Tuesday, October 31, 2006

my long weekend.

oct. 11, 2006

so this past weekend was hella busy. friday night i went downtown to meet with my travel agent and book my sapporo trip. i ended up getting dinner, accidentaly ordering a bottle of wine instead of a glass. i tipsily ran into (not literally, wasn't that drunk) sandi and dob. sandi went home, dob and i had beer. saturday i slpet in, but then i did a little shopping and then went to a kagura festival at a local shrine (B-T-W shrine is for shinto, temple is buddhism) with carolina.



it was traditional performance folk dance, very interesting. i ate too much ita-yaki (?), which is fish shaped pancake with azuki paste inside. mmmmm...drool. sunday, woke up early, met carolina on the JR and head to saijo. there we joined kate and natalie (and eventually dob and some other JETs) for the sake festival. an all day drinking fest, 1500yen for as much sake as you can handle (although, the teacher that i ran into from school, told me that last year the glasses were bigger). it was a good day of sampling some really nice sake, then chugging some really bad sake--marking each glass off on our hands. (i had sixteen--although 2 were in the form of sake mochi).



and by the end of the day, the coorodened off grounds were mostly filled with drunk gaijin running around being...well, drunk gaijin. sadly my friends and i weren't that drunk, as we paced ourselves and ate way too much food and ice cream. <--perchance why i am broke and don't feel well this week. after the fest we all went to catch our respective trains to respective places of crashing. carolina decided to join kate, natalie and i to stay at natalie's in tadanoumi. we had to shove a very drunk yamagouchi-JET off on Dob, as she knew she couldn't make it home by herself--damn was she drunk. the four of us got to experience a scary interesting part of japan: a man, while looking for the train, fell on to the tracks. it took a moment, but three men jumped down and, very efficiantly, picked him up and put him on the platform. five minutes later the EMTs showed up, and the guy was able to walk away, but he reaked of pot and probably had a pretty good time at the sake fest, too. it made me really mad because it just was reasuring the japanese system of having really strict laws against marijawna. after that excitement, we hopped our train, natalie traded numbers with a canadian living in mihara; i flirted with a cute japanese boy, who's number i shoulda asked for. grr. and we landed in tadanoumi. from there we decided to walk to the fancy pizza place on the highway. now tadanoumi felt much like a seaside town in oregon, a couple places for the tourists, but the rest you would pass with out noticing. we had a very nice walk past nats' (natalie's) school and eventually found the pizza joint to be closed, a couple hours closed and turned around; which i think worked out for the best. back in town we ate at a small little resturant, one that apprently natalie's pre-pre-predesor ate at every night, and we became minor celebrities--completing the day of an interview for saijo university; a photo for my teacher; with, here, an autograph for the kind owner/cook of the eatery.



finally (after i set up and used nats' internet) i crashed. her annoying town-bell woke me at 6, but i rolled out around 9. we then had pancakes and ran (and i mean RAN) for the train, making it by seconds. the day's planned event was a tea ceromony in mihara at a shrine. a very nice woman, who nats was set up with as a contact, met us at the eki and gave us the needed papers for the ceromony and some simple instructions. the shrine was very nice, the ceromony very casual, the sweets reeally good (manju). after this adventure (nats' and kate's first tea ceromony) we went to fuji grand for lunch and had korean bbq--basically you order raw food and then cook it on a grill in the middle of your table, pretty fun, but not my favorite. nextdoor was a mister doughnut, so kate and i decided it was time to try this taughnting establishment.



we over ate. then of course i needed mochi, as it is a cure for the depression that was creeping up on me. more over eating. and finally a walk back to the train station. carolina and slept on the train back to hiroshima, and when i got home i trough laundry in the wash and proceeded to fall asleep. damn, i'm tired ust thinking about it.

i didn't think it was possible to be this bored.

