JAPANEXILE

September 25th - shortly after returning from the Sakura nursery Craig was feeling pretty damn rotten, as he had been for the past 12 hours or so. Originally we had put this down to the henious overeating over the weekend, and coincidentally I wasn’t feeling too hot either so it made sense. However, very correctly, Craig diagnosed himself with a problem with his appendix whilst sitting on the toilet no less. And so off to the Hospital he went for a blood test to confirm this.

3 hours later. Craig returns with a confirmed case of an acute appendicitis. This time I volunteer to come along with him to Kyokai Hospital in Abuta for his likely surgery to remove the enflamed appendix. And so then for the next several hours we play the waiting game. Which as you may expect isn’t particularly fun, especially if you are Craig and in quite considerable pain. It seemed inexplicable why we had to wait considering the Hospital was empty as far as I could tell, not nearly as busy and dramatic as TV had taught me. Luckily I was able to pass the time by attempting to document the adventure through photography. Eventually after 2 hours of waiting Craig goes in for his surgery, whilst Yuko, myself and Mr Omougiri go out for a curry burger to pass the time - leaving Karaoke King to watch the fort outside the operating theatre.

9.40pm. The doctor finally comes out and walks us through the procedure he has just performed. Apparently the enflamed appendix was impressively large, the largest he had had to remove infact, so suitably impressed I continued my photo diary of the night and asked to take a picture, internal organs are always a good thing to have a picture of for the scrap book. We saw Craig briefly after the surgery and had a few final photos before leaving him to sleep (or try to)

The recovery - I ended up visiting Craig each day in the Hospital, fitting it around my busy work schedule (Ha!) From what he told me it was extremely difficult to sleep for the fist few days due to the pain. Even so he seemed to be of fairly high spirits. Must have been the effect of the suppository pills he had to administer to himself! HA! He must have set a record for the number of visitors a day however, as almost everyone from the Board of Education came to visit, not to mention many many people from Toya. All of who came bearing gifts Craig had neither the desire nor ability to eat at first, so by the end of the week quite a substantial collection of snack foods had amassed.

So, any effect on me? Well work was slightly tougher without Craig to back me up, its a big confidence boost when there is at least one other person who understands what you are saying. But I managed, same for the living on my own. Although then again I’m used to spending time at home alone. Craig came home on Wednesday morning (October 2nd) but has yet to rejoin the workforce. So I’m still working solo for the moment. Other than that its business as usual once again!

23rd September - Our Saturday morning was to be spent being the token white guys at the Biennial Toya Sculpture Festival. Being a biennial event the Board Staff had quite frequently been saying how lucky we were. Normally this would be quite a truthful thing to say, but in all honesty, I’m not much of an art fan.

The event was being held at the Sogo Centre, the day before we had been helping transform the lobby into a lobby with some sofas and artwork, although somehow I hadn’t noticed the actual sculpture exhibition room, the entrance to which was cunningly hidden behind a desk. I’ll admit some of the sculptures were quite impressive. And even more impressively in my opinion was that many of the sculptures were from pretty far afield, with the winner coming from Iran. Our main job for the day was mainly to be the token Gaijin. Serving drinks to the mayor, the prize winners, and other important people who had been invited for the opening ceremony.

The art viewing only lasted for 30minutes, and the rest of the day was then spent lunching and drinking in the sun, with a little Tea Ceremony and traditional Japanese festival activities thrown in for good measure. Craig and I tried our hand at both rice cake making and the tea ceremony. The latter being overly complicated and the former a lot of fun! Any way, little else to say, photos can speak a thousand words.