October 2023
We left Japan in September with no sign of summer letting up, and returned from Australia three weeks later to discover winter had arrived! What?!!
The rice fields were brown and starting to be harvested.
The cherry blossom trees had lost all their leaves.
Tired vegetable gardens boasted attractive bursts of chrysanthemum colour.
Before reaching our Japanese countryside though, we drove through narrow streets and passed crowded buildings. Hard surfaces were everywhere as brown/grey tones filled the cityscape—a complete contrast to the wide spaces and green nature strips in Australia—and strangely, my heart was glad: I was home. In Japan.
I had really loved being in Australia, everything was just so EASY!!!! and I was completely INDEPENDENT. No waiting on anyone to help me with anything! Need to contact the bank? I can call them myself! Need to buy sunscreen with natural ingredients for Bob? I can research, read the ingredient list, and find it myself! Need to book an appointment? I can do it myself! And yet, even though I loved the easiness and independency in Australia, I was happy to be back in Japan, which was a nice feeling to have.
There are always things you love from your home country though, so I had stocked up on cotton shorts, cotton shirts, socks and underwear. Bonds had a 40% off sale (don’t you just love such sales?!). I think I bought five years worth of underwear... Haha!!! I paid for extra luggage on our return trip and took back the kids’ Lego, compromising on my desire to fill my suitcase with chickpeas and lentils… but I managed to squeeze in a few packets of each.
I bought another vegetable peeler (just in case I lost my current one!) and I bought a wooden spoon for baking - I just couldn’t find a rounded wooden spoon for cakes and biscuits in Japan! There were some items on my list that I wasn’t able to buy... Mum and dad booked tickets to come visit in March 2024 for almost three months—YAY!— so I’ll be giving them a list to help fill their suitcases!!
Whilst in Australia, Bob and Missy had missed out on three weeks of school in Japan, so it was straight back into it when we arrived home. I walked the kids to school in the chilly but sunny air, huge smiles and happiness greeted us, the kids even got hugs from Mrs Suzuki and Kiyo (hugging isn’t a Japanese thing…). The holiday to Australia was great, but thankfully, we were also happy to be back in Japan.
Until I wasn’t.
Well, it’s not that I wasn’t happy to be in the country, it was more that I was struggling with our living conditions. Sharing a house-built-for-two with 6 of us was really wearing thin… How long could I live in a shoebox??
Shujin hadn’t start renovating. He’d planned to do everything while we were gone and out of the way, but then he decided it would be better to have our help, so he was waiting til we got home! I was personally happy, still clinging to the hope that renovating wouldn’t be necessary. It wasn’t going to increase our space, just give Missy and Bob a room each. Also, it would change the location of our front door, making the kitchen door our entry, which I wasn’t feeling so excited about.
Perhaps my discontentment with our living arrangements was wearing off on my husband... He shoved his phone under my nose, demanding my immediate attention.
“Check this house out! Look how beautiful it is! Only $100,000!” (We regularly talk in Australian dollars, as the Japanese yen has too many zeros! Imagine if there were only cents in Australian currency and no dollars, well that’s the Japanese yen. And even though the Australian dollar doesn’t exactly buy ¥100, we just round it up to make things easy!)
I slid my finger across the screen, scanning the photos. A well presented house. Small kitchen, but that’s to be expected in Japan. Multiple rooms. The place looked like a mansion! Even had a small yard! The house must be in the countryside.
“Where’s it located?” I checked with him.
“Yamaguchi.” He may as well have been speaking another language (well, I guess he was!). I’d never heard of the place! Google maps soon taught me how far across the country it was…
“I’m not moving there!”
We can’t move. Okasan had dementia. Moving her to a different location, even within her own country, would be really challenging for her and possibly set her back even more. We were stuck, destined to stay in our little village.
With all this going on, I had the urge to share. Shujin and I were keeping it quiet about wanting to buy the house next door. No use informing the kids and Okasan if it wasn’t going to be. But as I stood outside Kiyo’s place one morning, chatting with her after dropping the kids off from school, I felt the need to share.
Being the good friend that she is, she was totally sympathetic to my wants and super excited for the prospect of us potentially moving next door to Okasan. It felt nice to be able to share and be supported. Kiyo was so supportive in fact, that she became active about it.
“There’s some vacant properties in our village, would you be interested in checking them out?” Would I? Of course! Turned out, Kiyo found looking through houses very fun and was keen to go with me. We’d soon set up a meeting time to view two houses, meeting first at a house owned by the Baptist church.
I was far from excited about this house and held no hopes whatsoever. We walked past it every day on the way to school. It was so rundown and neglected, I felt it was an embarrassment to Christians. I knew it was owned by the Baptist church as there was a very old, rusty and crooked sign at the front of the property which once proudly announced this house was a House of Prayer, owned by the Tokyo Baptist church. I guessed it to be a weekend retreat location, rather than a residence. But one could clearly see that those weekend retreats hadn’t happened for a long time and you couldn’t even put the blame on covid. Nevertheless, I was still excited for the little outing around our village with Kiyo and what the outcome might bring…
What do you love about where you live?
If you have left your country, what did you notice upon returning?
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