東京 – Tokyo

I left Nagasaki last Friday morning. (Wow, has it already been a week?) May and I treated ourselves to breakfast at Mos Burger, we said goodbye to everyone at the dormitory and then we got on a bus together, bound for Fukuoka Airport. Those three hours on the bus were both happy and sad. We were on our way home but that meant we were leaving each other and leaving a lot of great things behind in Nagasaki too.

Since May was flying to Seoul, we got off at the International Terminal. From there I had to take a free shuttle bus to the domestic terminal. I said goodbye to May here, which was obviously very sad. We are both so determined to see each other again though, it didn't really feel like goodbye.
The bus pulled away and the 'Sayonara' ending song from Howl's Moving Castle played on my ipod.

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The flight to Tokyo was fine. It took took two hours, so it basically felt like we went up and straight back down again. I arrived in Tokyo in the early evening and I was aware that it would be getting dark soon, so I ignored my hunger and fatigue and headed for my youth hostel. This involved two train changes which, with a suitcase, rucksack, handbag and paper and bamboo Japanese umbrella for my sister, was quite an effort. It wasn't fun navigating Tokyo's rail network with all this luggage, but what choice did I have? Given the vast quantities of food I had eaten in the preceding two weeks (due to the numerous farewell dinners and a commitment to finish all the food in my apartment) I thought the exercise was probably not a bad thing. Still, my19kg suitcase was quite a beast to haul on and off trains. I managed to time my journey to perfection though, as I just caught the last glimpses of a Tokyo sunset, the sun sinking behind Fuji-san (Mt. Fuji), leaving the famous volcano burning terracotta red on the horizon.

Seeing my youth hostel was such a relief. I stayed in a different one when I first arrived in Japan in September but it was in the same area (Shinjuku-ku) and when the building looks like this:
...how could I possibly miss it? Checked-in, found my room: more relief. When I read 'dormitory-style rooms' on the youth hostel website, I started preparing myself for three nights of disturbed, public sleep. So seeing this was just wonderful:
Curtains! And a reading lamp! Privacy, yay! As it happened, I didn't need them that much since the other people in the room turned out to be... well, ok, first, one of the girls, Lee Anna, I already knew. (I know, what are the chances?!) She was one of the Gappers who came to Tokyo back in September. She had spent the past six months working in Kumamoto and now, like me, was stopping in Tokyo briefly on her way back home (to Vancouver). The girl in the bed above me, Danielle, was also a Gapper, but she was just starting her placement. There was also an American from Georgia with a voice like honey and an Australian snowboarder from Perth. We all got on really well and chatted a lot over the next few days about our respective homes and experiences.

Danielle and I clicked particularly well, so we ended up doing some sightseeing together. This was such a wonderful relief. I was expecting to spend three days alone in Tokyo in a sort of limbo, since I didn't want to leave Japan but I wanted to go home. Spending time with someone who I got on well with and who was in the exact same situation as I was six months ago then, was fantastic.

The first day I was there though, Saturday March 1st, I went on a day-trip alone to see Fuji-san. I took a 2-hour bus to Kawaguchi-ko (Lake Kawaguchi), walked around the town a bit and went up to a viewing platform to see the volcano. It was a lovely little day trip, but unfortunately some cloud had settled in over Fuji-san this was the view I got:
It was actually a little clearer than this photo but still, I had seen more impressive sights in Japan. Well, maybe I am being a little harsh. It's size was extraordinary. I was truly colossal. I definitely felt like I was looking at a volcano too, so that was quite cool.

The lake:

After a slightly longer than expected return journey – there was a problem with the bus so we had to wait on the side of the road for another one to come and blah blah blah – I got back to the youth hostel at around 4:30 and I was just shattered. I managed to make it down to the convenience store to buy some food, but after that I didn't leave the hostel that day. I had a bath, read, chatted with the girls for a while, then fell asleep.

