I Can Never Say My Job's Finished

In the past two weeks especially, I have noticed that in early afternoon at the latest I am really feeling tired. This past week the weather has turned cold with the start of the rainy season. so add to the tiredness some aching joints in reaction to the weather.  Today I realized that perhaps part of the tiredness is due to the Spring Cleaning/Change Over that step by step  has been accomplished in about that same amount of time.  I had a famous two days at the beginning of the month where all of the Guest Home beds and a few additional futons were full.  I had gotten the main building changed over before that and after I did the annex.

The Change Over involved putting the winter duvets (actually called kakibuton here) into Space Bags after airing them and getting out the summer weight ones I put away last autumn. Also every bed here in the winter has an electric blanket under the bottom sheet. These are thankfully washable and so were collected washed and hung to dry.  They are the last thing that needs to be put away in some of the rooms. The mattresses for the most part were turned and the mattress pads were laundered as well. While I was at it I moved all the furniture in the rooms and vacuumed and dusted behind everything. 

Cleaning a couple of recently vacated rooms today I realized that my enemy, the ubiquitous mildew has been lurking undetected under the lids and behind the toilets in the unit baths! Yuck, I hate mildew! There's a handy spray cleaner here that is called Kabi Kira. (Kabi is the Japanese word for mildew, kira is Japanese for, well...killer.) So, something else to tend to in this round of cleaning.

East Japan Conference 2011

This year's conference was held at Megumi Chalet, a Christian Conference Center in Karuizawa, Japan. Since I will be responsible for booking space at our Holiday House in Karuizawa for summer visitors, I went a few days early with an OMF couple to do the spring cleaning at the house.  We aired all the blankets and futons and made sure everything was clean and organized so that people who need a holiday will be able to spend most of their time enjoying Karuizawa.

On Monday afternoon we went to the Chalet and joined our colleagues for three days of speakers, discussions, music, activities and enjoyed the meals prepared by the staff there.  The facility is built on a hillside, and our meetings were mostly held in the Chapel about two-thirds of the way up. My room was on the lowest level, so I got lots of stair climbing exercise. A lovely little lake is nearby and provided a nice place for a morning walk.

It was a great chance to catch up with people we don't see all that often and to see how their kids have grown. We took several short term workers along to run a program just for the kids, so everyone had something to do.

 Here's a picture of us: