Very quick post just to let you know I'm alive and I won't be posting much lately, as I'm going (coming?) home soon for a few weeks.

ON HEAD TRAUMA
I decided I will post this while it's still fresh in my mind. Japanese people have no concept of germs, I think. Also, I have decided that the purpose of the school nurse is to distribute maxi pads and bandaids. I'm not entirely certain that the school nurse has an sort of medical training at all. I've taken 2 Red Cross courses and High School Health class, and I get the feeling that I know more on the topic than the school nurses at most of my schools. I really wonder how much school nurses get paid, because for all the work they do, the school could just hire a homeless person for much less money with essentially the same qualifications and skills.

The other day, the students were playing outside after lunch, as they often do. One student fell, hit his head on the concrete, and started bleeding fairly heavily from his head. The teachers called in the school nurse, who came running. All she had with her was a towel in a plastic bag. That's it. No emergency medical kit or anything. No gloves. No disinfectant, antiseptic, cleaner/cleanser, nothing. Just a towel. And I know she didn't wash her hands before she came out. She walked up to the student and began mopping the blood off his head. Meanwhile, the wrapper from the towel got caught in the breeze, and after it had rolled through dirt and blood, one teacher picked it up and held onto it. After a few minutes, the teacher with the bloody bag comes in to call the kids mom. He plops the bag right down on the desk, wipes some blood off his hands on a kleenex, puts that on the desk, too, and picks up the phone. Oh, and the desk with the phone is right next to me, fyi.

The school nurse runs in a few seconds later to ask the mother what hospital to take the kid to. She didn't wash her hands, touched the phone, her computer, her desk, etc., opened a pack of clean guaze, grabbed it with her unwashed hands, wiped her hand with it, put it on her desk, then went out to put it on the kids head. ACK! The mere imagining of the transfer of germs going on was enough to give me chills. I had to take a Communicable Diseases information course for my summer job working with children a few years ago, and I have to say that there are some truly horrendous diseases that you can pick up through contact with blood or other bodily fluid. If I know this, you'd think the school nurse would, too. But she didn't appear to care. Instead, she called a taxi to go to the hospital (a TAXI?!? What the crap, this kid is hurt, shouldn't you call an ambulance?), coughed into her hand, removed the bloody towel from her desk (don't worry, she disinfected her desk afterwards by grabbing a tissue from the box and rubbing the blood around the desk a few times), and left to go to the hospital.

Throughout this whole ordeal, teachers were coming in and out of the teachers room, picking up bloody towels, dirty tissues/bags, using their computers and phones to check on info. And none of them washed their hands even once. And none of them were wearing medical gloves. And each time they entered the teachers room, they took off their shoes. How messed up is that? Don't mind spreading whatever diseases through blood and dirt, but God forbid we drag dust onto the teachers room floor. Well, so long as they've got their priorities straight.


ON FINDING MYSELF
They say that to find who you truly are, you must remove yourself from everything you know and examine yourself; to put yourself in a foreign environment and see how you react. I've done this, I've taken this journey into a foreign land, and I've made many discoveries about myself and my true nature. Perhaps one of the biggest and most important discoveries I've made about myself so far is that I could never marry a man with smaller feet than me.


FAME
In Japan, literally every little hick town and horse outpost is famous for something. Every city claims it is famous for something, whether it be its' special brand of noddles, its beer, its sweets, or its people; and they all sell gifts (to tourists too stupid to know not to buy them )indicating what makes them famous. My city actually is famous (the first Japanese prime minister was born here, so people can buy silly postcards with his picture on them), but other cities aren't so lucky. Still, people always act like their town is amazing due to its great fame. And when they tell others what their city is famous for, others feel obligated to be impressed. So some hick will tell a traveler, "Yup, our city is famous. Right over there is where Lord Tajima puked after eating bad sushi." And the person listening must respond, "Eh? Ii, na!" Meaning, "Really? That's great!", as if nothing in the world could be better than some unkown noble tossing his cookies in a rice paddy. And they must look at the Tajima Puke Replica with great interest, even if they won't buy anything.

I just want one city to be honest and say, "Yup, we're famous for nothing. We don't even have special hats, although my son once got the hiccups after eating a live frog. That was special." But even if they said that, the person listening would still have to say, "Eh? Ii, na!" Good thing I can't speak more Japanese, or I'd start bsing people and telling all sorts of weird stories about why my city was famous. "See that mountain over there? Well, that's the very spot where...uh...Bob the uh...god of Alcohol Poisoning umm....dripped some of the uh sacred alchohol of the gods in order to make dogs of putty that he could mold to his will and make his messengers so that the other gods would um...know when he was planning big drinking parties. Would you like to buy a putty dog souvenir?" Consequently, I'll be bringing home plastic models of Lord Tajima's puke if anyone wants one...