my kitchen stuff. 

My "new" flour container.

My pink Tupperware flour container comes from my friend who recently left for Singapore (I posted about that here). Some of my larger oven trays come from a friend who's gone to her heavenly home. She gave them to me before she went back to the UK for cancer treatment. 

Oven trays, many of which were
given to us.

A few of our pieces of furniture come from missionaries we've hardly met. The telephone stand/cupboard houses all my recipe books and is very handy. It came from a family that had to return to Australia due to ill health.

Our telephone stand/cupboard.

We also have a number of things acquired more anonymously, like at second-hand stores or garage sales. Our little food processor I bought in Hokkaido very early in our time in Japan. I was so pleased at my "cheap" food processor.

My second-hand
food processor.

Ah, the memories, the connections (see here for a post on connections we find through food). Memories that new things just don't have. I'm not discontent with my lifestyle. Most of the time I'm not hankering after new things. That makes it hard when I encounter those who do. My first reaction is judgement against the materialism that I can so clearly see in them. However, it isn't my job to judge them, not even in my thoughts. 

I'm glad that I was forced to remain in that little table group on Tuesday and pray for that lady. Probing more deeply, she and her husband did feel "called" to Japan, but now she's here she doesn't know what God has for her to do. So I prayed for her. I asked God later for forgiveness for my judgemental heart, and asked him to reveal my own faults, because as soon as I put her down (even in my head), I'm elevating myself, as if I'm better in His sight than she is, just because I live a more modest lifestyle.

Pride. It is something that I don't want to take back with me to wealthy Australia next year. There is no good in being prideful that we manage to live on a small budget. But it is an insidious beast, poking its head up where it isn't wanted.

Humour Differences Aren't Often Funny

I was out all day the other day, mingling with a bunch of Christian women, many Americans, some Japanese, and some from other nations like Finland, Scotland, Canada, Germany etc.

Humour is often challenging in an international environment like this. It isn't just that not
everyone speaks English as their first language, but that our senses of humour are culturally defined.

For example, several years ago I made a casual comment to an American teacher who was leaving Japan and would therefore miss teaching my child the next year, that she "was lucky to miss him". She was highly offended and proceeded to tell me so: that she was indeed competent to handle challenging children and that she was shocked that I should be of such a low opinion of my son. I suspect an Australian would have just laughed. Her reaction was a big surprise to me!

I do find I'm drawn to some non-Aussies more than others because their humour matches mine better than others. I guess that's personality too, but someone suggested today that American-New England humour is closer to the British-type humour that we Australians enjoy. And that the ribbing they give each other is sometimes misunderstood by other Americans. Interesting.

In any case, I did a little internet research about Australia, British, and American humour (not indepth, mind you, I'm no expert!)

I found this link by the Australian Government, intended, presumably to inform/warn visitors about Australians.

In general, Australian humour is closer to British humour than American humour. If you're interested in the different between British and American humour, here are a couple of Youtube videos.

In the first video (4:19 long), the main point the speaker makes is that British comedians tend to be failures and flawed (self-deprecating humour) and make that a big point, but American comedians tend to be heroes. Australians major on self-deprecating humour too.

(Warning: there is a little bad or crude language in both videos).

The next one is a bit long (7:14) and amateurish and is by a New Yorker (which, I now know because I just looked it up, is not a New England state, but is close to there). He does give some good examples of British humour and explanations of some of the differences and how British humour is perceived in the US.

One of the things we love about hanging out with other Australian and UK expats is the humour that we can indulge in.

Followup on our teenager's washing

So what happened about the washing . . .

For anyone who remembers this post back in June, you might be wondering (actually you're probably not) how we're going with getting our teenager all domesticated and doing his own washing.

Actually, it's going very well. He's washing approximately twice a week and often at night-time, hanging it inside. Occasionally we're asking him if he needs to wash again, but mostly he's managing it all on his own. Wow! It's actually working.

We ceased having them intensely involved in washing and putting dishes away once school started, but it was a great way to get them involved in helping out over the long summer holidays.

But we've made other changes to our boy's household jobs.

Our younger two used to take it in turns to vacuum the dining room during the week, but as they've gotten older the mess under there isn't so bad, so we've reduced that to once a week each. However, our 8 y.o. is now cleaning toilets once a week and our 11 y.o. is washing up and putting dishes away once a week.

Sometimes I look around and think, yes, that could have been done better (I had to rescrub the toilets yesterday after he went to school, for example), but on the whole they do a pretty good job and I'm happy. The down-side is sometimes having to chase them to get the jobs done and the occasional whinging, but on the whole they're pretty good about it. I know that the longer we stay in this routine the better they'll get at just doing it.

Average Japanese woman size?

I recently spent time with some foreign women in Japan and the conversation at one point turned to how intolerant or shocked Japanese are at their size. These women are not obese, but certainly they are larger than most Japanese women. So I went hunting for some statistics about Japanese women's size.

The [Japanese] ministry of health, labour and welfare's 2010 National health and nutrition survey found that 29% of women in the 20s were too thin (body mass index less than 18.5). (From The Times of India, May 25, 2012). America's ABC news reported the same statistics in this article.

According to Wikipedia, the average Japanese women's height is 158cm (Australia's I was surprised to read, is only 163cm). Which makes me close to, but still below average here.

I am not large, my BMI is about 22.5. Yet in Japan I usually have to buy shirts that are L sized.

I still don't understand why Japanese people, who tend not to say what they think straight up, have a tendency to quickly tell foreigners how fat or large they are. Ah, yet another mystery in this land. 

Meanwhile, I'm off to the gym, to keep myself from becoming a "fat foreigner". (No one has told me that yet, except when I was pregnant here and the nurse told me to stop eating fruit!)

What's the longing of your heart?

I've totally run out of time to write anything myself here today, but here's a link to a new blog. Today's post is by a former member of my writing critique group. The post today asks the question:

What is the longing of your heart? What is God inviting you into?