Phone Data is marvellous!
Sunday was very exciting!
First, I finally got heat on in our sleeping room and off in our living room for the night, successfully turned on the stove, cooked breakfast and found our way to Quaker meeting on time! All this because Dan was given a phone with data and we could take pictures of our machines, discuss the button functions, as well as look up subways and rail lines.
Beautiful sweet, quiet meditation and meeting event! Yukiko Backes, the woman Dan's Uncle Ward knew, from an international Quaker gathering in the 70's, just happened to be visiting Tokyo meeting from Osaka. We met some young women from the Quaker school, a young British woman doing a year of mission work, and gave our travelling minute to the clerk, who wasn't quite sure what to do with it. One conversation was about what it was like to be a teenager, experience the political tyranny, bombing and work instead of school during the war. Another conversation was about the peace camp the Quaker youth were planning with Jewish, Palestinian kids. Over a simple lunch of soup, rice, salad and peanut brittle we heard more about the long running Quaker school started by Philadelphia meeting (1890's) and how this older group of Quakers now interfaces with the students by putting on retreats for them twice a year. The phone let us show Yukiko the letter Ward had sent to tell us about her.
Then we went back to the throbbing masses at Shinjuku to meet Maki.....with luck...and thankfully...phones. I have been corresponding with Maki since it was decided we were coming. Mom(Mary Stickel) made the connection through Rev. George Takashima who travels through Kaslo most summers to talk with Canadians of Japanese descent and do a service at the United Church.
Maki's family is an international family and she teaches her daughter to dance between Japanese and Canadian cultures and languages. Dan suggested she google an American boy who shows off how he can speak 70 different languages. Happily we will meet up with Maki at various events I the future...starting with the embassy gathering on Friday, and then a fair at her daughter's school.
Sundays excitement was not over for the day. We zipped home to met up with our bike and furniture delivery man. We are not yet sure that we've communicated what we think we intended, so I wanted to wait out on the street. Just before I got out to the street we saw the delivery guy zip past our street on the major highway. Dan managed to find the web site of the store we went to, so called (thanks to the phone data as we don't have internet at our house yet) and told the man who answered on Sunday afternoon! that the delivery guy missed us. 15 minutes later the little truck got back around to our street corner near the Mazda dealer...( see I was not so silly for listing all the Japanese names I already know..though we do not pronounce them properly) and we celebrated recieving our bikes, chairs, coffee table, bed side table, recycling, cleaning and kitchen items...all from the same discount store....score!!!!!!
Simple things delight when all is a risk, or at least not sure.
Our BC friends know how great the exercise is when you slowly step, one foot at a time, up a mountain and finally one of those steps puts you up on the top of a beautiful mountain with a 360% view. You see more. This language and culture adventure is like that....tiny steps, some backwards but exciting for the knowledge that soon there will be a greater view or understanding.
Everyone here who we've shown the picture of the dials of our washing machine to (before explaining the meaning to us) has said,"Oh what a special machine you have." Sorry Stu, telling us to try reading the Braille was no help, worse yet, Helene's suggestion to push all the buttons. I tried that strategy on the stove and wound up messing with timers which meant I had to wait til the next day to try again. Oh well, ate out again.
Dan got the wash started successfully but the results to his fancy new shirts were pretty demoralizing,"special" was not the word used for the machine right then. The phone relieved a little stress when we were able to find a dry cleaner nearby. We've had fun with a language app where you can speak English and have the Japanses spoken out for you or vice versa. The automated voice speaking for us makes everyone laugh especially because we have to gesture to get people to speak into it and it is a fun surprise for those who dare. Last night the first part of our dinner ende up to be a surprise of cold noodles and so we gave up and went to where we could point to pictures. Got to finesse the phone thing more...and stick to the goal to increase our language.
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