oct. 11, 2006

i think my school (my second, mid-level school, mind you) is empty. i forgot that it was test week (as i only come here once a week) and i didn't bring anything to do--like maybe planning what i want to do in tokyo the weekend after next or planning my kyushu trip so i actually have some place to stay--and gaa! i am so bored. and i have no money so even if i did sneak out early i couldn't do anything. where are all these people getting money? there's plans for the hiroshima JETs to go out to dinner, but shit no. i can't afford that. but then again...i did pay for a trip to korea, i am going to tokyo and i do have another over priced doctor's appointment on monday. i hate being so good at spending every penny i have. *tear*

dinner with the mormons.

oct 10, 2006

so about a week ago (and yes, i will start almost every blog with 'so') i ran into some mormons on the street. this was exciting as they were two young women from utah and ohio. yay, gaijin! to which they said the same thing about me. we traded contact information and they invited me to their church for clam chowder and corn bread--which i eventually declined. they called, later, to get together and 'teach' me things. ideally i just saw them as potential friends outside of JET, which can hopefully still happen. tonight we had dinner, tried out the okonomiyaki restaurant i've been eyeing next to my eki. it was great to meet new people, eat good food and learn about their histories, plus the bonus of photos from home. after dinner they wanted to 'teach' me, so i offered my place and mochi. we headed back, a little more casual talking, and then they jumped into their shpeal. so, as many of you know i am not a religious person at all. i am a strident atheist and have been that way since middle school. this was a curiosity thing for me, at least so i can feel better about making fun of mormons (okay, there's a little guilt with that last sentence--omg! atheists feel guilt!) anywho, they gave their little christian background--mormons are christians apparently, just SPECIAL christians--and i already knew all the answers to their questions, what profits are, who jesus is and so on--nothing special, yet. through this i kept feeling reassured in my position. i am really happy that i don't have to depend on this abstract 'god' guy to make my decisions and be happy with who i am. then they went into the mormon-shpeal. to answer all you curious people out there, joseph smith lived in new york. he was a normal confused christian until omg! god and jesus came to him, at age fourteen--this seemed important--and told him he would be a prophet, ending the time with no prophets, hence all the shitty religions. so this is one thing that makes mormons SPECIAL. the other is the an angel told little joe where the prophets from america kept their gospels. yup, there were prophets in america. they came BEFORE the american indians and they were just as cool as the prophets in israel--see look at their shiny book! they had GOLDEN tablets, and they buried them so they wouldn't get screwed up in translation, since all the 'good' people were being killed off. by good, i assume, is meant NOT native americans. soo, basically what makes mormons different from other christians is they have both the bible AND the book of mormon, so they can compare and decide what sounds good. that and they had a prophet telling them how to think. it sounds like any other crazy religion, but it was rather sweet to see the way these girls talk about it. they were just so passionate, aww. but it was interesting how they spoke about prayer and knowing and how it let's them trust what they believe. all of which basically sounded like eastern meditation and trusting your gut. i know i'm an atheist because in my gut some abstract male guy up in the sky is ridiculous and insane and not for me. but hey, if thats how you can find peace and find confidence go for it. personally i like to be dependent on my own internal confidence and trusting my strength to get through a hard day rather than looking to some 'god' who also imposes restrictions on how i desire to live my life. i know what i need to be happy (i made a list!), i need to look to 'god' for that happiness. it kinda makes me sad that these women have to be part of a religion who puts them second to men--they can't even stop men on the street to talk to them in japan. there is enough sexism in this world without joining a faith that tells me that i am inferior.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

arrgggg!

oct. 9 2006

i need my internet now!!! i am supposed to be getting it tomorrow and there's no way it's going to happen because i have heard nothing from yahoo bb. but gaahh. i need internet or i will go insane and start killing people.

i'm riding the culture shock roller coaster down to the bottom.

oct. 7, 2006

i had a week that felt normal. i didn't desperately desire portland. hiroshima was looking pretty good. my kids were being all awesome and actually talking to me. one day, while passing the JR tracks on the way home, i actually had a full and complete thought--'oh, i should look into tv sets, cause i don't think i could survive two years without a better medium for watching movies.'--that i am going to be here for two years. and then…something changed. now i can't stop eating. i'm distracted. i can't relax. i miss every little thing from home. i am depressed. logically i will come out of this. and tomorrow's massive amounts of sake and seeing the girls (minus sandi) should help my force the next up shoot in my shock, but fuck. i don't need to go home right now, but i am having trouble imagining not staying for two years because if i only stay for one it is basically impossible that i will get to go to india or do my post-JET trek of japan. but imagining not being in portland for two years literally hurts, like a punch in the kidneys. and if i did go home, for more than a week, it would screw up all my possible second year travel plans. i feel like i'm trapped on the edge of a fence. if i fall i'll be safe, but i have no idea which way to let gravity take me.

