June 23

Ok so this morning I woke up at 9am to do a load of laundry and iron my clothes. I put in my clothes and did my morning routine. I started ironing my clothes and was eating my breakfast (yogurt and juice). The iron here is a little different. They are very energy efficient and so you plug in the base of the iron and it charges up the iron. So the iron is cordless. It sounds really neat, but sometimes the iron takes a while to heat up. The first time is fast, you use it until there is no heat and then you put it back on the charger. It beeps when ready. I think this is a good idea, but it is nice to just have the heat continuously. So I get done ironing and getting ready. I go to get the clothes out of the washer and when I open it up it is still full of water. I drained it but the clothes were still wet. I think it went thru the wash cycle but it’s didn’t spin out the water. Great! So I run it through again.

It’s time to go and I go to toon’s door and knock. She says ok and comes outside. She gets outside and fumbles in her purse for her key. why isnt’ it ready? I don’t know. We get downstairs and change shoes. I wait at the door and I notice she put on her new sandles. I’m like ummm. She says she is going to buy new shoes at the school store. Ok. We start walking to the station and toon is super slow. Everytime I look back she is playing with her phone. I’m annoyed. I want to leave her ass. She walks like she has no plans and all the time in the world. She’s pretty spacey. We get to the station and I hear the train and tell her we need to catch this. No talking. I don’t know what to say.

We get to school and still no talking. I tried to use yumi’s computer but it is slow as shit so I go to the lab room. And she’s just sitting there. Chinatsu is working on her reports. Toon is playing on her phone. she comes over at 1140 to say she is going down stairs to be on the phone. i said she might want to mention that she needs to buy shoes. And she said she told chinatsu yesterday. I said maybe you should ask again, she might have forgotten. When I get into the lab I update the journal and check email. And Brandon has asked kana to make a hanko for us. We thought we would need to go to a place, but they had a catalogue to order from. Brandon’s last name, neely, when written in kanji means kind and good. Kana wrote out my first and last name. smith, sumi is clear and su is child. And kimlee, kin(m) is gold, and lee had 3 kanji: good, pear, or peach. I thought for a bit. I liked gold peach. I was debating whether or not to get my family name, but realized that my family name wouldn’t be my family name forever. So I decided to go with kimlee in kanji. Gold peach sounds fun to me!

It was now lunch time and mari and naoko came in to get Brandon and i. we start walking and I’m like where is toon. They said she already went down to the cafeteria, but I didn’t see her. I got fish, rice, and miso soup. yum. Halfway through I saw toon and mari coming from a corner of the cafeteria and then mari came to the table and toon went out. I don’t know why she didn’t just get in line. Mari thought she didn’t want to eat. She finally came back down and taka and kana helped her get food. I knew she would eat slow. Good thing she wasn’t at our table. Our table was done and decided to go up. The café was getting crowded.

We get upstairs and matsuyama sensei wanted me to come and look at his email to dr eckel. We asked him about our evaluation and he was emailing for login and password. I told him that he should email kim leadon instead. And she was also the person to talk about for the clerkship program. He said he was going to be in nc in September. Cool.

It was time to go back to the dorm to get my clothes out of the laundry. I walk as fast as I can to the station, get to sengakuji, and walk fast to the dorm. I get out clothes and hang them up and run out. I follow naoko’s directions. I told chinatsu that on Saturday naoko wouldn’t talk to me. She asked naoko to give me a map and hoped she would talk to me. It took about 10 minutes to get to the hospital. I was sweating up a storm.

We get there and meet the boss man. Saito-sensei. He kind of looks like sato-san from karate kid part 2. funny. We go change into our coats and shoes. Back to long coats and sneakers. We get back to the office and we meet miss fusako the chief of pharmacy and Suzuki-san. we actually saw him last week because he came to the university to do a lecture. His first name is kuni. The boss man doesn’t speak much English so we had three translators. Kind of. Chinatsu and kuni were good. Miss fusako not so much. They explained how many beds the hospital had and regular statistics. They have a lot of nurses.