The next day I felt I could take things at a more leisurely pace, having no long-distance bus journeys to fit in. This was when Danielle and I went off together, hopping from one site to the next. We went to Harajuku, Tsukiji and the Imperial Palace. We may have gone to a few other places too but they kind of all blend into one in my memory. Tsukiji was my favourite. There is a giant fish market there, where the first catch of the day are brought and sold. Surrounding it are scores of sushi and sashimi restaurants which sell some of the freshest (i.e. finest) fish in Japan. It is apparently best first thing in the morning but we chose being slightly lazy over getting the best of the best sushi and went there for lunch. We were fortunate enough to bump into a man handing out discount leaflets for the restaurant where he worked, so we each got ¥500 off our lunch. I ended up paying ¥360 (£1.75) for some absolutely delicious sushi. Yum yum.

After lunch we walked to the Imperial Palace and had a stroll through the gardens. It was nice enough but certainly not one my favourite sights in Japan. I did enjoying walking around Tokyo a little though. Usually, you just travel by train or metro because that is the quickest and easiest way to get somewhere, but we both had the time to walk and the weather was lovely so why not?

I didn't go out in the evening, the same as the previous two nights. I was just so exhausted. Plus, there wasn't anything else in Tokyo that I desperately wanted to see. You may have gathered by now that I wasn't all that impressed with Tokyo, even after a second visit. Perhaps if I liked to go clubbing all night and shopping all day, it would be more my kind of city, but I am a bit of a geek and I like sightseeing and exploring. The sights I found a bit of a let down and Tokyo is too big to explore on foot really. The buildings were remarkably tall, I'll give Tokyo that. Like, you have to strain your neck to see the top of them.
I had to wake up early on the morning of Monday March 3rd for my flight back to England. Lee Anna and Danielle got up for my departure (Danielle even helped me with my luggage to the lobby) so yet again, I found myself saying goodbye to friends I had made in Japan. Leaving the youth hostel, catching the trains to the airport, checking in... all of it I did in a state of numbness. It didn't feel real. It was too significant a day for me to take everything in. The twelve-hour flight went remarkably smoothly, and time didn't drag as you might expect it would. I highly recommend Virgin Atlantic. They were great. Each passenger has their own TV screen and there is such a vast choice of entertainment it was impossible to watch everything I wanted to. I only slept for about an hour and still I couldn't make it through all the episodes of Family Guy they had on offer.

Bang. Tires touch down on English tarmac. Home.

As I was walking to the baggage carousel, I heard someone calling my name behind me. I turned around and it was Lucy, yet another Gapper whom I had already met and who had just finished her placement. She was partnered with Lee Anna in Kumamoto, as it happened. Lucy had been on the same plane as me for the past half a day and it was only as we were getting off that we met. It's a funny world, isn't it? We talked about our experiences at break-neck speed to try and fit everything in, as we only had the time it took to collect our luggage and go through passport control before we had to separate again.

Seeing my Dad for the first time in six months, there waiting for me in arrivals.... it goes without saying that it was... I can't come up with a good enough word to describe it. He had told me on the phone the week before that he would be wearing his red winter coat so I could spot him easily in the crowd, so one of the first things he said to me was, “Can I take my coat off now? It's sweltering in here”. Good to be back, Dad.

Dad and I left Lucy to find her Mum and we got in Dad's car – how good it was to see that little blue Nissan again! - and hit the road. Destination: Preston, Lancashire. From London this was a four-hour drive, but that felt like nothing compared to the amount of travelling I had done recently. Dad and I talked all the way home. It was a fantastic four hours, made even better by the goody bag of English food my Dad had prepared for me. Pringles, Iced Gem and Haribo Fizzy Mix have never tasted so good.

