Six months in Japan

Its been almost a month since my last post but not because I would struggle for topics to write about. This month has been so busy which is why I guess it feels like its gone so quickly. I haven’t had too much time to think about how long I’ve been here till now really.

So since my last post I have now started at my new ward - paediatrics. At the moment I don’t feel like I’m going to work since all I pretty much do is play with the kids in the playroom. I sit down all day, play games, talk with the parents and childminders or maybe do some arts and crafts type of things. There are again some really friendly nurses and doctors. Most of the doctors always come and speak to me in bits of English and Japanese. They even try and explain different cases to me which is good. Nurses are once again really friendly. The only thing I’m not getting from this ward is invitations out. On my last ward I got invited out a good 10ish times but I cant see much coming from this ward which is a shame.
Anyway the kids are great fun to play with and most like practicing the English that they learn in school. When I do get asked to do a proper job the kids come find me and ask me to come back and play with them. Most staff have now given up on trying to get me to do jobs.
I've ended up learning all the kids TV characters and their favourite games now. Power Rangers (or Bokenje) is pretty big here and so is Thomas the Tank. Then they have their own Japanese characters such as Doraimon or Ampanman. Ampanman is basically a man with the head of a type of bread. He is bean paste bread man, then there’s his friends curry bread man, melon bread man and tosto. The evil character is bacteria man. They also have some familiar games too like pop-up pirate, jinsen game (the game of life), jenga, uno etc. so I know what I’m doing most of the time.
My job isn’t really just playing with the kids though, I also do quite a lot of craft work. For the Halloween party I made these card thingies for this game that they played. I’ve also made the Christmas card invitation template with a popping out Santa Clause. Now we’ve just got to make 46, one for each possible patient.

Ok so this month saw me doing a proper Japanese cultural touristy visit to inuyama. We went with the hospital had a look around the castle and its grounds. Not too exciting to be honest but then we got to see “ukai”. This is a very historic fishing method still used around Japan. The basic principle is that you catch fish not with a hook on the end of your line but a bird. The birds (cormorant) are starved and attached to leads that the fishermen hold. The cormorant are then thrown into the water where they dive to catch the fish. On resurfacing their yanked into the boat where the fishermen push the fish out of the birds throat (the leashes stop the birds from fully swallowing the fish). Oh and its done at night with big bonfires on each ship to lure the fish to the surface.

We’ve been and played volleyball at the local university three times now. They don’t take it too seriously and its good fun. We’ve met a load of new friends, some who speak good English. Been out to dinner with them twice which was good fun. And also went to this community centre for some bible readings with a few of them…pretty bizarre day really. Anyway, I started volleyball as a rookie spiker and during mid spike I fell and sprained my ankle. Its fine now and I knew it would be ok in a day or two but the hospital insisted on some x-rays…I racked up a hospital bill of £90 in under 45 minutes!

Oh yeah random story but pretty funny…. I was riding my bike through Motoyama which is pretty close to my apartement when this guy ran up to me shouting konbanwa (good evening). So I stopped and when he caught up with me he undid his jacket to show me a bullet-proof vest marked police in big blue letters. He then said some Japanese of which all I heard was ‘show’ and ‘passport’. A bit confused I showed him my foreigners card I had got that very day . Eventually I found out that he thought I had stolen the bike I was riding and that he was an undercover policeman making routine checks. Was pretty scary since I had no idea what I’d done wrong really. Why he wanted to see my passport I have no idea.

Went for our first karaoke night a few weeks ago. I watched some videos the morning after and it was pretty painful watching. We sang loads of English songs, but after a bit to drink when you think you can sing it doesn’t go too well. Oh dear, don’t expect any of those videos to be appearing on the internet anytime soon.

We went to our first and probably our last Japanese Halloween party. Well it was at a n English bar but still pretty Japanesey. We didn’t dress up and nor did the friends we went with but still their were a lot of costumes. We met a lot of English speaking people who’ve lived out here for years.

