When your world is rocked by an earthquake

And the return of the Singapore shirt!

January 2024

Missy and I stood in the kitchen, just pulling out supplies to start baking together, when my phone started vibrating and talking simultaneously.

“Earthquake! Earthquake!”

Instantly the house started rocking. I instinctively stepped back from the kitchen bench, pulling Missy with me. We had overhead cupboards, I didn’t need anything falling on our heads!

Bob and Okasan soon appeared and we all stood in the kitchen, the house steadily rocking, but not getting worse. Everything rattled, but nothing fell off shelves.

Then Bob noticed it. The fish pond.

I took this video at the end of the earthquake. You’ll notice the rattling at the start settles down, but the light is still swinging!

I’m guessing the quake lasted about 3 minutes. And I was sick. Seasick. I felt sooooo gross! It had never crossed my mind that people would get motion sickness from an earthquake! But having now experienced it, it totally made sense! Not only did my stomach feel gross, but my head was wrecked! It was awful! Missy also got a sore head. It took me over an hour to recover.

The earthquake alert on my phone informed us that there was going to be a second, larger quake. So when our world stopped moving, Missy went and prepared…

Missy filling her water bottle, preparing for the next earthquake, complete with bicycle helmet!

No, she wasn’t about to go for a bike ride! The helmet was in preparation for the next anticipated earthquake! 😂 (I laugh looking back now, but in fact it was probably a very smart idea to wear that!)

Bob also went and prepared. His black backpack was full of food. The other bag had his dressing gown, a radio, torch, and I don’t know what else. He seriously had these two bags ready in 2 minutes flat!

Apparently they learnt at school how to pack emergency bags (and here I was, initially feeling proud that somehow I’d taught him well, haha!). At school, they don’t teach them to pack food though, he took that initiative on his own! No surprises there!

I found it most entertaining with Missy. She was the type of child who saw natural disasters on TV and would be like “Wow, I wish I could have been in that car, stranded on the bridge with the strong typhoon winds pushing me towards the edge!”

Me: No, you really dont!

Her: I’d love to experience that!

Me: No, you really wouldn’t!

Her: I wonder what’s it’s like… Just imagine…how cool…!

And then this earthquake happens and she was totally freaked out!

We waited, and waited, for the second, larger earthquake, but it never came. So I guessed that we didn’t feel the first one as we weren’t close enough to the epicentre which was in Ishikawa prefecture, and the one we did feel must have been the second, larger one.

I was glad no more came. That one was strong enough for me. Upon sharing the experience with my family, my sister suggested I buy some anti-nausea wristbands. Of course it felt so necessary immediately after the earthquake, but a few hours later, after I’d recovered, the urgency didn’t feel so strong.

When Shujin got home from work he told us that the epicentre of the earthquake was still experiencing small quakes every five minutes. That would be my worst nightmare!! I went straight to Amazon and found the wrist bands!

It was New Years Day, a most unfortunate start to the year for those adversely affected by the earthquake. A very harsh slap in the face for the country that so passionately celebrates New Years! The Japanese place value on 'the first' in anything. It’s a symbol of 'good fortune.' Now, for Ishikawa prefecture, it just felt like extremely bad luck!

We were having some not so fortunate events of our own. We’d incubated 9 eggs in December, and excitedly watched five off them hatch. But devastatingly, 3 had died. Perhaps all unnecessarily, which made it all the more harder! With four eggs still to hatch, and me exhausted from the physical and emotional demands that come with hatching chickens (which I wasn’t expecting!), it was time to have a word with God.

God, if these last remaining eggs are roosters and not hens, please don’t let them hatch! We need hens and if we get roosters we’ll have to deal with them when they’re grown and that’s even harder than when they are babies!

The next day, one egg hatched.

It’s A Girl! (Of course, we couldn’t tell yet, but I knew it was, I had prayed!)

No more eggs hatched and eventually we laid the last 3 unhatched eggs to rest underneath the blueberry bushes, along with the 3 chickens that had died.

So from our 9 eggs that we incubated, 6 hatched, 3 died, and 3 survived.

This was not such a good success rate! How foolish of me to think winter was a good time for incubating chickens!! Nature should have been my guide: Spring Debbie, Spring!! I’d wanted to incubate them in December. I thought it would be most efficient to incubate them over the winter months when hens don’t lay, so once they were old enough to lay, the weather would be warm and off they’d go! But the crazy part was, our adult hens were still laying eggs. In this cold weather! How long would they continue to lay? I thought hens rested for the winter season!

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We stood waiting for our food at a Japanese Subway-style type eatery. It was Sunday lunch, the place was crowded and everyone was standing around waiting for their order, as there were no tables inside. It was getting too crowded for me inside so I stepped out into the chilly winter day, only willingly because it was sunny and I can handle cold much easier when there is sunshine.

Once outside, I noticed there was a sit-down eating area: a big trailer with walls and glass windows on both sides and tables inside. It was empty. I stepped inside this sunroom and started stripping off my jacket and jumper. Then I went back and opened the door and hooked it up so it stayed open, encouraging fresh air in and trying to cool the place down! It felt so stuffy and hot, especially compared to the air outside which was very chilly! Satisfied, I went back inside and took a seat.

If ever you want your kids to come to you, just sit down. They will find you!

Bob saw me first and came in. Seeing the wonderful eating location I had found, he went straight back out and brought Okasan and Missy in. It was good to get them out of the shop, and out of the way of other customers. But perhaps it was a little too soon as, looking into the shop, I saw that Shujin had just received our order. I sent the kids back to help him carry the food.

