Packing: the ruin-er of all things happy.

I highly dislike packing.

Wait, two bags? How much weight? Is this weight per bag? Oh no...that's for my second flight so I'll have eaten theoe treats already. Hold on...did I check in yet? I've got too many bags! I'm going to need to send things home. How much is this? How much will it cost me if I go over weight? Ohhhh crap I forgot about what I'm wearing TO the airport. I haven't even packed my toiletries yet! Okay, I'm starting again.

...seriously. This can go on forever.

Packing is an art and am I a child clenching a crayon in their fist drawing anywhere but inside the lines.

Sigh. Where is my mother when I need her most? She's a packing superhero! Regardless, I have less than 24 hours left in Japan to figure this all out. I fly out of Fukuoka airport tomorrow morning at 9:45 am and then out of Narita airport in Tokyo at 7:15pm making my way over to Los Angeles then Toronto Pearson bound!
I'll be in transit for just over 26 hours but arriving the same day only 4 hours after I left Narita. Holy jet lag batman. My next few days will be spend in the strange world of airports and airplanes where time doesn't really exist. Here's to a final sushi dinner with friends tonight and all the red wine that Singapore airlines will give me.

Cheers, see you in Canada!

p.s I have no explanation for the lacking of the blogging this month. It's been a roller coaster. I plan on more posts upon my return to Canada. I can't even blog in the airport....I have no keyboard. :| aaaaaanyways.

Typhoon rolls in to steal the show

Alright Mr. Typhoon, Typhoon san, I've got some things that you absolutely need to hear...

How dare you rush in today, like all typhoons do, and rain on my going away/leaving party final weekend in Japan? Who do you think you are? I had plans tomorrow night to attend a summer garden party with over 600 people, including president CEO, ASO kaicho. I was then going to go to a HCU farewell party at a local pub followed by an amazing Saturday at Fukuoka beach and Fukuoka Tower.
Alas, the typhoon has spoken and all of the things have been cancelled due to the impending rainy/windy doom.

I'm wondering if my flight from Fukuoka will be cancelled, causing me to miss my flight home to Toronto from Tokyo, overstay my VISA and be imprisoned in a Japanese jail as an illegal immigrant. Wouldn't that be a story!

Let's think of Olivia and her leaving plans for one minute and decide not to hit Fukuoka city, okay??

Typhoons are so selfish!

Update re video of my JR trip: after spending 17 hours (probably not exaggerating) slicing, piecing, cutting and editing, the video remains unable to save on my wonderful thing that is a laptop and I can't put it up online. (どうして!?)
I'm going to try again with Ken's mac and see if I have any luck. Sorry!

Eeeps! Back to packing now.
To give this aesthetically unpleasing blog entry some flare: my packing song of choice. On repeat.

Hoowwwwwwww stronggggg does the typhoon blow?

Woah, wait.....did you say only 9 more days in Japan?

YUP. It's true. I know, I can't believe it either.
9 more days in this wonderful country that I've called my home for the past 5.75 months.
With that being said, I have SO many things to update my blog about, including my week-long trip across Japan to mount Fuji, my leaving party, working a new ward and interesting Japanese things I feel should be mentioned (as well as a guided tour of TRIAL, aren't you excited?)

Turns out I'm...really...busy lately. I'm working on a video of my trip to upload here asap. Keep an eye out!
We'll talk soon.

No sleep is okay.....I'll sleep on the plane home.

Short and sweet, need to pack and sleep.

Here's to a short blog entry to let my readers (are you still following my adventure?) know what I'll be up to for the next few days.

Tomorrow morning bright and early (well - 5pm Toronto time :P) at 6am I'm starting my journey across Japan to end up on top of Mount Fuji.
I'll be making my way to Hiroshima, taking the slow and steady Japan Railways route. 6.5 hours later I should arrive from Shin Iizuka. There I'll take in some sights and meet up with Matthew, the Hiroshima volunteer.
Unfortunately I've got to pack up my things the next morning and make my way to Osaka, another 5.5 hours on the JR. It's a great thing that my kobo reader was sat on by yours truly only two days ago - would have been nice to read the 100 classic novels that came with it...sigh.

Friday, a new day, a new city - I'm going to Nagoya!

Saturday myself, Tom, James and Simeon (volunteers from Nagoya) are making our way over to Mount Fuji for the craziest climb of our lives! It's going to be only a couple chilling degrees when we make it to the summit! :D

I'll be flying back (can't handle any more JR-ing) August 20th to start my first day in the emergency room and my last two weeks in Iizuka.

Here's to not getting lost. Olivia, you can do this! Ganbaru!
Catch you on the flip side guys, watch out for my next update post!