We booked our first holiday as well…we are off to Okinawa next Sunday for a weeks holiday. We actually have to fly out to the island, so i guess it will feel weird going to an airport and not going back to England. Haz is coming out for two weeks too and it coincided with our this holiday so we’re all off to the sunny sandy beaches and the clear blue waters of Okinawa. Well that’s what the travel brochure said anyway.

As per usual here are some photo links (I’ve given up a bit on putting videos on the internet).

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/77412
Night out with doctors and nurses
Ukai fishing and inuyama castle

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/83402.b20326f57cf
My sprained ankle
Some nurses from my old ward
Night out + kareoke
Maggie Powell visit
Halloween Party

mata ne

Its pretty weird thinking that ive only been here a month…its gone very fast. Once again ive had an eventful few weekends since my last post. Largely because of all the nice people that invite me out. If its not hospital staff its random people on the street. Seriously I was just waiting at a traffic light crossroad thingy on my bike when these two japanese women just started talking to me. And now im playing volleyball with them and their university friends next Sunday. So im pretty busy all the time, if im not working im being invited out.

Last weekend I was invited out to a yacht day. Started off pretty miserably with rain and cloudy skies. As far as I could guess we were meant to sale the yacht a good way to this meeting point or something. Anyway it was decided that it was a bit too wet and windy to yacht so we drove instead. We then had a barbecue on the platform under a pier with about 30 random people. Really good fun, despite the language barrier we could still communicate and have fun. so yeah the barbecue (or yakiniku) was awesome, tasted amazing. We even got a chance to go on a different yacht in the end as the day cleared up.
Then we went back to some guys house who had a piano. I got some requests, but I ignored them and played what I could remember. realised i miss playing the ole piano. They had some sheet music for “santa clause is coming to town” which I played despite it being the first day of October. we ate more raw fish and drank some more sake. so a good night, not what im used to but im sure i will be pretty soon.

ok so next style of invitation is where i go out to eat a dinner with people. we went to another yakiniku (barbecue), i got invited to a ramen restuarant where the bowls were hauge, a random chinese restaurant and then to someones house where we had okonomiyaki which is a sort of pancake thing. so my schedule is pretty busy which is really good.

this weekend was especially awesome. first we got invited to make mochi for the festival of nagoya. this basically consists of heating rice, smashing it with a big hammer to turn it into a paste, breaking bits off and making round things called mochi. then they had to be wrapped up.

so that was saturday. pretty good experience and all but to make it better we then got invited to the festival. adn after that we just got invited to be inovled more and more. so we started off as just being invited. then we were going to get uniforms, then we moved to carrying the shrine, and then we were told we could actually throw the mochi to the children from the top of the scaffolding. ok so that needs some explaining. basically these people sort of dress up and carry this shrine aroudn town, giving sake to town memebrs and making a lot of noise. thats part 1. part 2 involves throwing mochi from the top of a stage. the mochi are sort of rice cakes, some have prizes. we threw the mochi to the first age group (under 10s). then we watched the next group and finally we got to have a go at catching in the final round. was really good fun. we won 5 bottles of waching up liquid and some bin liners. i was pretty annoyed since i spent 2 quid on a new bottle of washing up liquid the day before.
mixed in with that day was random fun things. we got free candy floss, free goes at fanfare games and we played some universal games with the children like rock paper scissors and tag.
after all that we went back to the big mans house and had a decent meal. had some sweet potato sake which was pretty good. met loads of new people and had a lot of fun. it so bizarre the situations you get in but im enjoying them anyway.

forogt to mention we went to our second concert...razorlight. and today we bought tickets for snow patrol which i really look forward to.

right so today is Monday and it’s a national holiday in Japan, so I get the day off. Im back at work tomorrow to finish my last but one week at the stroke care unit ward. I chose my next ward on the Friday...I start in the paediatric ward on the 29th October.

anyway ill be off now. we just downlaoded the new episode of lost and well i wanna get home an watch it.

here is a link to all my online photo albums:
http://www.bubbleshare.com/users/profile/58452

the two newest ones from october are here:
http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/73776/overview
http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/73757/overview

Videos:
you can view all my videos from this webpage
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=jamesrharper
there are 10 videos on mochi there...emjoy

until next time

heya

just wanted to write up a pretty quick summary of whats been going on since my last entry...

We had our volunteer course on Tuesday. We spent the day making beds with other Japanese volunteers. We did get a chance to get some wheelchair practice in, which included wheelchair races. Well ok you were meant to practice pushing the wheelchair whilst jogging but what with the language barrier and all me and luke thought they meant run full pelt down the corridor.

First day at work on Wednesday, down in the ole SCU. Everyone is ridiculously nice. They took me to lunch and spoke to me in what English they could. So they were really fun people and by the end of the day I’d been invited out for three nights over the next week or so. They also said they’d take me to a baseball game and to a natural onsen (natural hot spring).
That night me and Luke went down to soda pop again. Twas discount home made pizza night. We got talking to the staff a bit more and we hope we’re on course for some free food soon.

Thursday we did our presentation again but this time to the nurses. We got some phenomenal applause this time, much better than we got with the doctors. That night was one of those organised with the nurses and doctors at my ward. We had another of Nagoyas famous dishes called Motsu Nabe. I had asked what it was that morning when we were talking about where we were going. With broken English all I got was a “mooo” noise and then a finger pointing to the stomach. Later that night I found out that this meant cow intestines. They were pretty good anyway. Had some yakisobi, some fish eggs and potato egg things which I cant remember the name of. Once again we did a rendition of I’m a little teapot. (VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFrqVx0kjEU ) We also took the mick out of their ability to pronounce r’s and l’s. I gave them the red lorry yellow lorry tongue twister. (VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_va5JGKDxTI )After our little teapot song we got to see the japanese nursery rhyme equivalent of heads shoulders knees and toes. (VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuiskeJQ3G0 )

Woo Friday. I think that was the day where this old japanese guy in a wheelchair saw me and shouted “bonjurno something something”. So apparently I look Italian. Another good day at the hospital really. Can be boring and repetitive at times but there are some hilarious moments when talking to patients and the nurses. Like one doctor is called genki yatshuro. But genki in japanese means fine. So all the nurses told me to call this guy “fine”. I tried explaining the alternate sort of slang meanings to fine but they weren’t having it. Thankfully this doctors not around too much.
That night me an Luke headed over to the Hard rock café for an expenisive but non-japanese meal. Burgers, chips, ice cream and live music. Ok it was hardly hard rock music but we went along with it anyway.

Saturday was the day of our first Japanese concert. Hard-fi at Club Quattro, 8th floor of a department store. Not your typical concert…it started at 7.00 finished by 8.30 and the main drink on sale was oolong tea. Good fun though.

VIDEOS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBAXQA7EwEo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh3aV_hryT8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD2kVz8h368

Thought I’d take a few minutes to say what I do at work. Basically there’s never anything set for me to do. So I end up walking around aimlessly trying to find something to do. So what I do changes from day to day really. The most common task involves cleaning and making beds. I’ve also pushed patients around in wheelchairs, rolled oshibori, assembled drips, served tea and meals etc. but my day is split up by random patients and nurses just coming over and talking to me. Up to the point of my first day at work I hadn’t really felt taller than anyone else. But now its like the number one question…how tall are you. Everyone always gets really surprised when I say im going to study medicine too. I’m probably not actually saying medicine though, i might not even be saying studying. oh well.

ok i better get off. New work week tomorrow. This routine is pretty handy to be fair. Cant believe ill have been here for three weeks this tuesday.

oh new photo album...i think
http://www.bubbleshare.com/myalbum/65593.b321d1db54d

I would just like to wish a special someone a happy birthday...Happy Birthday Fiona. it seems like you've barely aged since i met you, you're still as crazy as ever. so go and have a drink on me, but you better make it a nesquik. which reminds me...i miss nesquik. xxx

james

Ohayo Gozaimasu

im just on my 3 day weekend at the moment. this Monday is a national holiday..."Respect for the Aged" apparently.

on tuesday we have our volunteer course to prepare us for starting work on the wednesday. i'll be in the stroke care unit, luke's going to the gastronomy dept. im looking forward to getting into some sort of routine. So far its felt quite a lot like a holiday. no strict plan and no real work. this next week should hopefully change that. then i can feel a little bit more settled.

so this last week has basically involved random trips and visits organised by the hospital. not really that interesting to be honest.

we saw Nagoya castle. which wasnt exactly what you’d expect from a castle. For one, there were four elevators…
we went to our first restaurant where you do the kneeling thing. pretty uncomfortable. Even the japanese people werent used to it. we ate some sort of baked eel dish with a side order of eel kidney soup. was called hitsumaboshi. was pretty good. the only bad thing was the cramp and pins and needles from kneeling on your legs for so long. they let us stretch our legs out in the end. This was after we tried explaining pins and needles. They don’t seem to have it in Japan?? or maybe they just didnt get our cherade actions of ramming forks into our feet

we visited some other places and once again ended up in situations where we didnt have a clue what was going on. meeting new people, everyone speaking in japanese. we're used to them now though. Just nod, bow and say some Japanese. Pretty standard greetings and nothing goes too wrong.

On Friday we gave a presentation to the doctors of the hospital. There was about 40 senior members of the hospital and the whole thing went down pretty well. There was some mild applause.

friday night we went and found this american bar called soda pop. i had a bacon cheeseburger and a pint of carlsberg. We need to try and not go there too much. but there a bit clever and they gave us a coupon for our next visit. so we have to go back now at some point.
we played some pool and met these three american speaking guys. they were pretty hammered and hilarious to talk to. they asked us why we're here and we said we're working at the nagoya hospital. well one thing led to another and we spent the night pretending to be qualified english doctors. i was in paediatrics and luke was an orthopaedic surgeon. good job no one needed any medical attention that night.

Not much planned now really.

EDIT

Just got back from the real Nagoya centre….we think. Seriously everywhere looks like a city centre with huge department stores and high street shops that seem to stretch for miles. Massive crossroads, flashing lights and all you’d expect from a city centre. The only thing is, you go a couple of subway stops and you’re in what seems to be a huge city centre again. Anyway we went to a pretty big department store and bought tickets to see razorlight and hard-fi. The actual venue was just on the top floor of the department store. Should be good.

Ive put up what photos and videos I can. Some links here…

VIDEOS
soda pop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ECpCNfWmxg
crazy shop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_reTOLBf74
toxic chemical drill at hospital: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlGVP9G_j0k
PHOTOS
http://www.bubbleshare.com/myalbum/64719.cc47cf850aa
http://www.bubbleshare.com/myalbum/65593.b321d1db54d

Will get some photos of the hospital soon. And will write again after my first week of work. Everyone seemed nice where im working so it should be good.

Thanks to anyone who sent me an email by the way. will respond as soon as possible.

Dewa mata,
James

ok this offendimeter thing is sounding a bit weird to me now. but anyway its on 2. you shall see later on if you stick around and read.

so i cant quite remember where i last left you but ill just talk a bit about what i remember ive done.

we met the directors of the hospital on monday. very formal, lots of awkward silences but i think we did well. we also had our medical checkup japanese style. basically the style just involves in and out in under 3 seconds. waiting times are about 3 minutes on a bad day. i had a blood test, hearing test, ecg, physical, xray, eye test.... it was all given by japanese speaking doctors which made it very difficult. especially during the hearing test when i didnt realise you had to push the button on hearing the beeps. i just sat there with the beeps just in my ear not knowing what to do. in my defence they didnt point to the button or anything, just told me to sit...well i think thats what she said.

then we got...the uniforms. new gallery here for some pictures...