We go to the ward and meet the nurses. I’m getting tired of toon. She’s real slow any time we walk somewhere. And the smile she gives is getting annoying. I know she’s doing it in a cutsie way. And when she doesn’t know anything she smiles that same smile. And when she introduces herself she says my name is tooooon. Really nasally. Come on now. No one knows what you say when you say it like that. Even I had trouble. And then one of us with say toon. Normally. Annoying.

We each picked a patient that we will watch have an operation. Cardiology patients. Mine is getting a CAG. Coronary angiography. They all need catheters. Japanese doesn’t have the –th- sound so they say ka-te-- te-ru. We visit my patient and he has many risk factors: smoker, dm, hyperlipidemia. We meet brandon’s pt, but toon’s is no where to be found. Toon’s been really quiet all day. Moreso than normal. We go back up the nurses station for a meeting and meet dr araki. He kind of has a lisp, but his English is good, but very quiet. Hard to hear sometimes. We meet the patients again to tell them about medication. Then It’s about that time and we head back to the bosses office. Brandon and I joked earlier that it was the like the boss at the end of a level in a video game. Kuni bought us green tea or coffee. I asked for the sweetest one and got the gold coffee boss. The boss got the silver boss espresso. And he even pointed to the can and said boss! And smiled. It was funny. Boss by the way is a coffee brand. They had some questions about things in America. Then he told us about dinner the next night. Everyone always asks if you drink alcohol. Everyone has to explain that Brandon does not drink and that he doesn’t like it. I of course do. And they are like ok. They don’t even wait to ask until you go to a restaurant or bar. It is just a generally conversation piece. Everyone here is big on drinking beer. Interesting.

We leave the hospital and we ask toon what she is doing. I asked if she wanted to go home or back to the university. she says she wants to go to the dorm because she has a headache. I showed her directions on how to get home. Chinatsu, b, and I went to the station and went back to school. Everyone already ate so we went out and started walking down daimon st. on the way we started talking about toon. I told him why I was getting tired of her. And he was equally pissed especially because of the long long wait for her to try on make up. It was rude and ridicoulous. Why shop for something that you can buy at home. Brandon said it was ok that I wanted to get my collar because that is something I can only get here. It’s different. That really wound him up. And I completely understand. That was bullshit. You don’t shop like that when there are 5 other people waiting on you to finish.

We went to dinner at Miami garden. We usually passed it by because the pizza was so expensive, but we saw they had a nice pasta selection. We went inside and went to the 2nd floor and walked down the spiral staircase only to find there was a door to the first floor from outside. And we asked the guy for an English menu and he just asked if we wanted smoking. We said no and we went to the 3rd floor. The menu had English under the Japanese. Yes! I got a soy sause based pasta with tuna. Yum! I love soy sauce! We kept talking and said that she was not allowed to travel with us. That would be awful. We want to go back to ueno and ginza but Brandon doesn’t want her to go with us. I don’t really want her with us either. She just slows us down.

We go the convenie and get some anko pancakes. We go back to school to research Kyoto and talk with akiyoshi sensei. He showed us his hanko and it has four kanji. A-ki-yo-shi. When separate a-means nothing, ki means fire, yo is woman, shi is child but when aki is together it means fall or autumn, and yoshi means love or like. So his name means fall in love. That is really cool. He said that chinatsu means “1000 summers.” And we added “of the ninja.” It was after 10 when we left. I needed to head back to take a shower not so crowded. Naoko even came in when I was there and didn’t say a word. She’s so weird. I was looking over the gift page and remembered that we need to bring something for saito-sensei because he is taking us out to dinner. I call Brandon to ask him to bring a notebook, and we talked some more about toon. we just don’t understand. Oh well. It’s late. Oyasumi nasai.