My house looks almost exactly the same as when I left it in September. The only difference I can spot is a new bath mat. Even all of my fish are still alive! The people have changed a bit. My sister is now seventeen and looking more and more like an adult – albeit, a rather unique one – by the day. My eldest brother is deep in his studies and has a new girlfriend, who he seems to utterly adore. My other brother came back from university in Coventry for the weekend and he is more well-built and balder than I remember. He had obviously shaved his head very recently, I like to think for my return :-)
There has been a lot of gift-giving and catching up, and still plenty more to go too. I am settling back down into my English life nicely and am already working on my Post-Japan To Do list. The priority on there is finding a job so that I can start earning and paying my Dad back for my Japan trip. The grand total spent on this whole Japan experience was... drum roll, please... £4113, ¥848,771. Out of that, I owe my Dad £2388. That's not too bad, certainly not as much as I was expecting. And for what I got out of it, it was worth every single penny.

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There is still more to come on this blog. There are a few things I didn't get a chance to write about at the time they happened, so I'm going to be going back in time a bit to catch up. Stay tuned.

50 Days To Go

Today marks only fifty more days left of my placement in Nagasaki. Can I hear a "woo!"?

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I am going to Oita this weekend with May. More on this when I get back.

ふくふぐ – Happy Fugu

Well, I am alive. The fugu dinner was excellent and, given that none of the attendees died, could be considered an all-round success. It was actually a retirement party for Hamano-san, the lady who works in the Medical Office where May and I spend Friday afternoons 3-5pm. It is so sad that she is retiring; she is like a mother to everyone in the hospital, including all the surgeons who use the office as a break-room. It was an honour to be invited to her retirement dinner, it really was. I am going to miss her when she leaves at the end of December.

The meal consisted of fugu sashimi, then fried fugu, battered fugu, fugu soup and finally, fugu risotto. The window to the tiny little restaurant we were dining at doubled as an aquarium for the (live but soon-to-be-dead) fugu; by the time our party of six was done with all that food, I kid you not, the tank was half-empty. Given that each one of those fish contained enough poison to kill 15 fully grown men, I must commend our highly skilled chief separating the 'safe' parts from the 'deadly' ones. The battered fugu tasted remarkably like battered cod from the chippies back in England, so that obviously had to be my favourite. We fried the pre-sliced chunks of fish on little grills in the centre of the table, which wasn't anything special in itself but what was endlessly entertaining, the pieces of fish were doing that post-mortem death-twitching thing. They kept twitching for about five minutes too. I thought it would last only a few seconds after death but apparently not. They were really strong muscle contractions too.... amazing.

Here's my plate of sashimi. The sashimi is the pale pieces of meat laid out to cover the plate; the white and grey pieces in the middle are some of the fish's skin. Yum. And yes, my lips did go quite numb after just a few pieces. Way to go, chef!


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I got my new work schedule last week. Monday and Tuesday are the same as before, but here are the changes:

Wednesday
am. Day Nursery
pm. Free time

Thursday
am. Pharmacy
pm. Nurses Station

Friday
am. Nurses Station
pm. 13:00-15:00 Operation Room
15:00-17:00 Medical Office

Also, starting in January after my Japanese classes finish at the Brick Hall, we won't get free time on Wednesday afternoons but we will spend 13:00-15:00 in the Nutrition Section and 15:00-17:00 back in Radiology. Overall, these changes are pretty pleasing, although I don't know yet what May and I will be doing in the new departments. I'll let you know.

3か⽉ – 3 Months

Well, I have made it to the half way point. Today is twelve weeks since I came to Japan. Three months down, three to go. I don't think the enormity of being half-way through my placement has hit me yet.

Over the past few weeks in particular, May and I have really bonded. She is remarkably similar to me, which does mean however, that she occasionally annoys me. Most of the time though, we spend laughing together. Yeah, we get a lot of stares from people at work, let me tell you. She has become a very dear friend to me and one I will always think of fondly when I remember my time in Japan. We have already made loose plans for me to visit her in Vancouver and for her to visit me in England at some point in the future. Man, I'm going to miss her. Although I am excited about finishing my placement and going home, it makes me sad thinking about leaving May-chan. Her nickname among her friends back in Canada is 'Amazing', as in Amazing May; on the same theme, she gave me the nickname Wonder Lily. We could totally fight crime.