do not go to the gynecologist in japan.

oct. 2, 2006

this blog is not for the feint of heart, the squeamish or those people who do not want to hear about 'women's issues'; and let me just say that i too take offense to the vague term 'women's issues', especially after today. so be warned there are details here that are not pleasant nor modest.

background: immediately before i left for japan i was told i needed to get a LEEP done. this is a procedure that is moderately frightening to get in america; it's quite simple and therefore easy to screw up. i was advised to get it done while in japan because there wasn't time for the procedure and the follow up before i left--i was handed my file and wished good luck. whether you need a LEEP is something that you find out after your annual PAP. the procedure involves scraping the cervix to remove abnormal cells that will potentially develop into cancer. scary shit, huh?

let me just start out by saying that i really wanted to get this taken care of before i came to japan because i knew there was no way it could go good. this is not because of a lack of faith in the japanese medical system-which, B-T-W, would be totally appropriate-but rather due to the fact of medical systems in foreign countries are just that, foreign. any presumption that it will be all hunky dory and the same is just silly. now, of course, i convinced myself otherwise. this self inflicted convincing led me to think that i could walk into mazda hospital and say, 'hey, can i get a LEEP over here?'. yeah, not quiite that simple. so this a rather personal matter, but if only to make the experience seem somewhat worthwhile, i will take note of the details here, for prosperity, and those other women who cannot follow the advice given in the title of this blog.

so i begin the day continuing the procrastination that i had been practicing for the last two months, by doing a couple rows on the scarf i'm knitting. i then convinced myself that i should just get up and go. so, i headed to the JR, caught my train and got off at mukainda on the sanyo line. i got a little lost, headed for the museum instead of the hospital, called carolina for directions, and eventually found my way to the hospital. the check-in was on second floor, which was momentarily confusing, and there is where the adventure began. i found the right desk, she handed me the form, i wrote my name, we figured out what to write for my birth year and then i was handed the next form. she was sweetly optimistic and thought that my confusion was based on not being able to read kanji. another very sweet women was then recruited to read the form aloud to me. and she assumed me smarter than i am, and thought i wasn't sure of my symptoms rather than having no clue as to what she was saying. when she finally realized that i am completely clueless when it comes to japanese, especially medical japanese, she walked me over to a small room, office, thing; i was then put in a cubicle-style sectioned off 'room' with a table and chairs. [advice you can take from this: just come out and say that you don't speak japanese, stop trying to pretend] a young doctor (?) was brought over and begin to speak english (yay!), but of course, because it's japan, she said that she didn't speak english and that they had no doctors that speak english. the next step was to tell me to go to the university hospital, which they then told me was closed at 11 am (it now being 10:40) i started to freak out. this was byokyu (being the type of leave from work that is a glorified sick day) that i was on this monday morning. byokyu requires documentation, if i didn't have it then i have to take nenkyu (being the paid leave or rather glorified vacation days). if i have to take nenkyu that's one less day with elena or alex or in china or any day NOT at the doctor's or school. i think the wonderful-pseudo-english-speaker saw the tears swelling in my eyes at this point (i'd like to justify these tears with exhaustion, stress, and being called 'so young!' every time my age is mentioned. somehow being called young immediately takes away all your confidence) and she called the university hospital and found that, yes, they do close at eleven, and there's no way around it. after more finagling than should have possibly been necessary, they got the doctor to agree to see me--of course this was after finding a poor receptionist to follow me around and hold my hand. and honestly her english was rusty and therefore not that much better than the original english speaker that was handed to me. my theory is, that being the low rung on the ladder, keiko (as she introduced herself to me) could be roped into baby-sitting the gaijin, who at one point attempted to invited her into the exam room.

the next fiasco was of course just waiting. here was a comfortable position, being kept waiting by the doctor. i've done this before. the underlying terror subsided for a moment. keiko had to disappear for a bit, to appease her boss, and i took a doze. keiko returned and, finally, i was called. now i didn't realize this till later, but the doctor calls the patients' names. he sits in his little office and calls them from a speaker, even though there's a nurse right there who comes and retrieves me and could easily call my name without the need for extra technology and a creepy booming voice from above. must be an authority thing. at this point my stomach was all butterflies on the way down the hall, i stepped beyond the yellow curtain into the doctor's office and my butterflies stopped: he looked like a decent human being! and once he uttered the word 'dysphasia' my butterflies dropped dead. this is the word i needed to here. he knew what i was talking about. he pointed to the acronym LEEP on my file and asked if i had had it yet, and he spoke english! sort of...better than i spoke japanese, anyways. through a mix of broken english and a little japanese he said that today we would do a biopsy. which is better than i expected, this was only one step back rather than all the way back to a PAP smear. next, i was told to go to exam room four.

i figured i'd be kept waiting there for fifteen minutes, or so; turned out not quite the same as the american gyno. firstly, i was unsure that i would get seen right away so i was very confused by the tiny changing room--even though looking back it makes perfect sense--so i tried to get keiko to follow me in. she eventually convinced me that i went in alone, 'for one person.' i then did the changing thing, and went past yet another yellow curtain. okay, so this is where i started to freak out. now i've had this procedure before, i know the story: it is uncomfortable to our modest sensibilities and it is painful. what made it bearable in the past was the nice conversation that the doctor engaged me in, to distract me. so going in this time, i knew i wouldn't get that, the language barrier being a giant chasm, but i was not expecting the separation that the exam room forces. first there was the chair. chair, not bench or table. this was not something that i really wanted to be sitting for, but i took a look and assume that it adjusts. oh, but looking. no, that was a mistake. i glanced down at the floor below the chair and there it was, blood. yeah, fresh red blood splashed on the floor. firstly, this is bad for simple sanitary reasons. second, it's blood. some one was just in that chair bleeding. i am about to be in that chair. i am about to be bleeding. i am about to run through the yellow curtain, out the door and escape this whole shitty thing. i mentally scream at my butterflies to calm down and wait for the nice nurse to help me into the chair. then the chair. *twitch* i sit down and try to not think about the lack of sanitation with only a small paper that is protecting me from where the last victim possibly infected this monstrosity. and you think stirrups are bad? try a chair that first tilts you back, to who knows how far, and then the leg supports that automatically separate. they just kept going and going. i didn't know when they were going to stop. not a good feeling when you are at your most vulnerable.

so there i am splayed like a damn pig for slaughter, and i haven't even mentioned the worst part: there was a final yellow curtain. this sucker's only purpose was to separate the top half of me from the rest of the exam room. common sense tells me that this is to protect the sensibilities of the poor japanese women who have to sit in this torture chair. if i was in a logical mood at this moment i could have focused on this and found the cultural difference interesting, but as you may remember, i am splayed like a pig ready for slaughter. i am not calm or logical. i am nervous as hell and letting my american perspective tell me that this curtain is about shame. and honestly, it is about shame, but being an american (which is a nice thing when being able to hold this perspective, in most situations) i have no shame associated with my vulva or vagina or any of my parts--and, yes, this is something that i had to work towards being raised in a phalocentric society, just like every other woman in the world. but i am quite happy with my vulva and not really that embarrassed to have a strange man looking at my parts. but what is bad is when that strange man won't look me in the eye and my poor vag is facing out into the exam room and to whoever walks by and she is a thing, not part of me. just this faulty body part that is being fiddled with by a japanese man who probably doesn't even know how to treat one right in a romantic situation. after being told to relax, ha! i was poked and prodded--the whole time watching shadows of large tools cast their shadows on my yellow privacy curtain; the soundtrack of an old black and white horror flick is playing in my mind as i sit there wincing for ten minutes. then, i am finally set free! this is, of course, after the doctor has left so there is no chance of me making eye contact with him while i am half clothed, only my little towel protecting my lost modesty.

