I went Ice skating Saturday for the first time since the day I departed for Japan. I thought things were going to be difficult and that I wouldn't remember much or my body just couldn't handle it, but all of that was wrong. Am I sore everywhere? Yes. Do I have blisters? Oh yeah. Did I fall and nearly kill myself? A bunch of times. Would I do it again? You bet your munchkins I will!
The journey there is quite the ordeal. The rink had practice time from 1:10-2:40. However, because the rink is in Nagano, and I live in Maebashi, I would have to travel "state lines," as it were, to get there. Nagano is the prefecture just north west of Gunma. I had to leave my house around 8:50 or so to catch the 9:03 train to Takasaki, then transfer to Yokokawa, in which I would take a bus up a mountain about 3000 feet above see level to arrive at Karuizawa, Nagano station. But my journey doesn't end there. I was still 6 miles away from the rink. I wasn't about to walk there. That would have taken me 2 hours. Though, I probably had plenty of time. I arrived at Karuizawa station at 11am. I basically just took pictures and shopped at the station for a bit. I even bought lunch, not that I ate any of it because I was so excited, but I still bought food none the less. After about an hour, I stood in line for a taxi and took it to the rink. That one taxi, cost me more than the entire round trip. Once at the rink, I couldn't believe I was there. I didn't believe it until I was actually inside, and on the ice skating. Which brings me to point number one: 1. The smell is exactly the same. I am not sure what I was expecting, but I thought the familiar rink smell, was something significant to AZ rinks. I never realized that all rinks in the world smell the same. As soon as I walked inside, I felt the familar cold, and was greeted by the smell. I was so overcome with happiness, that I had to lock myself in the bathroom because I just broke down sobbing. I had finally made it to the place where all my worries and all my troubles dissappear for that moment on the ice. I could feel myself returning to normal. It was like God was assuring me that He had this planned from the beginning, and wouldn't put me somewhere where I couldn't be myself. He created me. He knows that skating is as every much a part of me breathing is to life. After composing myself, I went to watch the other skaters who were taking turns practicing their programs, because they have a competition next weekend and the weekend after. While watching them I noticed something, 2. They skate to the same songs. It was a surreal feeling watching them skate the all the familiar songs that the kids from back home skate to. I thought there would be differences because of the culture, but I guess when it comes to skating internationally, there are no differences really. Listening to their songs actually made me think more about creating a post on the top ten songs to never skate to. The last program before the public skate time started, was an adult ice dancing couple. It was really cute!! I felt proud and exciting knowing that adult skating is also a thing here. 3. Admission prices are cheap. At first, I thought it was rather expensive, $12 to skate for an hour and a half? But after talking to the worker, he told me that the price decreases when you have your own skates. So it really was only $6 for an hour and a half of practice. I was rather impressed. I am accostumed to practice times being $12 for 30 minutes. 4. Japanese skaters are serious. I knew that Japan has had very good skaters throughout the years, so has America, but what I did not expect, was that all of the skaters would be good! There were people doing quads and triples. HUGE ones, I might add. And here I was, doing singles. I think only the 5 year olds were doing their single jumps. I was amazed at the amount of dedication they were taking to jumping and spinning. They would do the same move, over and over and over, until their coach claimed they did perfection a certain number of times in a row. I saw one guy do at least 8 quad toes before he moved one to other jumps. It was amazing. Their spins they would do over and over also. However, they spent more time working on Jumps and various moves than they did spins. Watching them do their moves made me admire their coaches hearing abilities. There were at least 30 people doing serious jumps and spins and here was this one girl, trying to do back power pulls and I could hear this coach teller to sit back and get off her toes. How he heard her scratching the ice is beyond me. Speaking of Japanese coaches, 5. Japanese coaches don't ever raise their voices. My coach would always yell at me from across the rink to either stop doing something or start doing something. Japanese coaches, stand and watch silently or follow the student closely. During public times, they did group lessons. One half of the students worked on Jumps, and the other half worked on spins. If they wanted to work on moves, they saw coaches individually. The coaches would calmly state their direction and stand back and watch the skaters jump, then tell the student what they did wrong or right. If they did it right, they told them to do it exactly the same. Then again, then again. Until the coach was satisfide that the student knows how to do it. Besides the normal sounds of skating on the ice, and general talking, it was a rather quite skate. 