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This week is the last of my current work schedule, the one May and I have followed for the past three months. We still don't know which new departments we will start working in next week (some of our bosses are having a meeting today, I think, to decide) but we are feeling quite optimistic about the change. Of course, I will let you all know where we end up.

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Tonight is Fugu Night. I am so excited! I'm going to try fugu at last. I remember seeing that Simpsons episode as a child, you know, the one where Homer demands fugu at a Japanese restaurant and then thinks he's going to die after eating it, but then doesn't. That episode has stuck with me all these years, so I am really determined to go ahead and seize this opportunity. Also, I promised my cousin that I would try it. This is for you, Greg!

たべもの と かいもの - Food and Shopping

May and I have become suddenly very popular indeed. I think maybe it was our joining the sports teams in Kumamoto and our pathetic attempt at playing volleyball last week that has brought us closer to certain members of the hospital staff. They just seem a little more comfortable around us and, apparently, more open to inviting us out. I am writing this on Saturday morning (24th November) and yesterday we had lunch out with Oka-san, the assistant nurse on 5W, and her daughter. We had this (it's a type of bento):

Today, we are meeting Kumiko-san again for lunch, and on Wednesday we are having – drum roll, please - fugu(!) with Nakashima-sensei and another of the senior doctors, who's name I don't know yet.

I'll just quickly explain about the Japanese naming system, since I have now mentioned three different addresses in this blog. Putting -sanafter the name is the equivalent of calling somebody Mr, Mrs, or Miss. You generally use the surname only; first names are only used by very close friends or between members of the same family. Also, I have noticed at work that if more than one person has the same surname, people might call them by their first name. If you called out for Yamaguchi-san about ten nurses and three doctors would answer. -Chan, as I think I have mentioned previously, is less formal than '-san' and is usually used when referring to children. Children, and me. Finally, -sensei means teacher as a word on it's own, but after a name it means doctor. So Nakashima-sensei is Dr Nakashima. Oh, actually, like in English, you could just say 'Sensei' when speaking to a doctor, as in, “Tell me the truth, Doctor” or “Thank you, Doctor”.

Back to all the dinner engagements. So yeah, I am having fugu on Wednesday! You all will know what fugu is, even if you don't recognise the word. Fugu is that infamous Japanese fish that can kill you if you eat certain parts of it. It looks like this:

If I am not mistaken, it is the toxins in it's liver that can turn your dinner into your funeral. It is usually served as sashimi (thin slices of the raw fish) or boiled in a soup, I believe. It is a winter delicacy and an expensive one at that, so May and I are very lucky that Nakashima-sensei offered to treat us to some. I understand that a good fugu chef can prepare the fish so that there is still enough toxin in it that it makes your lips go numb – that is the optimum fugu experience. If there's a little bit more of the poison present than that, you will end up in a coma, and a little more on top of that and you'll end up six feet under. I read somewhere that back in the olden days, to distinguish between coma and death in someone who had eaten fugu, they would leave the body next to the coffin for three days before they buried it: A comatose body won't rot. So that is all for me to look forward to on Wednesday. If you don't hear from me after that, you will know what happened.

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After lunch with Kumiko-san today, May and I are going shopping. Yay! We have been very good and have resisted doing this until now since our last spree in September. But believe me, my urges to buy things are so pent up, there will be no resistance this afternoon. There will be no holding me back. Ha ha ha ha! There is a decent excuse for shopping today though. Firstly, it is a long-weekend so there are a few sales on. Secondly, May and I have a party to go to and therefore, a new outfit to buy. More on this later, hee hee.

