Celebrity Status, my last day on High Care 3rd floor.

The ladies I've been working with on the 3rd floor of the high care building have made me feel like an absolute celebrity. Every day when I come in they either mention how nice my hair looks, how cute my headbands are, how different and lovely my eyes are or how my "sta-i-ru ga ii naaaaa". Here, "stairu" is the Japenglish word for "style" and they use it to explain a body shape or figure. They also say "ii na" when expressing envy (I say it every DAY when handing out lunch trays to patients).
So many people that I meet talk about how different I look than Japanese people. "Your nose is big", "You're so tall!", "You have beautiful eyes", "Do you curl your eyelashes?", "You have gold hair", "You have the longest legs!", "You look sporty". Seriously, it's like people have never seen a Westerner before. I feel like a unicorn when I walk around the hospital as people triple check they've actually seen the tall blonde creature walking among them.
Another thing that made me feel like a celebrity is when they asked me for my autograph (seriously!), Kawakami san even bought a special display board for me to sign! This happened when I was helping them work through their English For All tests, a hospital wide program that encourages staff to speak English. As their teacher, I wrote my name on their page and then signed it to make it official. I didn't expect the "woahhhhh, KAKKOII", "COOL!" when they saw my signature or the requests to sign other sheets of paper so they could keep it. Their excitement is because their names are written in Kanji, Chinese characters, and they don't ever sign anything here in "signature" format. If anything needs to be "signed" they simply use a red stamp of their name (which, considering you can buy the stamps at 100 yen shops, I'm surprised forgery isn't HUGE here).
Anyways, this week has been filled with me feeling like a total celebrity. I'm thinking my self esteem is going to take a major punch in the face when I get back to Canada and I'm not so different. So, I think for now I'll enjoy the compliments, why not? :)

Yesterday was also my last day volunteering in the High Care building on 3rd floor. I feel like every time I'm writing a blog entry I say "So today was my last day on..." Time is going by ever so quickly. But I made some really excellent friends on this ward and I'm really happy to have met them and will certainly miss them. Although, I will be back on Monday because a nurse is going to make me lunch! How nice!
The picture on the left is myself with the nurse aids I've been working with for the past two weeks: Aoyagi san, Kawakami san and Takahashi san.

As for an update re the typhoon...it didn't even really happen. We had some rain and a bit of wind but I suppose we were lucky enough to have the storm skip right over us. Excellent! Although I did get an excellent view of the Onga River when it's water level was really high. The water had raised over the small bridges that connect branches of the river. Cray cray.

Japanese food picture of the day: Goboten udon, a Fukuoka specialty. I went to lunch with Kawakami san, her daughter and her daughters friend on Friday to enjoy this delicious meal. Unfortunately enough we went during our lunch break and had to eat like mad women. I've never been so happy to burn my tongue before in my life.

Also, from last weekend: a video of the sushi restaurant and the master chef preparing our lunch.