Meanwhile, Okasan had chosen to sit on the chair opposite me, and had started stripping. Despite letting in some air, it was still very warm inside. Off came her jacket and the puffer vest underneath it. She was still hot and she checked that she had more layers under the jumper. She did, so off came the jumper. She was still hot so she checked under her long sleeve shirt and yes, there was more layers, so off came the shirt. (Anyone like Russian nesting dolls? Okasan is a living one of those!)

After she’d taken off five layers I looked, and lo and behold her Singapore shirt from Ken (that precious shirt that I apparently buried under a tree in the backyard!) was staring back at me!

I wanted to shout and rejoice and point out that she found her shirt, but I kept my feelings of surprise to myself. There was no use saying anything. Her dementia would have caused her to forget the accusations against me for hiding it, would have forgotten that she’d even lost it!!!

Where that shirt had been hiding for the last 3-4 months, who knows!! (Maybe inside another shirt?!!)

Discovering the Singapore shirt was reason to celebrate, but it truth be known, we were struggling.

Shujin and I were dreaming about returning back to Australia.

Life in Japan was hard.

Shujin didn’t like his job. He was so stressed. The aged care centre was just not financially viable. He had cut costs and cut costs and dreamt of ideas for how to make it breakeven, or even how to make money, but you need money to make money, and you need time. He didn’t have either. The doors had only remained opened because God had kept them open with timely, sizeable donations and a released term deposit.

He felt obligated to stay in the job, knowing that no one else would be stupid enough to take on the position. He was responsible for the homes of the residents, and felt that God had placed him there. So he stayed.

I was tired. I had taken on too many extra commitments. Teaching English. Teaching Ukulele. Still gardening and cleaning at the aged-care centre, still hosting Zoom English chat sessions. In an attempt to further aid my Japanese learning I started learning Japanese sign language. It felt that, doing an action whilst saying the word, would help it stick in my brain. And on top of all that I was raising chickens which were far more involved than I bargained for!

As well as being tired, everything felt so hard in Japan. I still couldn’t speak the language, and certainly reading was harder. I had to wait on others to help me. I couldn’t even go to the hairdresser or book an appointment on my own for goodness sake! It was hard not being independent!

And Bob’s allergies and food intolerances made life super hard. He’s very sensitive to additives in food. MSG which is in just about everything. Even canned tuna! WHY would anyone need to have MSG to TUNA??!!! So I'm constantly checking labels... with Google lens.

The other thing they throw in everything is fructose. If Bob consumes this highly-concentrated corn syrup, we all suffer. He just totally goes off his rocker! Like he’s just drunk a glass of pure red cordial! This fructose is added to so much stuff, just like MSG. I can’t even buy fruit juice without checking that it’s actually FRUIT JUICE! Nearly all will have fructose, amongst other poisons (colour, flavour, etc).

And then there’s the living arrangements here which are hard... Perhaps exasperated by winter. Although I will say, I feel we are warming the house better this year than last year. Last year we used 2 oil heaters and it didn’t even keep us warm! We’d just moved to Japan, I couldn’t read bills and didn’t keep track of anything. Shujin had just started his new job and wasn’t used to keeping track of household bills (since I did that in Australia). At the end of winter, our electricity bill arrived, accompanied by an apology letter for a mishap in their system. Electricity bills come monthly in Japan (what a brilliant idea Australia!) but our’s hadn’t come. And no-one had noticed.

Our three month winter electricity bill was a whole month’s wage! That hurt.

I hid the oil heaters.

So this winter, Shujin researched and learnt that the kutatsu (the heater under the tabletop) was only 16cents/day to run. We kept it on, even when not sitting at the table. We got December’s electricity bill. Less that $100. Now that was better!

Even though we were much warmer inside than last year. It was still cold. It was still winter. Outside was getting less attractive by the week. The sun got weaker and shone less. Ice on the roads became more regular. Winter can be a hard time.

The other hard part about our living arrangements was the torture of being so close to having a house of our own, but still waiting… And the added chicks which started out living under the table but outgrew their box way too quickly and were now in a cage in my kitchen because it was far too cold for them to live outside! (Yes, this was entirely my own doing, I have no one else to blame!)

And then there’s the spiritual life... church just wasn’t nurturing or even spiritually engaging. It was dull and just sucked my energy having to play church and keep my kids under control each week... Yes, they were 10 and 12 years old and had been going to church since babies but yet they still couldn’t “sit still” and go through the appropriate motions of church. Japanese churches are very traditional, also having a congregation that was full of retirees or those close to retirement, didn’t help the matter either.

The church services were all in Japanese of course, so the only thing that felt a little meaningful to me were some of the familiar hymns. And the Children’s Story, ‘cause it was told in English since Bob and Missy were the only kids.

Shujin and I both missed church back in Australia. We were obligated to attend our current church here in Japan because it was in the aged-care facility where Shujin was manager. We’d love to not have to attend and to do home church... do something that wasn’t just going through the motions, but something that was meaningful and real.

Life in Japan was hard.

Work. Home. Spirituality. Language. Diet. Food.

Was it time to just go home?

We took the matter to prayer.

God, we’re feeling like we want to return to Australia, but if the Baptist Church Board decides to give us the Prayer House, we’ll take that as a sign to remain in Japan. We leave it in Your hands.

It was well past New Years and getting into late January, but still no word from the Baptist Church about any Board decisions. We didn’t press. Finally Shujin got word from them. Their next Board meeting was scheduled for early February. What’s another few weeks of waiting? I’d waited this long!

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