2⽉ - Two Months

Well, another month has passed. That's two down, four to go. Looking back, the second month was a bit easier than the first. Perhaps this is because everything is now familiar, perhaps it's because of the babies on 5E. Although, having said that, I seem to have developed new fear during my second month in Japan: stairs. Japanese stairs are really steep and tall (you saw the ones at Suwa-jinja!) and are made of brick, and I'm afraid that if I fall down them I will break my neck and that will be the end of me. I'm even having dreams on this theme. I look forward to nice English, carpeted staircases.

On a much brighter note, yesterday I got to handle my first human organs! Woo. Sure, they were from a recent autopsy rather than a live patient, but that actually took the pressure off a little and made me less worried about dropping them on my shoes. My friend in the test dept. just kept on handing me body bits, which I prodded for a while until he handed me the next one. I could tell what some of the organs were but some were completely indistinguishable (they had already been 'autopsied' – cut up). I was playing around with one particular piece of dead person and couldn't figure out what it was, so I asked: the patient's rectum-

8-I

-Right. Okay, I'm just gonna put that one down now. Next? I was quite proud of myself for putting my hands in a jar filled with formaldehyde and all the internal organs of a now ex-patient. I hesitated at first, but then thought, 'hey, when is the next time I'm gonna get the chance to do this?' I answered my own question with, 'probably next year when you start medical school' and decided it was too long to wait. “Hand me the gloves,” I said. The organs were actually less scary once I had touched them. After feeling them they just became rubbery bits of meat rather than parts of a human being, and that was easier for my brain to handle.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. I have passed my two month marker. Next target: Three Months, aka Half Way.

ばんごはん – Dinner

It turned out that I had nothing to worry about with our dinner invite on Friday. It was as far from the whole-hospital-invited party that I feared it might be as you could get.... only five of us: the hospital vice-president, a nurse from the ENT department, Kimurasan, May and me. I am embarrassed to admit that I have forgotten the names of both the vice-president and the nurse. Shame on me, I know!



That's the vice-president sat on the left of the photo, Kimurasan in the middle, and the ENT nurse on the right.

From the hospital May and I were taken by street car to the Best Western Premier Nagasaki Hotel, which, as you might imagine with a name like that, has a five-star rating. The restaurant (called 'The Kitchen') was on the 15th and top floor. The view was amazing. Just amazing. I had heard that Nagasaki has one of the best night views in Japan and now I can believe that unquestioningly. I took pictures but they really didn't capture it, so I won't bother posting them here.

The meal itself was great. It turned out to be an authentic Japanese buffet. The Japanese word for buffet is, believe it or not, Viking (pronounced Biking). You can see how May and I got so confused when beforehand we were told it was a 'Biking' restaurant we would be going to. Anyway, the food was sensational. My favourite thing by far was the sashimi (thin slices of raw fish, in this case in a light marinade). The salmon sashimi was particularly good. Mm, sashimi.

To top off the wonderful food, we had some really great conversation with our hosts. It was during a dessert of ice cream, tiramisu and sesame seed cake that it happened. We were talking about what May and I wanted to do in the future, as in what careers we wanted to pursue, when the vice-president turned to me and the following words came from his mouth: You know, you can watch a surgery if you want to...

...My jaw dropped....

...I seriously could not believe it for a second. I had to ask him twice if I had heard him correctly. Me? Watch a surgery?! 'Yes, yes, yes, I would love to!' I was so shocked that I forgot to ask for details: When? What procedure? Which surgeon? From the gallery or - *gasps* - inside the operating theatre? Oh man, I'm getting so excited just thinking about it. I feel like Meredith Grey. No, actually, probably more like George O'Malley. (Sorry, for the non 'Grey's Anatomy' fans, I feel like a surgical intern, that's all you need to know).... Awe.Some.

