Swine Flu Level 5 Super-Emergency-Everyone-Panic ALERT!!!!

Every year, the medical school puts on a big spring festival. Students set up tents and make octopus balls, noodles, lizard heads* and other scrumptious morsels to sell, while music groups perform, martial arts clubs put on exhibitions, and people from the community come to eat and watch all of the different events. Last year, I went to the festival for a bit to support my English students, and left thinking that it was a pretty cool community outreach event and a nice way for the med students to showcase the fun things about their school.

Unfortunately, this past weekend, this year's medical festival was suddenly canceled. Why, you may ask? According to the medical school administration, since there's a big swine flu outbreak going on right now, it would be irresponsible of the medical school to sponsor a big public gathering where the infection could potentially spread.

...I sort of understand what they're saying...but I feel like there's one small detail I ought to point out:

Number of cases of swine flu in Ehime as of last weekend: ...um.....that would be....0.

How can the swine flu spread if it's not even here yet??**

Anyway, while some of the medical school students were upset that their big event was canceled, I was surprised to hear almost nobody complaining about how unreasonable the decision was. In fact, a lot of people here have decided that it's one more reason to get worked up about the flu. If you think the news coverage in the US is overblown, you haven't seen anything yet. Since the beginning of this month, the news here has almost literally been a 24-7 Swine Flu Network.*** blech...I can hardly stand to watch it.

Amidst all of this paranoia, I can't help but think that it was a little irresponsible of the medical school to cancel the whole festival and fan the flames. If the medical school's top concern was really public health, wouldn't it have been better to put the festival on as planned and add special lectures to educate the public about the real risks of the flu and proper hand-washing/flu prevention techniques? I dunno...that seems more reasonable to me....

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Last week, everyone in Japan decided that they should wear surgical masks**** to prevent the spread of infection, so there was a big rush and the medical school completely ran out. I've noticed that my roommate has a box of masks sitting on our kitchen table. I'm kind of tempted to steal it and sell it on the black market. Betcha I could probably get at least a couple thousand bucks for it...


* Just kidding.

** There have been about 345 cases of swine flu in Japan so far, most of them in Osaka, which is an 8 hour ferry ride, 6 hour bus ride, or 1 hour plane ride away from Ehime, depending on how rich you are.

*** I'm live here from Osaka with Ms. Toshiko Suzuki. Ms. Suzuki went on a trip to Mexico three years ago, and now has decided to quarantine herself in an Osaka hotel room to make absolutely sure that she doesn't spread the swine flu to her three grandchildren...

****One of my bosses (who is a great guy, by the way) always wears a surgical mask wherever he goes, even before the swine flu outbreak became big news. He is so religious about his face coverage that I think I've seen his nose and mouth only about twice in the last six months. He actually reminds me a bit of this guy... Anyway, my boss is obviously taking the news about the flu seriously -- since it broke, he's been wearing yet another mask on top of his usual mask. I would think it'd be hard to breathe after awhile, but luckily it doesn't seem to phase him. :)

Hair Cut

Although I've been in Japan for almost three years now, I've never had the guts to get my hair cut here. Frankly, I find the salons in my neighborhood slightly amusing...and a little frightening (...although I'm assuming that they do hair a little better than they do English. :)

Which one should I choose???

Candidate #1:

And candidate #2:

As Promised...

...here's photo post その２. (One day late...shame on me...)

Today I'm moving on from gigantic vegetables to enormous pieces of MEAT!! This was from lunch today. The coin on the lower left hand corner of the plate is about the size of a quarter. I think they took a whole pig, rolled the poor critter in bread crumbs, deep fried it, sliced it and put it on a plate.


I ate pasta and half of my friend's gigantic slab of meat and I think I've about doubled my body weight....I'm feeling a little sluggish at the moment, but I'd better go feed my amoeba. Hopefully I can roll my poor bloated body to the lab....:)

A Picture a Day?

Today's post is brought to you by the fairy sprites of the Enchanted Forest:


a.k.a. Tamura-san, a lady who sings with me in the band, and the Shinto Priest/pianist. We were practicing at Tamura-san's cafe one morning, and one of her customers brought by some vegetables. I forget what this particular one was called, but it looks like the biggest rhubarb I have ever seen, or something out of Honey I Shrunk the Kids...

...er wait...on second thought, I guess I lied. They're not that big...

Anyway, I was looking through old pictures this morning and found some interesting ones, so I'm thinking I'll try to post a new one here each day.

We'll see how long this lasts...I seem to remember promising to post a picture a day sometime last year, and somehow that never happened.... (>_<);;

Free Pass

I am quickly becoming the Barry Bonds of my Japanese softball league.* This season, I have no batting average and a 1.000 on-base percentage because I've been walked in every at-bat. I must be the most fearsome number 8 hitter in all of Japan.

*...minus the home runs and the steroids.

Skin Grafts and the Next Iron Chef

Last Saturday morning, I went with the softball team to a field on the side of a mountain to plant rice. The people who used to take care of the field haven't had time to cultivate it recently, so they asked for volunteers from the community to use the land and my softball team signed up.

A few weeks ago, the softball men went up to the mountain to pull out the grass and weeds already growing in the field, and last Wednesday, we went up to the field one more time to make dirt walls around its perimeter so that it could be filled with water.

Then, on Saturday, it was planting day. Most fields are planted by machines now, but I guess the owners of the field thought it would be more traditional and environmentally friendly to plant the rice seedlings by hand. So about ten of us rolled up our sleeves and our pant legs, jumped into the field, and trudged back and forth through the mud, bending over to plant rice seedlings every foot or so.

It has warmed up here recently and there was a nice breeze blowing on Saturday, so it really felt good to be outside in the sun. Unfortunately, I stupidly forgot to apply any sun block whatsoever (I don't usually burn, so I totally didn't think about it at all....how silly of me). Today, my shoulders feel like they are on fire.

Even more impressive are my legs. I've actually started a new form of body art. Behold:


All you have to do is splash a little mud on yourself in the desired pattern and stand outside in six inches of muck for two and a half hours. Then, voila, the mud splatters will remain white, while the rest of your leg will turn a brilliant red. Magnifique, no?

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Since we were planning to be at the rice field all day, we were supposed to pack lunch to eat at noon. One of the softball men said that he really wanted to try my cooking and asked me to make lunch for him and his son too. (Actually, I think he was just too lazy to make his own lunch, but hey, who knows....)

In Japan, making lunches is really an art form -- you can't just throw a sandwich and a bag of potato chips in a bag. A good Japanese wife will cook several different sides to go with the rice, arrange them in pretty patterns in a pretty box, and carve the fruit into rabbits and swans and things.

With all the works of art I've seen in the last couple of years, I wasn't very confident that I could live up to the softball men's expectations. But fortunately, I received an emergency lunchbox creation lesson from my roommate on Friday night. We slaved away for several hours and the end result was quite respectable if I do say so myself. (....although we didn't attempt any rabbits or swans. I guess I'll have to try my hand at fruit sculpting next time...)

On Saturday, I unveiled my creations at the rice field, and the softball men went absolutely wild. One guy took a rice ball and said that he wanted to put it in the freezer so that he could preserve it and take it out every morning to admire it again and again. Another guy took pictures of the lunch boxes and posted them on his architecture company's website. Click on "COLUMN" in the link bar at the top of the page, and check out the posts from April 29th, May 8th and May 9th if you'd like to see my masterpieces, the softball men, and our rice field. :)

Anybody there?

ハロ～ I doubt anyone even looks at this page anymore since I haven't updated for almost a year (!!), but just for kicks, I figured I would start writing again. A lot has happened in the last few months -- too much to write in one post -- but here goes.

-- After my English teaching job in Ehime ended last August, I went back to Seattle for three months to do some job shadowing in an assisted living facility and a couple of community clinics.

-- In October, I jetted all over the place doing medical school interviews. For the most part, everything went okay, besides one trip to the east coast where my luggage got lost somewhere in between Seattle and Pennsylvania. That night, I finally got to my hotel around 1 AM, borrowed deodorant and toothpaste from the front desk, brushed my teeth with my index finger, and climbed into bed. I ended up going to my interview the next morning in the same t-shirt and jeans I had worn on the plane because my suit was still MIA. I stuck out just a bit amid the group of other interviewees dressed in freshly pressed black suits, but luckily the interviewers were very nice about it, and plus I was very comfortable. Tennis shoes are a beautiful thing. :D

-- In November, I got back to Japan and have been working in a laboratory growing amoeba in little plastic dishes all day. Here are some of my favorite pets, named after some of my favorite people.


Actually, I spend most of my time soaking these little guys in different contact lens solutions and trying to figure out how to kill them. (They're awfully cute, but if they infect your eye, they eat up your cornea and can even blind you.) Several brands of contact lens solutions have no effect on these guys at all, so my task for the next couple of months is to find out which ingredients in the contact lens solutions are preventing the disinfectant from doing its job. Hopefully I'll have some Nobel Prize worthy results to present at the Japanese contact lens conference I'm supposed to go to in July...

-- According to the existing medical literature on these amoeba, they most often cause eye infections in contact lens wearers. The other at risk population includes people who have "experienced traumatic eye injury involving vegetative matter." ... That'll make you think twice the next time you have a sudden urge to fling a cabbage at your best pal's head, won't it!

-- I'm still playing trombone and singing with a couple bands here. My hope is to become a Japanese gaijin pop star extraordinaire like this guy within the next three months.

-- I've finally been accepted to medical school, so I'm bound for Cornell starting the end of this August! Come to NYC and visit me!

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With all of the uncertainty about medical school behind me and my year(s) abroad quickly coming to an end, I've been in a weird mushy, philosophical mood lately. I can't quite put my thoughts into coherent English at the moment, but I'm very thankful both for my family and friends in the states, and for all of the people I've met in Japan. I feel like my heart is stretched out across several different continents right now. I wonder what will happen when I go back to the US this fall and start over in yet another new place...

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On a slightly different note, I really like this quote:

"Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood." ~Leonardo da Vinci.

Like most people, I think that I tend to make quick unconscious judgments about things and people based on first impressions, but recently, I've realized how dangerous and hurtful that can be. Too often I find myself thinking in terms of labels -- "good kid," "bad kid," "smart kid," "drunk," "trouble-maker," "Christian," "Japanese" etc. -- but real people are more complicated than that, and it's a shame to condense them down to something less than they actually are.

...So, my goal over the next few months is to try harder to see things through other people's eyes, rather than just making assumptions. That's the way people deserve to be treated, and the way I think I would want to be treated myself. 頑張ろう！

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Stay tuned, O faithful reader(s?), for more posts in the near future (hopefully less rambling and vague than this one) as I finish out my last three months in Japan. :D