6. Posted rink rules are not enforced. The rink rules are that you just skate around in a circle and never really do anything else. You don't go backwards, you don't spin, you don't jump, so I was kind of afraid that I wouldn't be able to do anything. I was also planning on pulling the gaijin card if I needed to because I really wanted to actually practice, however, the posted rules were not at all what I witnessed happening. The rink was "split in half." Half of the rink was reserved for jumping practice, and the other half reserved for spinning. The outer rim is for those who can't skate or those who are practicing moves. I saw a couple adult skaters doing their best to practice some 3 turns and edges. People are really skilled to be skating in Japan because, as I said before, there were at least 30 good skaters doing a bunch of stuff at a time. The fact that the adults were able to do their edges without hesitating was impressive to me. 7. Free skating is done in turns. They have a sort of line system when it comes to spins or jumps. Each person has their turn and if you miss it, then you mess everyone else up and get nasty lazer eye stares. Because these skaters were doing mostly triples and doubles, the amount of speed required to achieve those jumps is significantly higher than I am used to. I really had to book it on the ice if I wanted to keep my place in line. I have never done so many jumps with such high speed before. My coach would be proud of me for jumping while being scared out of my mind. Also, I am a clockwise skater. The only other clockwise skater was a 5 year old who was just learning how to do a lutz, so that doesn't really count as she stayed by the rims of the rink to practice it. Everyone else was counter clockwise. not only that, but they have amazing accuracy in spotting their jumps. I do not have this jump spotting skill, so every time I went to jump, I had to quickly break away from the line, so I can get myself going in the other direction so I could jump. I think I only accurately spotted 3 jumps out of the many I did. On the bright side for me, I was able to do my lutz going the same direction as everybody else. After I did my jumps a couple of times, the other skaters kind of figured it out that I jump the other way. So whenever they saw me in the line, they sort of separated more so that I had my own space to jump. I think they realized that I suck at spotting. *Sigh* such is the curse of a clockwise skater. 8. Zambonis are driving the same. I don't know why this really impressed me, but for some reason, I expected the driver to be on the other side of the zamboni, driving it the other way. However, this was not the case, He drove it just as anyone else would in the US. I found it interesting though. Since we are on the topic of zambonis, 9. Ice resurfacing is an art. They take great care in making sure the ice is sufficiantly smooth. They don't just leave holes in it from either hockey or figure skaters, they take the time to patch it up after every session. Each practice session has a zamboni resurfacing scheduled. You would never see something like that in America. Arcadia should take note. Although, I do wish they would have resurfaced half way through the practice session. With 30 skaters constantly jumping and spinning, the ice gets messed up rather quickly. Also, the shear number of people on the ice, made it start melting. When I had gotten off the ice, I was expecting to have to wipe ice off my blades but there was just water. My entire boot was covered in water and so was the bottom of my pants. That being said, I still like the fact that they take such great care of their ice. 10. Locker rooms are actually used for changing. In the US, locker rooms are used for storing stuff, while everyone took turns changing in the bathroom. Well, in Japan, there are showers, and a sink, but no toilets, you have to go somewhere else for that. While I was getting my boots on, people come walking in to the locker room and just start undressing and changing into skating clothes. Quite shocking for me to all of a sudden see so many women and girls in their underwear. Once they changed, they quickly headed out the ice to put their skates on. It was strange. The locker rooms were actually used for their intended purpose? What is this world coming to? That is all for now. I look forward to what else Japan will teach me.
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I am not trying to say that Japan is a weird or strange place, I am just saying that from a foreign perspective, these things are not something that I would have expected to be a very popular thing here.
