Where are all the shorts??
June 2023
Okasan stretched her arm to try and reach the itchy spot on her back. She’d had these sores since we came almost 9 months ago. Suffering from pemphigus, a rare auto-immune disease, these itchy and painful blisters come and go. They flare up under different circumstances, and if not treated but left to rampage, the pemphigus blisters will start appearing internally and can be fatal. She lifted her shirt on her back so I could put some cream on the blisters. There were many, the most I’d seen her have. We needed to do more than just treat with cream.
When she’d first been diagnosed with pemphigus several years ago, medical doctors couldn’t help her. It was too rare, too under-researched, no cure had been found and one doctor told her outright, “You’ll die!”
She’d thankfully found another doctor who had other thoughts. Placing her on a strict diet, she had gradually started to improve. As is usual for auto-immune diseases, it still hung around, however it became manageable and gradually she was able to re-introduce food back into her diet and not suffer so severely.
Looking at her back now, I didn’t want this flareup to continue. We needed the list of foods that she could eat, before this got any worse. It took some hunting, and quite a few days of concern that perhaps we’d lost the list for good, but thankfully we found it. I looked over the list of fruits and vegetables and wondered what on earth I was going to cook with such limitations! I also noticed that some foods clashed with the diabetes diet that I was feeding her. For a diabetic it was better to eat blueberries rather than a banana. But on the pemphigus diet, blueberries weren’t allowed, but bananas were… Oh man!! This was going to be one tough gig!! I was also restricted with oils and seasonings that I could use… Thankfully, Okasan was a very grateful receiver, so she ate the simply cooked food with gratitude.
Diets and cooking weren’t my only struggle. Now that Spring was finally over (the cool Spring weather seriously went for months!), and the Rainy Season finished (which wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d been anticipating), summer had finally arrived (Yay!). And I needed shorts. We’d moved to Japan with just a suitcase each, so my wardrobe was limited. I’d brought one pair of shorts from Australia. I hadn’t needed any more up until now. I first started looking in the clothes stores near home. Nothing. No shorts. That’s odd! Despite Summer arriving, the stores were still full of long pants and long sleeved shirts and tops! I started looking wider, but still, nothing.
One Sunday we were out shopping in a store we don’t usually go to. I went straight to the ladies section to look for shorts. I found a few in the sports/active wear section, but I didn’t really want to be wearing basketball shorts! I asked Shujin if he could enquire for me.
He approached a staff member and asked if they had shorts. She tilted her head and thought about it and slowly said, “Hmmm, no. I don’t think we have any…” and kept thinking. “Oh, maybe there is some over here…” and she headed towards the active wear and then very happily said that yes, they did have shorts, here they are!
We showed our gratitude with smiles and nods and “Thanks”, but internally I groaned.
And thus I started noticing the attire of those around me and realised, the Japanese don’t dress like Aussies. I mean, I already knew they have their own style, but now they REALLY looked different. It’s summer, it’s hot, and so the Japanese make sure they have long pants and long sleeved shirts, hats, towels, umbrellas, and many layers to protect themselves from the sun. Meanwhile, I’m sweltering and dying from just one layer and I want short sleeve shirts and shorts please!!! Buying shorts was clearly not as easy as I thought it was going to be!
Suddenly, I missed Big W. I never thought I’d miss Big W!! Back home in Australia, we had lived in a small country town that had a Big W (a cheap department store). I didn’t love shopping there, it just didn’t seem as cool or as exciting as Kmart or Target. But that was our only option. The clothes weren’t as trendy, the quality was cheap... Now, here in Japan, suddenly, I missed Big W. If only I could just go to Big W and buy a basic pair of shorts!!! I never thought I'd miss Big W!!!!
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July 2023
It was early Sunday morning and instead of relaxing, our family was pushing down breakfast and scrambling to get out the door to get down to the community centre where we were meeting with others from the community to take part in cleaning and garbage collection.
Japan has this incredible organised system of dividing towns up into zones and each zone takes a turn doing some sort of town cleaning. I’ve seen groups cleaning the sides of the road, and I also know that the groups take turns cleaning the shrines. These are the two cleaning jobs I know about, perhaps there’s others. The garbage collection side of things is collecting the recycling. People know it’s collection day and will leave stacks of newspapers or books bundled together on the side of the streets for the collectors to retrieve. They also collect glass bottles and PET bottles.
So on this cloudy morning, as we were hurrying out the door, a car drove down our street. Uncle Ken! What on earth?! It wasn’t yet 8am in the morning! Turns out, he drove all night (‘cause he likes driving the back roads and doesn’t like to pay for the expensive tolls on the highway!) and had come to give Shujin a hand. We’d told him our plans for how on earth we would fit his two boys and their mum into our house-built-for-two (that already houses 6 people) for five weeks over the summer break: build a triple bunk.
But that would have to wait, we had community obligations to attend to! We told Okasan to stay home with Ken, and rushed off. By now we had missed the pre-meeting at the community centre and caught up with those on their way to the shrine where we would be cleaning. We made our way down the main street and then turned down a side street. Despite going past many, many times, I had never actually been down this side street. It was quite narrow, and dropped away significantly to one side, with no guard rail! I peaked over the edge but couldn’t see the bottom. I moved on, the flutter in my heart dissipating.
A little further on I looked up and stopped. Wow! What a picture! The lush, green rice paddy sitting in the valley, the red torii gate bolding standing out at what must be the entrance, and another red torii gate standing right at the edge of pine grove. It was hard to see into the pine grove, despite the very tall trunks, but I could see some sort of small building which must be the shrine, hidden away in there. Wow, this place was beautiful! It had rained overnight so everything looked extra lush and vibrant.
I heard some excited voices behind me and turned to see a family walking our way, their small son running ahead. I smiled at his enthusiasm and joy. He raced past me, running towards the bigger kids up ahead. He didn’t look dressed for cleaning, he wore white track pants!!! White!! What a brave mother he must have! She was soon to become a more wise mother as suddenly, he tripped and splat! Down he went, straight onto the muddy road! He picked himself up and another mother and I let out cries as we looked at his once white track pants now splattered with muddy knees extending down to his ankles! Oh what a sight! His cute pudgy face was sheepish, but soon it turned to all smiles. Well, his clothes might be ruined, but it certainly hadn’t ruin his morning!
Some curious kids went close to the rice paddy. They pointed out the little water critters moving about under the protection of the rice plants. Then they moved on to deciding whether the electric fence was live or not. Suddenly there were squeals, but it was not what anyone had been anticipating…