We wound things up around 8:45 and May and I got a taxi home with the nurse. We didn't spend a single Yen all evening – the vice-president paid for everything. Of course we were incredibly grateful for this and showed our appreciation in the traditional Japanese way, by saying gochisou sama deshita (“that was a lovely meal”). We have been invited to another dinner in a few weeks; I am not nervous at all about this next one now :-)

冒険 Adventure

Well.... I am in the final stages of my preparation for my Japan adventure. This will in all likelihood be my last post before I take a giant leap into the unknown early next week. I'm sorry to say that I am more scared than excited at the moment. Normally before I travel I feel the complete opposite, but I guess this trip is in a league of it's own. It is making my two months in Türkiye a few years ago look like a long weekend.

My main worries are to do with the language and my job, which it has to be said are going to be pretty major components of the next six months. On the up side, I don't have many little niggley worries that are going to drag me down. In fact, the only one I can think now is that I have to survive the winter without my Vicks inhaler - the only thing I have found that successfully clears my nose when I have a cold. But unfortunately, according to the Japanese anti-stimulant laws, all of Vicks' products are illegal in Japan :-(

Anyway, I better get back to my preparations. See you on the other side.

疑い Doubt

This has been a tough week - for reasons I won't go into. There have been moments this week when I felt the last thing I wanted to do was to go abroad for six months, and it's at times like that when I really question my ability to get through such a challenge as this. I don't have much choice about the matter though – probably a good thing; I might have chickened out by now – so I just have to get on with it, I suppose.

In lighter news, I found a 1-on-1 Japanese teacher, who is currently giving me weekly lessons. He's a great teacher and I have learnt a lot already, having only had one 2-hour lesson with him. The only problem is that he charges £20 an hour. I'm trying not to worry about the money, it's just this is going to set me back a couple of hundred pounds that I hadn't anticipated.

This post seems to be all doom and gloom, so I'll leave it at that. I'll try and report back in a few days with more positive things to say.

興奮した Excited

Yay, I've finished my A-levels! Now I am free to really buckle down with my Japan prep. I'm going through a whole range of emotions daily: fear; panic; excitement. I'm trying to think positively though, and scaring myself into doing something usually works for me.

My Dad and I travelled down to Reading on Thursday for a briefing by G.A.P. and although it was possibly the worst train journey we have ever been on and the most over-priced hotel we have ever stayed in (it was £65 per night per person, but you could probably find the same quality of rooms in a hotel charging £20 a night), it was still worth going. If nothing else, it was a real jump start. I'm now devoting most of my time to Japan stuff, mainly the language at the moment, and now the excitement is overriding the fear and panic.

Before I went on the briefing day in Reading I was really worried about how I was ever going to manage with only a 23kg luggage allowance. I kept thinking, 23kg for six months... I don't think so. Now I'm thinking I won't even go near that limit. I debated for a long time over whether I should get a rucksack or a suitcase, especially given that I will be doing at least three weeks of in-country travelling. What clinched it was my Dad filling up my brother's 45 litre rucksack with the heaviest things he could find and then seeing how it felt when I put it on.... I worked up a sweat just standing still whilst wearing it! I could barely walk the couple of metres across my bedroom so there was no way I would be able to haul a rucksack of similar size and weight up and down Japan's mountains. So I chose to get a suitcase. Apparently there's a well-established system in Japan where people send their luggage on ahead of them and then just travel with a small piece of hand luggage, so that solves the issue of a suitcase being awkward to transport.

Another thing I found out at the briefing: I may be placed to work on the hospital pharmacy for a couple of weeks and if I am I will be required to read prescriptions and medicine labels, which will be predominantly if not entirely in hiragana and katakana. There goes my focusing-on-conversational-Japanese plan – right out the window. I am taking this news in my stride however, and have already learned about half the hiragana “alphabet”. I have been told also that it is not particularly important to know thousands of kanji, which is a huge relief. I had best get my hiragana and katakana perfect though, since I am told I will be handing out medications directly to patients. Lots of potential for things to go wrong there.

Anyway, that's all I have to report for now. I'll leave you with a picture of the new receptionist at Aizu Central Hospital in Aizu-Wakamatsu city: