tour guides

With a visit from mum and dad drawing ever nearer, it was very unfortunate that Karen feel sick on a Monday night, just three days before they were due to arrive.

By day two, Karen's headache and fever had got a bit worse and lead to her soming home sick from school.  I proceeded to tell her that she would be fine and it must be a bug from school that was sure to pass before mum and dad arrived on Thursday.

it's just one of those Japanese experiences you really have to try

By Wednesday night, and after another day home sick from school, Karen was showing no signs of her sickness letting up soon.  I was still, foolishly, confident she didn't need to make a trip to the hospital (people visit the hospital not a GP here).  However, by 9.30 that night I felt Karen's head, felt her fever, and made a call to a friend of ours to inquire about visiting the hospital.  She in turn phoned a school nurse she knew who had a number of questions for us.

It wasn't long before our friend was over with a thermometer.  The reading of 39.6 lead to the three of us piling into Sarah's car and making a trip to the hospital.  The after hours area was all that was open, and the Doctor we got was pretty average to say the least.  For example, he asked Sarah what medication she thought he should prescribe?!  Upshot of it all was he missed all of her symptoms that, in hindsight, screamed pneumonia!  Swollen knee joints, bad cough, fever... the list goes on.  What he did do was send us away with some medication to bring down her fever, and a little cough syrup, legend ,not!

With renewed confidence that there wasn't really anything too serious wrong with Karen, our hopes grew that she would make a recovery in the next day or so.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Thursday rolled around, and brought with it another day home sick for Karen.  That evening we got into the car and drove to Fukuoka to meet mum and dad, our first visitors from New Zealand!

They were in very good spirits having just come from a couple of weeks in England and Portugal and a night in Hong Kong.  They seemed to have taken the rain with them everywhere on their trip, and arriving in Japan was no exception having been clear until the moment they arrived and then the drive home require the windscreen wipers!

After a late night of catching up in our apartment I made it to school on time the next day, got my lesson planning out of the way, and then I popped home to pick up my "surprise guests".  Mum and dad were a big hit with the kids, and they really blew them away ("they're like Angus, but older?!").  After showing mum and dad around school, and where I have spent a good chunk of my past two years, it was time to head out and show them a little of the town we call home.

We made a pit stop home to get changed and pick up a sick, but trying to put on her brave face, Karen.  We opted to take mum and dad to Kaiten Zushi (conveyor belt sushi).  I'm pretty sure they got a real kick from it as it's just one of those Japanese experiences you really have to try.  I even think they enjoyed some of the food a lot more than they thought they would.  And, watching mum man-handle everything with her chopsticks skills (or lack there of) was worth it alone!

After lunch we made a trip to the supermarket to show them just what we have to live with each day!  If mum thought deciding what's for dinner in NZ was hard, I think she has a whole new appreciation now! hehe.  Oh, and the noodle aisle didn't fail to impress either.

That night I had arranged for a large dinner party for mum and dad so they, and our friends, could all meet.  We ended up with quite a number of attendees, about 18 in fact.  Most were fellow ALTs, but we also had some of our Japanese friends in attendance which was great.  Mum and dad got to meet almost everyone that means something special to Karen and I here in Japan.

Seiko and Hiroko even brought their kids (who Karen and I want to steal and always go on about) along which proved to be a huge hit.  They actually turned up with a couple of small bouquets of flowers for mum and dad.

I had wisely chosen Yakitori (BBQ food skewers) as their first meal as it's basically unheard of to find someone who doesn't love yakitori!  The restaurant delivered the goods, as usual, and was such a hit with mum and dad that they requested I take them again for their last meal here!

It was a great night for all in attendance, and I'm grateful to everyone who made the effort to meet mum and dad and make their night so enjoyable.  They both commented afterwards how lucky we are to have such a great group of friends over here, and we know.

On Saturday I had scheduled to take mum and dad to Nagasaki for the day, but quickly changed plans as Karen was getting worse still. We went to a different hospital, one we had been told had a doctor who speaks some English. She was very sweet to see us, and tried her best communicating in English for us, but again, Karen's pneumonia was missed! She did take a blood test, and told us to return the next day for the results. Apart from that she didn't know what was wrong, so she merely issued a different brand of medication, of the same stuff and sent us on our way.

With Nagasaki now postponed till Monday I took mum and dad on a little trip to a beautiful waterfall. Dad and I had our eyes locked on the ground the entire time snake spotting, but all to no avail. Mum meanwhile was freaking out every time we mentioned the word "snake", and was choosing her steps very carefully!

That night we went for dinner to a nice restaurant, Parsley. However, Karen barely made it through the entree course before she needed escorting to the car to lie down. We proceeded to finish our meals before taking Karen home to bed. On the way we stopped off to grab some 'pino', bite sized ice creams, to eat when we got home and watched a Ricky Gervais DVD.

After a very poor sleep from Karen who was having fits of coughing all night I took her down to the hospital to get her blood test results. It turned out the hospital was closed on Sunday, and although we had been advised to return the next day for the results, they had clearly meant the Monday. Still, there are some bonuses for not speaking the language, as the nurse on duty quickly gave up trying to explain to us that we shouldn't be there, and instead phoned the English speaking doctor who got everything opened up for us. She then informed us there was nothing out of the ordinary in the blood result. So, we asked if an x-ray could please be done. Bingo! Twenty minutes later she sat us in her room and told Karen she had pneumonia and must go to hospital that day for up to two weeks! Shit, definitely not what we had hoped for. It only got worse though as she had to go the other hospital in town, the one with no English speaking staff, as this one was full!

So, with this news, and an understandably upset Karen, we made our way home to pack a bag for her to take to hospital. Karen was completely lacking in energy already, and this news did anything but revive her spirits. We raced about doing some research about pneumonia online, before I took Karen up to the hospital to be checked in. Once we got there they quickly went through the check in process, aided greatly by the letter the kind English speaking doctor had written for us. Then Karen was put in a chair and wheeled up to her room. Once there Karen quickly set about collapsing in bed with exhaustion and falling straight to sleep. Confident she was being left in capable hands, and feeling that sleep and rest, uninterrupted, was the best thing for her, I made my way home to grab mum and dad and head south to the mud olympics festival.

We arrived at the Kashima Gatalympics at the perfect time to be able to watch all my friends competing in the "obstacle course". It involved about 30 people at a time making a dash for it across a 30m stretch of thick, thigh deep mud, under a bar, across some stepping stones, along a balance beam, over some more stepping stones, along a board walk, across another 30m stretch of mud on a wooden "surf board", along a 20m boardwalk, and then up some steps to the finish. All the objects were of course thickly caked in slimy, smelly, grey mud, which made manoeuvring somewhat tricky. From each heat only about 5 people ever finished, with most contestants falling victim to the balance beam (which made for great photos I must add!). Big ups to Nick and Matto and Caleb, who finished first, second and third in their respective heats.

As I wasn't competing this year, Matto asked me to take the reins on his SLR which I was more than happy to do! I chucked the massive lens on and shot my heart out on his great camera. It made me really realise how much I want one of my one so I can start the long road to mastery.

After we had seen a number of different events we grabbed some lunch from one of the festival snack vendors, and I again proceeded to have a laugh watching mum attempt to eat a fried egg and her noodles with her chopsticks. I have to say though, after only a couple of days she seemed to already be improving and getting the knack for it!

Once we'd seen our fair share of mud, for both this life time and the next, we made our way back to the car and then I took mum and dad to a nearby Inari shrine. The Kashima Yutoku Inari shrine is one of the three biggest Inari shrines in all of Japan, and is a very impressive giant structure. I know it's a good shrine to take "newbies" to when I still find myself blown away by it after two years in Japan, and having visited about a hundred different shrines! The red torii gates the line the path up the hill are especially cool, as are the ancient stone steps that lead up past many small shrines towards a lookout. After pictures had been taken, "peace signs" pulled, and good luck coins thrown, it was time to head back to Takeo and check in on our patient.

My heart ached for Karen as she was clearly somewhere she didn't want to be, having to miss out on fun she had looked forward to for over a year. She was so excited at having my parents over, but now was missing out on everything. If I could have swapped places I would have in an instant just to see her smiling again and know she wasn't in any pain. But as is, I had to just sit by her and try my best at comforting her in the strange place and painful time. After a while I left her, promising to return after I had taken mum and dad for dinner.

Dinner that night was tenpura (battered food, fried in a a vat of oil). The tenpura restaurant is a joint first for me, as far as restaurants in Takeo go. The staff of the tenpura restaurant are absolutely to die for. The giant man, is like a massive cuddly bear, while his hunched over older mother, is the sweetest, most humble, old lady in all of Japan. It's a tiny place, but is easily that "one" restaurant, anyone who has ever travelled dreams of finding. You feel like you are having such an authentic experience being there, and feel touched to the core by the staff. Visiting that restaurant leave me 'high on life' everytime, and never fails to bring a smile to my face. Needless to say, mum and dad agreed wholeheartedly. But, it's not just the setting and staff that make is so great, it's equally a result of the great food. The tenpura food there is so amazingly tasty it will turn anyone not already a fan of Japanese cuisine into a convert for life! After dinner, and a long, polite goodbye from our hosts, we made our way to the hospital to visit Karen before letting her get some more, much needed rest.