1. Highschool Baseball Currently, there is a national baseball competition for all the high schools in Japan. My school came up second in the entire prefecture. That basically means we are second in the state. The team that beat our school was defeated during the national competition. It sounds like something that would not be serious, but it is on like 5 channels all day. I am pretty sure that in America there is a law that prohibits children from being on national television for profit, but here, I guess it is ok. Behind my desk at work, there are teachers watching the tournament on the internet. They are even cheering. High school baseball is super serious here. Much like college football in the states. 2. Bowling Recently, there was a world bowling championship in which 6 Japanese people were a part of. I watched it, and it was actually pretty amazing. One person got a score of 299! She was getting consistent strikes, then on the last frame, she suddenly had one pin left standing. It teetered, almost toppling over, yet it held its ground. You could hear the disappointment in the crowd as she walked away with 299, winning the competition. The international bowling competition was on television for about a week. I watched it every evening. It was strangely captivating. At work, and even on the streets, I would overhear conversations about the bowling competitions. I think it was held in Vietnam this year. 3. Karaoke I know that karaoke is a Japanese word, well actually it originated from Chinese, but the karaoke we know is from Japan. Karaoke is a pretty popular thing back home, but not nearly compared to over here. Karaoke bars are basically on every corner in Japan. There is a huge one in Maebashi. And I mean huge. About the size of your average mall. It is just filled with rooms for you and your friends to party together and karaoke. My dad, would probably be out of his mind with excitement with the amount of places to do karaoke. There are so many parties and gatherings and random get together that almost always involve a karaoke bar. Now, I have not been to one here, but from what I have heard, they are basically just personal rooms with a private window to order drinks and snacks, or a vending machine. They even have solo rooms with headphones, so you can do karaoke just yourself. 4. Wearing Socks with Sandals These socks I am talking about, are not like your average crew or ankle socks. They are almost like stockings for your feet. They come in various designs and colors. I highly recommend you look them up. It actually doesn’t look half bad. The reason they wear these socks with their sandals, has mostly to do with their culture. It is customary for many businesses to have indoor shoes. Many people wear sandals or various other open toed shoes to work during the summer time, but exposing your toes is considered taboo. So women will wear these fancy socks while the men will wear just plain crew socks with theirs. It is also customary to remove your shoes when entering certain establishments or homes. Bare feet is just as offensive as showing too much cleavage so they constantly wear socks. So they might as well wear fun socks if they have to wear them constantly. Although, you can see through a lot of these socks and pantyhose so I am not quite sure why they take offense to bare feet, but hey, it is a different culture. 5. Unnecessarily Wearing Face Masks Normally, when you see someone wearing a face mask, it is because they are sick, and out of curtesy, they wear this mask to prevent others from also being sick. Or, they work at a place where they are in constant contact with other people, and are trying to prevent themselves from getting sick. However, then you have an entire group of people, who just love the face mask look, and will wear them simple as a fashion statement. They have character masks, flavored masks, scented masks, and even ones that you can attach accessories to. I haven’t seen so many unnecessary mask wearing in Gunma as I have in Tokyo, but it is still common practice that nobody bats an eye towards. I hope you have enjoyed my updates thus far. I will kind of keep posting in this manner, unless something really amazing happens that I want you all to know about. I figured this type of updating gives people something to read with general interest rather than personal interest. Leave a comment or send me a message if you feel differently. So, I have been to Japan before. I have many posts in detail of what I even did before. Last year my husband got some sort of flu, and the year before that, I did not get sick at all. I was in Japan a total of 4 weeks before. Longer than I have been in Japan now. I was not sick at all. Just minor allergy issues which went away after 2 days. This time, however, I feel that I am super sick for no reason! I am not well still, and feel bad telling all my coworker that I am well now because I am basically lying. However, at this point, since I have been to the hospital twice now, and taken all the prescribed medication save one (it gave me chest pains) I am just letting my body handle it naturally. This post is my advice for anyone who becomes sick in a foreign country. You don't have to follow it, but after everything that has and is happning to me, I feel that this is the best option.
