Sometimes My Life is an Aerosmith Song

Wednesday was my mandatory medical exam.  That was so much fun, I think I`m on a fun overload and therefore can never do it again.  I love being poked, prodded, bled, and asked questions in a language I don`t speak.  Not to mention being clamped to a table.  I had to have an electrocardiogram.  I`ve never had an electrocardiogram before, but I figured it was just a matter of sticking things on me for a couple minutes.  Right?  Wrong.  Before the sticky things happen. you get clamps around your wrists and ankles.  How does this not automatically send anyone`s pulse through the roof?  It`s like the beginning of a horror movie, no matter how brightly lit the place is.

 (In reality, the whole thing is not as bad as I make it out to be, minus the blood sample because that`s always bad, but it`s really stressful when you have to keep having everything interpreted because they`re asking you complicated medical questions you don`t have the vocabulary for.)

After that joyous experience, we went to Mie University Hospital.  I`ll be working here about once a month with the inpatient kids.  I got to see the hospital classroom, as well as meet some of the kids in their rooms.  I`m really excited for this experience, because even though the kids are shy, they seem like they will be a lot of fun!!!  One girl in particular is going to be great fun.  Her room is cluttered with Disney stuff, and art that she`s done (much of which is Disney art or food art).

 As much as I hate Will Ferrel, this is accurate.

My supervisor and I had an interesting experience when we walked into the hospital, though.  We were supposed to be meeting the teacher from the hospital school in the lobby, and all we knew was that she said she would be wearing black pants and a black top.  So we`re standing awkwardly in the lobby, trying to figure out if she`s already there or not, and there`s only one person in the area wearing black clothing.  But it`s biker-punk type black clothing, including a sleeveless shirt to show off multiple arm tattoos, they`re wearing a mask (making them more likely a patient), and their long hair is looking like it`s never seen a brush.  So we decide this is probably not her, and continue to wait.  As we wait, a lady comes up to tattooed patient, they stand, and walk off.  We both watch for a minute, blink a few times, and then my supervisor turns to me and says, `Oh... It was a man...` And then we grinned and had a giggle fit that lasted pretty much until the teacher arrived to greet us a couple minutes later.

Once we finished up at the university hospital (including a lunch at the Chinese restaurant/cafe with an oceanview on the top floor, I kid you not), we went to visit the special needs school I`ll be visiting every Tuesday once classes start (except the times I`m at the hospital).  The teacher who showed me around had excellent English, and was really nice.  He showed me all of the school buildings, since I`ll be working with elementary, junior, and senior high students here on different weeks, and explained what types of special needs the students at the school often have.  It was a little overwhelming, and I`m not really sure of much at this point, but it seems like a great school and it`ll definitely be interesting to see how Japanese schools deal with special needs students.

Thursday.  Last day of summer holidays.

Last day to (easily) pretend that I`m doing work when I`m really not because the staff room is only about a third full.  Nothing much happened, really.  I realized halfway through my bike ride to work that I forgot my lunch in the fridge, so I had to hit up the conbini (convenience store) down the street from the school for food.  Breaded pork chop with sauce and rice.  Not bad.

I also learned that paying bills here is complicated.  Not the actual act of paying them.  Once you get the bill, you bring it to the convenience store (seriously), they scan it in, and you pay there.  The complicated part comes in when you don`t speak/read Japanese, and you didn`t know that prior to sending you the bill, they`re going to send you a separate notice to let you know how much the bill is going to be when you get it (the trees are crying).  If you`re like me, you`re under the impression that this is your bill, and you try to bring it to the convenience store to pay.  Awkward...

Today was the first day of school after summer holidays (though not the first day of classes; I won`t have a class until September 8th, due to other activities happening in the school).  I brought maple cookies for the staff (that I bought at the foreign food store last night, but we`re not telling anyone.  They`re Canadian cookies, so it totally counts), and my supervisor wrote out how to say that I brought them and to please help yourself.  And then the VP called me up to introduce myself during our morning teacher`s meeting and I completely forgot the sheet.  Fail.  So I had to write it out on another paper and my supervisor wrote it in kanji for me.  After that was a brief respite while the students cleaned the school (it`s a thing here, I`ll explain it at a later date), and then it was time for the opening ceremony, where I had to stand up in front of the entire school and give a longer introduction.  I brought a paper along for this one so that I didn`t forget anything/stumble over my words/stand there like a deer in headlights.  I was still terrified, but I think I did okay.  At least, my supervisor said my Japanese was fluid and and the teachers said it was a good speech, so I`m basing my thought that I did okay on that.  I am SO glad that`s over! 

The rest of the day was spent working on lesson plans, pretending to work on lesson plans, and trying to figure out how to use the computer lab for my self-introduction lesson because the PC in the language lab (not the 80s monstrocity, the other computer in the room, which might be from as late as the early 2000s) is broken.  All of the teachers I`ll be working with and I took a trip up to the computer lab with the tech teacher to learn how to work the network up there.  It`s a basic closed network set up with screen sharing, so I had no problem understanding how to work it, even though the tech teacher only speaks Japanese (we had to go through it a couple times for the other teachers, since they`re not used to working with things like this).

Also: My school has a song.  True story.  It has a theme song.  Like Hogwarts.  Except that it has a definite tune, and it`s super happy and cute and I have no idea what the hell it`s saying.  Sometimes I forget that I`m in Japan, and obviously everything has its own mascot and theme song.

Since all the teachers were back today, I got fed more.  Omiyage is a fabulous thing.