One Year After Returning to the USA

I am still recovering financially from the 2 years in Japan. There were no more ESL classes to teach, the bad economy here crushed Japan. The JPY went from around Y120 to the dollar to about Y80 JPY and lower. Just by moving to Japan, I took a 20% pay cut from my pension. It will be awhile before I can recover.

In April of this year, 2011, I discoverd I had throat cancer.  It was a time wrapped up in uncertanty and fear. I got Radiation Treatments and Chemo Therapy July thru August. I still am not sure if I have beat it this time, I go back into the VA Hospital later this month for the first of what I figure will be many visits to check on any possible problems. I am happy to the extent that I don’t have to deal with Japanese docctors and hospitals. The trasition from daily conversation to medical Japanese is quite difficult.  I am also grateful that in the USA, the doctors will inform the patient of the exact status of progress, forward or backward. A terminal cancer patient in Japan can ask the question, “How soon will I be getting out of the hospital?”. The doctor will quite politely tell him, “Soon, very soon.”

Meanwhile, I continue the battle here, thankful that I am 100% connected to the Veterans Administration for my medical care, and I have no co-pay for the treatment I am able to recieve. Having been disabled for over 10 years, it would have been catastrophic to try to come close to even paying for a part of the care. I get top notch care, state of  the art tools and treatments, and I feel fortunate.

Throwing in the towell

I have been here for 2 years now, in Sendai, Japan.  I have done what I could to get my life back to what is was 10 years ago when I left, thinking I was dying from hepatitis C. Didn’t die, but didn’t get better either. Now, I realize that the medicines that I need are not available here, and there are no good substitutes for what I need. I am returing to the real world soon, to the Central Coast of Calfironia to start with. I will take my dog, Frank, and I will try to get things started on a new life, once again starting from nothing, or nearly so.  I figure this will be the last time I will do this, I am getting too old and my health is not what it used to be. Going to go back where it is comfortable, affordable and I can be understood, not just by the language, but by the thinking.  I don’t think that East, ever meets West.

Fracture Follow up

I have recovered about 3/4 of the use of my hand, it is still weak and painful. I take a lot of ibprophen, asperin, etc, I like to alternate between the different analgesics, especially after the Celabrex revalations. My dog, Loretta,  broke her toe, so it hasn’t been a good year for skelatal preservation in my house. She can’t run and play. This gets her pretty frustrated, and frustrates Frank, the other dog.   It is the first week of the month, and it is the only real time that my wife is busy with her part time job. I am having a hell of a time getting my tax papers together, my financial guy can fax them to me, no problem, I won’t have to pay anythin one them, thanks to the buttheads that are in control of the government and money has lost most of mine. But it is paperwork, and I need it. Arggh!

Happy Frackin New Year!

     I started out the year with good intentions.  I was gonna practice my Japanese writing, study and swear off Mafia Wars on Facebook.  Well, on Jan 2, I took my dog for a walk, pretty much sober, when I stepped on a patch of snow that was not snow, but hard packed, wet marble slippery ice. Just my right foot made contact with the evil stuff.  At this precise moment, Frank,, my dog, decided to bolt for an un-peed bush.  I went stratight down, crushing my right ulna in a compression fracture. I knew as soon as I hit, I had broken it. For a week, I didn’t do much, mostly sleeping. Just recently, I have stated to type again, I figure it is good physical therapy for my wrist.  It still causes pain, discomfort and logistic problems when it comes to doing things.  Frank is still alive. It was actually my fault for not wearing the right shoes and not being careful. With all that spare time?  I played a lot of Mafia Wars. If you don’t play, stay away! If you do play, add me to your mafia!

    Next year, I hope has a January in it.

So That Was Summer?

Japan is known by all Japanese as the only country in the world that has four distinct seasons.  Since I have lived other places, I can be pretty sure that this is not quite true.  We just finished what was supposed to be summer.  It was so wet, the crops rotted in the fields, the cost of produce was nearly double, or more for most vegetebales.  Floods ripped through towns killing people, washing out brideges, expressways and drownding beer gardens.  It wasn’t cold exactly, but it was wet, humid and the sunshine did lack some of the qualitites that you associate with it.  (that warm toasty feeling, that wonderful thing it does by getting things to dry out, prevent mildew from growing, you know, sunshine tasks that you kind of take for granted.)

 

It did get hot and humid though.  I did survive with only electric fans and uchiwa and sensu to prevent melting.  I admit, I did go to the shopping mall a few times, I did spend a little extra time just standing around department stores, but all in all, it wasn’t that bad. 