The final proper day of mum and dads stay was a trip to Nagasaki. We made our way down on the expressway cruising along in the 0.65L Mira at an average of about 82kph! We spent a little while navigating around the city and its many tram lanes, before finally finding a parking building in a suitable area. Then we walked along the baking roads towards the train station to find the visitors centre and get our 500yen all day tram passes.

Before you knew it mum had an excuse to do some shopping in the adjacent shopping mall, and we were searching for "a singlet for Karen"... likely story mum! haha. Very soon we had a few bits and pieces and mum had seen a little of what Japanese malls are like at least. Then it was goodbye to air con and back out to the humid hot Japanese summer.

We grabbed a tram across town heading for the Nagasaki bomb museum, park and epicentre. The three "tourist attractions" kept up busy for the next couple of hours as we took in the devastation through pictures, movie clips, objects and facts. What a world we live in where a bomb that takes the life of 70,000 civilians, is considered by many to have been "worth it", considering the alternative, Scary!

Next we made our way back across town towards another shopping mall. Mum and dad wanted to get a few things still so we played yo-yo with the floors of shops as we kept on remembering things to look for on the floors above or below. Another flying car ride home in the beast, before we took up some food to Karen and she said bye to mum and dad.

Oh, I still remember Karen's sad face as she hugged mum and tears rolled down her rosy cheeks as knew she had missed out on most things. Fingers crossed mum and dad make it over to the UK in the next year or so and we can meet up there or somewhere else. I am sure Karen will keep herself in isolation for a month prior to their visit to make sure she is fit and health and rearing to go!

For our last dinner I took mum and dad back to Yakitori Maruso, but this time being a Monday they were not very busy, and we sat at the bar right in front of where they cook the food. While I mentioned the staff at Tenpura being amazing, the staff at Maruso's are just as awesome and welcoming, but in a different way. Maruso's is a real chilled out, drinking and relaxing kind of place. The staff are very friendly and always to their best to accommodate us and our poor Japanese. The owner actually speaks a great deal of English and always seems in good spirits. He was very concerned to hear Karen was in hospital sick, and passed on his good wishes. Mum and dad gulped down the great food, as this time I was able to make sure they tried everything I knew they would like, where as the other dinner had been big platters of food shared by everyone and I hadn't seen what they had tried. They raved about the food, and dad was loving his massive shrimp on a skewer, complete with head and shell. However, he didn't fancy sucking out the brains like the owner informed us Japanese people do.

Then it was back home for our last night before hitting the sack as it was going to be an early start for us all to get to the bus station. Saying bye to mum and dad was as hard as ever, I don't think it will ever become easy, and to be honest, I don't want it to as that will mean we don't care. I had such an amazing time being able to show them around where Karen and I have been living these past two years, and teaching them things about Japan first hand. It was also just so nice being able to spend time with them, regardless of the fact we were in Japan. Time with mum and dad is something that unfortunately only happens once every year or so now. It was also very strange for Karen and I having them come to stay with us being a married couple now. I felt like I was mum racing around tidying up before Granny or Grandpa used to come over and stay in New Zealand, very surreal!

With the departure of mum and dad, the one blessing was that now I could now devote all my free time to visiting Karen and helping her feel better as I knew the hospital stay was really taking its toll on her. It's a very lonely thing to experience staying in a hospital where you don't speak the language. Still, each day I visited Karen she seemed to get a bit better each day, and by the Friday she was discharged and allowed to come home and take her antibiotics in pill form instead of a drip (which Kaz was so happy to hear as it meant no more holes in her arms where they put the needle in - by the end of the hospital stay her arms resembled bruised pin cushions!).

With Karen now at home, she was also able to shower and eat some normal food for once, as fish and pickles for breakfast, lunch and dinner isn't very appetizing, even when you're feeling on top of the world! With the internet at our fingertips we quickly learnt of the type of pneumonia Karen had and how long the recovery would take. It turned out that had the Doctors picked up on her symptoms sooner, it's very likely she wouldn't have needed a hospital stay at all. However, taking so long for it to be diagnosed coupled with the it being a strain of pneumonia callled, "walking pneumonia" ( Mycoplasma pneumoniae ), she will not be making a full recover for about three months and has to take it easy for that entire time. Trust me, that is not the news someone keen on swimming, running and keeping active wants to hear!

Karen's next concern was how much better she could be in time for our next visitors (yeah, I know, how popular are we this year!) So, with time off work arranged, Karen set about "recovering" as much energy as possible and taking it easy for the next week before the ever hyper Ali and Banks arrived!