My Japanese culture-filled weekend

It's happened again, I get to a blog about the weekend when it is now the next weekend! Bah, the life of a busy volunteer! Sorrrryyyyy. This blog entry will be a fun one - videos!

Iizuka Hanabi - Fireworks festival!
Friday August 2nd was the fireworks festival in Iizuka along the Onga River. I went, in yukata of course, and the works totally blew me away! They were incredible! Take a look here at a few videos I took. :D
Notice: my sounds of shock and amazement. haha.

 

 Saturday morning I had the chance to experience another wonderful aspect of Japanese culture; a somen noodle festival! At the festival at a nearby shrine in Iizuka, we picked up and ate cold somen noodles directly from a long tube made from bamboo that ran about 30 feet! They gave us sauce and wasabi and ginger to dip our noodles in and it was all you can eat (well, with some restriction I suppose) for 60 yen (~60 cents!) Unbelievable. And delicious!
Check out my video, the place was packed! They even had pink noodles, just for fun!

More pictures just for fun:

Look at the rice field outside my house go! Go rice goooo!!! :) :)

Also - whhattssss up? Just treated myself to this unbelievable flavour of haaden-dazs icecream. My question is...WHY don't we have this flavour in Canada?

 delish.

Doctor Hurry!

So far in my volunteering experience at the hospital, I've only heard rumours of a call over the hospital PA system that goes by the name of  "Doctor Hurry". Essentially, it's a call that's made in an emergency situation that calls every single doctor hospital-wide to the patient in need. It's sort of like an "All hands on deck,  now, and fast!!" call. And I've been wanting to witness one since March.

Well today was that day. I was walking about the ward of the High Care Unit going about my daily work when I'd almost missed it. I just picked up the fact that the music had stopped playing and barely made out at the end of the message played over the PA: "Doctor Hurry. Doctor Hurry." By the time I'd even realized that the message had played and turned my head towards the nurse station, all the doctors that were in the HCU...were gone.

It was AMAZING! I couldn't believe that they'd even heard the message let alone got their butts out the door that fast! What an amazing display of medical care! The Japanese are so intense. Do we have our own Doctor Hurry call in Canada? I'm not even sure, but now I need to find out. And if we don't...I'm starting one.

 Now I'm intrigued and have got to see the Doctor Hurry call from the finish line, rather than to just catch a glimpse of white coats hurrying around the corner from the starting gate.

The operating room....explained.

I have been keeping up with my Wednesday and Friday afternoon observational visits ("kengaku") in the hospital OR (it is wayyyy to exciting to not go). So far, I have been fortunate enough to have a front row seat during unbelievable surgeries from open heart aortic valve replacements, to knee replacements, to skin grafting, eye lens replacement and liver tumor removal. And I can't get enough. I've been able to make myself at home there, poking in and out of different rooms to catch the most exciting bits, and I'm quite familiar with most of the staff. Now, I go directly to the supply room, which has access to 9 of the 13 operating rooms and small observation windows into each room. I walk around and check out what's going on and pick an operation I'd like to sit in on, often moving between rooms. Now that I've been observing twice a week for about 4 months, I know what to expect in each room...

#1 - Orthopedics. Usually upper/lower limb plate placement or laproscopic knee surgery.
#2 - ENT. Commonly thyroid tumor or nasal cartilage removal
#3 - Eyes. Cataract surgery, eye lens replacement (one of the coolest things I've seen in my life. Here's a link to the surgery on youtube if you're interested! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZNtquypg_M)
#4 - There is no room #4. 4 in Japanese is "shi" which also means "death". Reasonable then that rooms hospital-wide aren't associated with "shi".
#5 - Orthopedics. Usually knee replacement surgery, hip replacement or re-aligning broken clavicles and humerus....es. Humeri?
#6 - Gynecology. Often laparoscopic hysterectomy or ovariectomy or ovarian cyst removal.
#7 and #8 - the variety rooms. Lots of different cases in these rooms. Often emergency cases or less invasive surgeries.
#9 - Internal organs. Pancreas, Liver, Colon, Intestines and Kidneys.
#10 - Brain. Shunt placements, hemorrhage draining and tumor removal etc.
#11 - Heart. Valve replacements, coronary artery bypass surgeries and even total aortic replacements.
#12 - Usually laparoscopic; lungs and gallbladders, or endoscopic; esophagus and duodenal surgery.
#13 - Variety.
#14 - doesn't exist. Also, there are no rooms that end in the number 4.
#15 - Variety.

I definitely surprised Ogata san, the OR head nurse, when I knew what was going on in each room despite not being able to read any of the Kanji. :)

I'd sleep in the OR if I could. That way I'd never have to leave.