People actually do this for fun?? and my first day on H8F

Friday night I experienced a side of Japan that I'd never seen before: Karaoke at night and the aftermath the following morning. I'm going to have to say I was mostly coerced into going into Fukuoka city Friday night for a night on the town with some hospital staff. We went to a bar in the Tenjin area and I had a great time. The story turns shady when at 1:30am I thought we were going to make the 45 minute drive back into Iizuka....and I was wrong. We moved our party to a karaoke joint to sing our hearts out (including the circle of life - essential) annnnnd we slept there. So I ended up with a nice and cozy spot on the floor of our small room. We also needed to be out at 6am because that's all the time we paid for. So after roughly 3 hours of sleep we walked our sore throats out of there. The best part of all this is that as we made the walk [of shame] back to our car, we weren't the only ones on the street. The city was cluttered with people in their yesterday clothes making the "my head is killing me" face at ungodly hours of the morning. Apparently, this is just a thing that people do in Japan....plain and simply because they're crazy. Obviously. There's no chance I could keep up with that here.

Note to self: do not ever....ever....sleep in a Karaoke room ever again. Or, if you do...bring an emergency sleepover kit.

Actually...maybe just don't do it.

Sunday I went our for sushi with Olga, a previous patient I'd met in the hospital. It was an interesting party made of her unbelievably cute daughter Maria, her 4 month old baby and her mom who is visiting from Russia to help care for the baby while Olga was in the hospital. Watching a blonde haired blue eyed Russian woman ordering sushi in Japanese, arguing with her mom in Russian, speaking both languages to Maria and working on English/Japanese with me was something I'm sure I won't experience again. What craziness. The sushi was UNREAL (how could it not be? Honestly.) and after we went to Aeon, a shopping center to take purikura pictures (my fav!). Maybe sometime in the next two months we'll head to the Fukuoka beach for a picnic :)

My first day in the general surgery ward was pretty crazy. I met the staff including Shinga san, the head nurse, as well as Mizota san and Igeta san, the nurse aids. I worked with Mizota san...and hoLY did this woman put seven extra helpings of "go get em" in her morning matcha or something? She works like the WIND [bullseye (toy story 2....I hope someone got that reference)] and I can barely keep up with her! It's been pretty busy. The highlight of the day, one of the patients there was moved from the High Care ward, where I was last week. She remembered me and gave me an entire mango (which, considering the price of fruit here that's a huge deal). I was the happiest, bless her.

After shodou and English class today I'm seriously exhausted. And after all of this travel commotion working hard to find and book myself a plane ticket from Fukuoka to Tokyo before heading back to Toronto (going home already?! noooo) has left me sitting at my desk at 12:26 am. Yikes. So much for the plan of getting a good nights rest tonight.

Bugger.

Coffee is the answer? Missing my Tim Hortons big times.