First, I would like to start off by saying how nice the medical system of Japan is. They don't really have doctor offices unless you see specialists, everything else is just a hospital. They are very tiny. Like clinic sized with only 3 rooms. The waiting room, exemination room, and a room that fits a total of 3 beds on one side, and the nurses station on the other. I am not sure what they do in there as there is only one doctor in the building but a lot of was going on when I was there. If you need emergency services, they have special hospitals for that that is much larger and more closely related to what we know of in America. This is also the same place women deliver babies as it is large enough to accomodate personal rooms. Second, I want to say how cheap medical attention is in Japan. I went to the hospital twice. The hospital. TWICE. and spent less than $80 combined for both treatment and medication. That is also without insurance. Sweet deal. America should take note. Ok, now I am going to talk about my sickness journey thus far. On a Wednesday, I woke up with a head ache, scratchy throat, and feeling achy. I knew I had a fever so I took my temperature with my termometer I so thankfully brought with me and yep, slight fever as expected. I just went off to work though anyway. It's what I have heard you should do in Japan as over the counter medicine contains codeine so there is no way you could stay home and help yourself unless you were really sick. I got to work and did my best to concentrate. Surprizingly my Japanese was really good. I found myself confused by the correct expressions coming out of my mouth when I only half understood what people were saying to me. Guess my brain really does know Japanese. Glad to know it is just me. Anyway, at some point, the achyness become unbareable to the point where air was causing me pain. My heart had made its way to my head and could feel and hear it pounding away. I asked who I thought was a person where my supervisor was only to find out that I was halucinating an actual person. This caused major concern for all my coworkers and they immediately took me to my supervisor so she could talk to me in English. Apparently, I started to say things that didn't make sense. I was so sick, I don't really remember what happened. I told my supervisor that I wanted to go home because I felt horrible and she said ok. On my way home, I thought I was going to the post office. So I started going some weird direction then got lost. I'm not sure what exactly I was thinking because I had yet to discover the nearby post office. I finally made it home and crashed on my bed. I was supposed to call my supervisor to tell her I made it home safely but in the midst of all the sick travelng, I forgot. She called me concerned and asked me to take my temperature and it was over 104. We quickly did an online conversion to celcius and she was very concerned. She told me I was going to the hospital and immediately came to take me. At the hospital my fever had climbed even more. So much so that even the doctor was concerned. He gave me medication and told me to do nothing but drink fluids and eat noodles for the next couple of days. He said that if my fever was still there after 2 days to come back to see him. His diagnosis was that I had stressed my self sick and my body was too fatigued to adapt to the new climate. Which made sense. So I figured that I would get better. I was wrong. The next day my voice had completely left me, my throat hurt so bad I couldn't even swollow my own saliva. My supervisor contacted me to see how I was doing, and I couldn't even talk to her. I had to send her text messages because there was just no sound coming out of my mouth other than painful throat coughing. I watched a lot of Judge Judy that day. And some American movies in Japanese as they were on TV. Anyway, waiting around sleeping all day made me antsy so I went outside to do stuff. To be clear, by the time I was going out, I had actually started to feel better. My voice was sounding pretty bad, but at least I could talk. I was able to have dinner with my new neighbor upstairs. She made spaghetti. The next day, Friday, i went to school, with my "sexy voice." I say good morning to my supervisor (I have two btw, I have a Mrs. and Mr.) The Mr. supervisor immediately laughed at my voice and when I told him it was my sexy voice he laughed even more. Both supervisors had me take my temperature right there because they were concerned about me. Plus, my ear was obviously infected, I mean the entire ear was bright red and in so much pain. My fever was still over 100. So I was taken back to the hospital. The doctor gave me more medication and said that I had a new infection due to the humidity. So I went home, again to rest the entire day. Again I watched Judge Judy. On YouTube in case you were wondering. This medication did nothing for me other than make me feel sick to my stomach and super tired. I finished taking them but did not feel any better. The only change was that my fever was down but all the other symptoms remained. Except my ear. That healed overnight. I figured it had to do with allergies or something so I took medication I had brought with me. At least I could read what was in those medications. There was no change with that either. Not even a slight change. I tried going out on Sunday with my neighbor to the local mall to go shopping. I went a little crazy with the shopping thing, but I had fun. I felt really terrible the entire time, but still had fun. Yesterday, I had the most excruciating headache I have ever experienced. I noticed it get worse, the more I was outside of the staff room. But near the end of the day, my head ache progressed. I was supposed to go out with a bunch of girls who live in Gunma, and I really wanted to go, but even after taking the max amount of pain medications I just could not feel enough relief to go out. I hope I did not upset them. I have been blowing them off all week because of this illness. I even had to cancel my notice of appointment meeting because of my illness. It ended up working out anyway because my principal of the school was unable to attend that cerimony. So we ended up having a small ceremony at the school. It was nice. He is really tall, btw. When I got home, I discovered the dehumidifier function on my brand new ac unit and turned it up to maximum. I did not notice a difference until this morning. I had left it on all night and all day today. I think the humidity is the main problem. In fact, I know it is because when I'm out side for too long, I am sick, but in my house, I am fine. My advice for you if you get sick, just leave it. Let your body take care of itself. It is trying to tell you that you are working too hard and need to relax so it can aclimate. Don't take any foreign medication don't even take familiar medication, just avoid medication at all. Your body knows what it is doing don't mess it up by taking steroid induced codeine. I have only been in Maebashi for less than one week, and already there are things that really stand out. Here is my collective list of things that I have noticed or been shocked by since being here.