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/64412.3785f215a97

or heres a photo you can look at straight away
http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=813070

basically bright blue and white things. not good.

then later that day nami tojo asjed us if we wanted to go out with the nurses tonight. so basically we were invited and so we had to go. japanese culture in a nut shell...dont refuse them. then she said it would cost 2000 yen roughly. an amount we're supposed to make last for roughly 1 and a half days.

not being able to speak japanese we really didnt want to go.

anyway we met at this conference hall at the right time. only to find that first we had to sit through a presentation. which was an hour long and in japanese. this leads me onto the offendimeter being at two....i fell asleep. nami tojo was not impressed. not sure what she thought i was supposed to do. even japanese people were nodding off.

so then we caught the bus for two stops and me and luke sat there surrounded by japanese nurses talking to each other. not knowing what the hell we we're supposed to do.

but we got to the restaurant and a couple of people spoke reasonable english. we had a few beers along with the women??? tried explaining women western culture with drinks. they were happy enough on the pints though. then came the food. there are some new videos up hopefully and pictures...

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/64412.3785f215a97
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=jamesrharper

so we ate squid, octupus leg including suckers, okonomiyaki, harimashi, sashimi, raw tunu, raw scollop, raw salmon, spaghetti with fish eggs, chicken wings, prawn pizza, sake pizza and more.

octpus leg was like...i dont know...maybe you've eaten rubber before. anyway nothing like chicken. squid was extremely slimey but also rubbery.

anyway it was good fun. one poignant memory was when one nurse suddenly said "im a little teapot short and stout". me and luke looked at each other and then gave the full rendition. bizarre but we got applause anyway. even though lukes spout looked anything but straight. we're working on it.

we talked to the nurses quite a lot. about japanese food and english alcohol, culture, learning languages etc. they werent too impressed on our driking knowledge. since the drinking age in japan is 21. but we explained tequila slammers to them along with after shock and burning sambuca shots with coffee beans. you should have seen their faces.
kinda like ours when we saw our dinner with an octopus leg sticking out of it.

then we talked about food. me and luke had to give our best impression of a yorkshire pudding. so in the end they were nice people. a bit more talkative than nami tojo which was good. she is a nice lady but very quiet.

so it was a good night and made even better by this random Doctor paying for most of our meal. his name is dr ishikawa and he will get a present.

today we had a good loong tour of the hospital given to us by no other than the generous dr.ishikawa. we saw the helipad which had great views. we saw all the specialty units among other things. i saw where ill start work next week: the scu or stroke care unit.
they all got really excited seeing us. one lady put her hand out to shake mine only to throw her pen across the room. so i look forward to working there.

we also had our first japanese lesson which was pretty slow going to be honest. and then i pretty much came here to write this.

dont have too much time now. watch this space...

ja ne
james

First of all i have a bit of an updated list of things for everyone to look at.

ive got two photo albums up on the internet:

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/63238.53780cf3566
http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/63460.d089f057e46

ill be adding more as and when i take more photos

my videos are here: some are out of sync. hopefully at some point i can sort that out.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=jamesrharper

and my blog is here of course:

http://jamesrharper.blog.co.uk/

so i hope that i can write a message here every now and again so people can see what im up to. instead of me replying individualy to everyones emails.

so right now im in this nice little internet restaurant. its basically about 2 quid an hour for internet. which is pretty good cos you get free drinks in the time you use on the internet. but its eating into my budget a lot. theyve got a huge library of japanse comic books which i cant read. loads of computers. one guy is sat next to me on the computer with a full course meal in front of him as well as a book.