i then re-clothe myself, silently scream in discomfort at my reflection in the changing room mirror, and i step out to find the smiling keiko is still waiting for me. we walk down the hall together and she asks at the doctor's curtain if i am supposed to come in and talk to him. we go through the barrier, i sit down, and i am told six times that i am supposed to take out the gauze at six and then am handed a slip of paper with phone numbers, 'if you have a lot of bleeding call'. not exactly what you want to hear, but step back a moment. gauze. so this is not normal, at least by american standards. one of those things that they repeat over and over is that when you have an unhappy vagina leave her alone and let her fix herself. she's a clever gal and knows what to do. so, when they told me about this gauze my first instinct was to say no fucking way am i keeping this in till six. but then there was the list of phone numbers...maybe i should just listen to this guy. who knows how much cutting he did down there. who knows how much of a mess my cervix is in now. he schedules my next visit for two weeks later, when the test results will be in, and the whole time i am still frustrated with this system of separating the exam room from the information that is important to me. after more rigamarole of copying my files and being handed my bill, keiko walks me down to the cashier and there is, of course, one more kick in the pants for me. i am charged 8500yen. this is much more than i expected, as a friend only paid 4000yen for six x-rays and two shots. i somehow suspect that japan really does have no understanding of the birds and the bees and that even in this population 'crisis' they don't subsidize for gynecological procedures as much as for others. either that or they were playing the 'let's screw the gaijin' game.

in conclusion, this is a day i desperately want to forget, and definitely one that i do not want to relive, but the alternative is using all of my nenkyu and more money than i have to go home and get it take care of there. at the very least, i get to see keiko again. [advice you can take from this: have low expectations, expect to be confused frustrated and scared; and, if at all possible, don't even go.]

the kids are starting to warm up to me.

sept. 28, 2006

so first there was haruna and her friend 'ryn'. they came back the next day and fujishiro sensei made haruna sing for me (she sings traditional japanese poetry and won first place in hiroshima prefecture). absolutely amazing. next i went to the ESS club and got to chat with the girls there. haruna and her friend came back a third day with a third girl, and then today there were five of them. it was so cute, each of them had one question that they wanted to ask me. one girl asked me what my favorite pasta was, haruna asked where i lived in hiroshima, and of course she lives in the same area. she is my very sweet japanese high school twin. hehe. another girl asked me who my favorite actor was, i listed off some they knew and then zach braff. of course they had no idea who i was talking about so i imdb-ed him and they all approved of his little sexy picture. another girl had brought letters from a pen pal to ask about a couple words (very curly hard to read cursive was the problem).



and in class today i was exhausted, so i just ended up sitting on a desk at the back edge of the students. i called out directions from there and even had them pass back papers to me while still sitting on the desk. but what was cool is there was one boy i sat near and he kept turning to me and waving. i would do my to-cool-for-school single motion wave, he would then turn to his friends and say, 'kakoii' (cool). this occurred like 5 times. what made it even better is with some prompting from the sensei he actually asked me questions about the assignment and i was able to correct his sentence. i think he actually understood the changes i made and was sort of able to figure out the sentence i wanted him to write (i would only say it once so he couldn't just copy it from me). AND later he was trying to say that his friend looked like a salary man, which came out more like, 'he likes salary man'. but after a couple repetitions he picked up the 'he looks like...'. so kick ass. and the cuteness of him (besides the whole kakoii thing) was that he caught me with my glasses off as i was rubbing my eyes, he looked shocked and then turned to his friends and the sensei and said that i was pretty without my glasses on. the sensei motioned for him to tell me in english, which of course he didn't, but awww what a cutie. hopefully all of this will lead to more students visiting me and more students talking to me. i know it's jsut because they don't know that i'm a nice person, they don't know that i won't make them talk really hard english or laugh at their mistakes. hopefully it is just all a matter of time and soon i'll be able to figure out a way to talk to students everyday and challenge some of their english skills. or at the very least have them warm up enough to me to come and ask for help on their homework. hmm...maybe i'll try to set up a time and place (not my office) where i can sit and be there just for homework help. tutoring is where my experience is....