1. The trash system here is confusing I knew that the trash sorting thing is something to expect. However, I did not know it would be THIS extensive. I mean seriously! Trash is trash. I get trying to recycle and things, but do we really need a separate reseptical for clear, brown, and other colored bottles? I get separating glass and plastic, but by colors? Really? Also, a separate day for clothing verses towels? I mean really. If I was Japanese, I would just sove it all in the same bag and say, it is not my job to sort the garbage. I alreay took the time to clean it for you, why should I also neatly sort it as well? Which brings me to my next point. 2. You must WASH your rubbish If sorting it in a very confusing way wasn't enough, you must also wash and dry your garbage as well. I have a sink full of plastic containers to be washed and dryed as we speak. The trash thing is something that I will have to really get use to doing. 3. Bike laws are the same as vehicular laws Drunk biking is the same as drunk driving. Your light on your bike being out is the same as driving without headlights. Bikes need to be registered and sometimes require travelers insurance, but not always. I don't need it. THe same exact driving laws apply to bikers. There are no exceptions. You might be thinking that bikes can travel on sidewalks but cars cannot. Wait right there, this brings us to point number 4. 4. Cars can drive on sidewalks If the sidewalk is wide enough, they will drive on it and it is not illegal. Infact, there are signs warning bikers and pedestrians of potential drivers on the sidewalk. About called the police when I first witnessed it when my neighbor pointed out the signs. 5. Banks are closed very early Banks are only open from like 9-3 Monday-Friday. It made it frustrating when trying to get a bank account set up for me because there were many things we needed to get done at once and the bank always made top priority because of how early they closed. 6. The ATMs open and close You better hope you have enough money to last you because ATMs apparently have hampsters inside them that get tired and need to sleep. They are open a little longer than banks and on weekends, but it's not common. 7. ERs are not always open Hospitals rotate emegency services on a daily or weekly basis. So if you get injured, you might be traveling rather far to find an open hospital. 8. Post offices are only open when everyone else is working Not sure why they don't take advantage of after busines hours but they just don't. At least busineses realize this, and will allow you to take off work just to go to the post office. 9. It's hot Being from Arizona, I am used to being in a constant state of warmth. However, I guess because of the humidity, I am in a constant state of sweat. Maebashi is the hottest area of Japan. Tempurature wise, it feels fine, but I am sweating. I am in a constant state of dampness. I try to put my pants back on after going to the bathroom and my skin has turned into scotch tape. I am always sweating. Even after getting out of the shower. You never dry off! I was wondering why towels were so small here and now I know. They are basically useless. Even if you dry off, you will still be wet and slimy. Curse you sticky air! 10. Japanese people prefer to sit on the floor You could have a 12 seater couch and only two Japanese people, they will all sit on the floor. Even pregnant women sit on the floor. Not sure how they get back up but I guess gorwing up always singing on the floor will promote that shairs are ust for show. |
AuthorJeny B Archives
August 2021
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