(ill take this time to apologise for spelling mistakes. i dont have to much time to do a proof read)

ok so thats where i am now. my apartement is about a 2 minute walk so not bad. we:ve yet to be given opur bikes which will make the trip even better. the small shop called lawsons is even closer which is ok but expensive. there is a supermarket a little further on too.

yesterday we had dinner at a chinese restaurant. tasted pretty good. maybe ill start eating japanese cuisine soon. food is pretty unusual here as i thought. the hardest thing is knowing what you like and eating cheaply. it is pretty expensive here. maybe ill setup a donations section to this blog. hopefully it wont come to that.

im at the hospital tomorrow. i get to meet the director, which is apparently a big thing. i better get eevrything right. this leadds me nicely onto a new section im going to add to this blog;

the japanese person offendimeter

so far the offendimeter is on one... i walked into my apartement with shoes on and nami tojo or tojo-san got properly cheesed off. so much for me thinking they might be forgiving. she had been nice and quiet all day and then she kinda shouted. oh well.

so i have offended one japanese person so far...therefore

offendimeter = 1

ive had some low times here. you do kinda feel alone. very few people speak english. im pretty grateful luke is here to talk to. but now im on a proper high. im enjoying talking to japanese people. everything is getting funnner and im looking forward to work and things.
so im glad im hear now. first few days were a bit shaky.

im going to say a big hello to as many people as i can now. if i missed you off its because you:re too good to for the list. expect your personalised special email any day now.

so hello to my mom and steve of course first. thanks for all support and such blah blah thanks for phoning too. i look forward to next one.

hey dad. hope you can get my email through janet. im having fun. say hi to william for me. he'd love it here.

hi grandma. hoepfully someone will show you this or maybe you have an internet cafe near you too. anyway hope you're feeling good and that yesterday want too difficult for you. i had my moment.

hi steve and rachel. i hope my email got through. thanks again for the money. much appreciated. although my plans for the money may have originally involved alcohol, the need for some food may be greater.

the barbers. hope you all had a good time at centerparcs. can you believe they dont do crabbing here. i tried asking where you can find crabbing lines and they got really confused. not impressed. not sure how easy webcam will be. theres none here. maybe when i can get settled ill find a place.
hi elliot, i hope school is going ok, keep working hard. hi harriety, i think you would be happy to know that my japanese phrase book is pink, maybe you can have it when i get back.

in no particular order...melodie, sam, sarah and sally. hi all. make sure you look after my mum. a few days off wouldnt hurt. thanks very much for your card. it takes its place on my rice cooker.

hey Sem, miss you loads. speak to you soon.

hello to all my friends. Jack, haz, ash, riki, nick, gunnny, wikum, niki, rachel, sam, nick, madu, ham, neil....
thanks for any emails or cards you gave. and thanks for those who came to see me the day before. made me feel pretty special.

hey Boots people. i was shocked to find that theres no boots here. ill soon change that. cant say i miss working yet. give it time though. thanks again for the cards and goody bag.

sorry if i cant email you all individually. hopefully you can leave comments on this page (should be a button somewhere). and then i can respond here.

ill keep posting here with things i do. just a quick summary of what ive done so far...

i arrived on wednesday morning in narito airport. i then spent three days in tokyo. staying at the international youth hostel. i went to akihabara which is called electric city. i have a video on my videos page. lights, noise and computers pretty much. plus lots of weird stuff to go along with it. we found an english pub which was hilarious.

we walked in and they said 'table for two' and then got proper confused when we asked if we could just sit at the bar. the head on our carlsberg (we had some japanese beer after) took up half the glass. asking for less froth was pretty funny. we got laughed at anyway.

we also went to a shrine and a place called haku joku. japans fashion district. incredibly weird. spaceman outfits, plastic nurse costumes seem to be the order of the day. goths, punks all there. very weird.

we got the shinkansen or bullet train on friday to nagoya. very smooth and pretty fast. we've got the wwkend off and im going to hospital tomorrow.

ill try and keep you updated as much as possible. until then...

dewa mata

james

So im settling in Nagoya quite nicely.

internet is getting a bit expensive now but i think i can get a free hour at the hospital each day but i dont start work there until the 25th September.

This is just a quick message to let everyone know that i wont always be able to respond to emails. but thanks to evreyone who has got in touch.

im hoping you can read up what im doing here. So I will put up as much info as possible.

for now here are all my photos so far: http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/63238.53780cf3566

and here are my videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN3tqt_gjzc

thanks and speak to you soon
james