 

Maybe we aren’t in the middel of Global Warming.  Maybe we should call it Solar Soaking.

Update and progress report

I have other blogs going on, the castaway link is pretty much a rough draft for what I will want to put here. I have underestimated my energy and my obligations and until such time as I am able to consolodate and rewrite, please visit and leave a comment. Currently adjusting to a new environment and am burning the candle from the middle.
Tony

http://goingsenile.blogspot.com/

http://castaway-hepkess.blogspot.com/

Settling In

Moving back to Japan is much like getting into a Japanese bath.  You burn the hell out of your privates, your back and all places that had been submerged up to the point your reacted and said, "Hang On!".  One of the first things I noticed was that I had forgotten my spoken Japanese.  Not all of it, just the parts that were necessary for communication.  My ear for Japanese was still pretty good, I mean, I know that people are speaking Japanese, but I am just not real sure what they are talking about all the time. 

 

I was going to go to the free Jap-go lessons at the local community center.  I eagerly awaited the appointed day, April 10th, dusted off old textbooks, got some of the ones that I figured that I’d be using, and even studied to try to get used to real Japanese. I got up early, showered, put on clean levis and headed off to the testing session.  I had filled out the application forms, (or thought I had anyway), and sat in a really big group of foreigners.  An MC got up and announced that if you had never spoken any Japanese in your life, you would go to group I.  If you had studied Japanese before, you should go to group II.  If you could speak Japanese and you really wanted to study hard, go to group III.  I packed up my dictionary and headed for group III.

 

When I got there, they played this tape really, really fast.  They wanted me to identify missing particles from the sentences that this guy was reading.  The guy doing the reading had a mouth full of sushi rice and he had been drinking coffee.  I probably got 5 out of about 50. I was stunned.  I had been to this level before and couldn’t believe that I had lost that much ability.  I had resigned myself to dropping back to a lower level when one of the teachers I had studied with over 10 years ago came up to intervew me.  I had never liked her before, it always sounded like she had a mouth full of sushi rice and she had been drinking sho-chu all day.  I could never understand a friggin word she said, and the 10 years without speaking Japanese didn’t help me one bit.  She was overly helpful explaining that I needed to go back to "Go".  She refused to listen to my pitiful attempts to explain myself and my situation, and when I found that she was the chief teacher for group III, I knew that I’d not be joining in the festivities with her even if I did qualify. 

 

I went home that day, and disenchanted and disappointed, I tried to figure out what had gone wrong.  I had 4 days to do some serious study, then go back and try to find a level that I fit into.  I thought about it and I decided that, "Perhaps "FREE" lessons were too expensive.".  I have decided to spend a lot more time working on my Jap-go by myself, with friends.  I will wait till the next time the "Free" lessons roll around, and if I pass the test and wind up in a class with the chief teacher for group III, I will probably just give up on the classes and continue to do what I have been doing.

I have Escaped!

I packed up my dogs, my computer and what clothes I figured would be warm, got o a plane on December 17th, 2009 and left for Japan.  11 hours, give or take a few, I was on the ground in Narita, trying to find my bags and my dogs.  I got them, and got out of there.  I am now in Sendai, Japan.  It is cold, a bit of a shock from leaving Califronia, but the politics are all left behind, at least the ones that were giving me headaches, anyway.  I missed the party when Bush finally got dumpped, but I guess that fits, I arrived about the time he got elected, and I left when he finaly got the boot.  Maybe I should have left in 2004? 

I Think I’d Hide

The idiocy continues.  You know, if it was just the little blurbs on Letterman about "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches",  the whole thing would be funny.  This man, however had done his damndest to flail, splay and filet the USA.  This man has done more to hurt the USA than the terrorists that he claims to be hunting. 

 

I cannot believe that this man is still in office.  I cannot beleive that he has not hidden away to hide his face in shame.

Legacy

President GW Bush is very concerned with his legacy, the way that the history books, the movies and the records will determine what his mark on history will be.  He says that it isn’t the polls, the headlines, but history that will prove him as a great leader.

 

Bush doesn’t realize that he is the first President of the United States who has ever had everything he has ever done, from the bumbling remarks to the great mistakes, to every single one of his appointees and what they have said marked down in countless blogs, stories, and remarks.  His legacy isn’t going to have anything to do with history books; it is already marked indelibly on the eternity of the internet. 

 

Georgie Dubbya, welcome to your legacy and the latest strokes from a keyboard!