happylife

See a doctor

As my flu seemed to get worse, I saw a doctor this afternoon. When I went into the hospital, the doctor was unfortunately out and I had to wait for him coming back for about one hour. And there were several patients waiting for him before me. After nearly two hours, eventually I could see the doctor. He listened to me with his stethoscope a few times and gave me some medicines. It took only five minutes and then I got some medicines. I have no medical insurance cards now because I'm not the resident of Japan. So I had to pay the full charge. It was 4,810 yen! I think It's too expensive for the five minute diagnosis and some medicines.

Sweet buns

In Japan there are many kinds of sweet bans sold at bakery stores or convenience stores. This is a "melon pan" which has been very popular in Japan for more than 50 years. I don't know why we call it "melon." It has no melon taste or melon flavor. This sweet bun has crispy surface and its inside is very soft, but it seems to have no relation with a melon. There some revised types of "melon pan": with strawberry flavor or chocolate chips. This picture is the edition with chocolate chips which I like best.

The lost day

My flu got worse because I drank last night. It was afternoon when I awoke today and I have stayed on the bed all day long. My throat is sore, my brain is dizzy because of fever, and I have no appetite. I did nothing creative or productive today. I regret to have drunken too much last night, and I think I have to care much about my health. I'm not young enough so that I can drink and eat as much as I like.

THE DA VINCI CODE

I'm now reading "THE DA VINCI CODE" by Dan Brown. As the Japanese translated version was three times as expensive as the original book, I got of course the original book written in English. When I started reading it, I felt it very difficult because it contains too much unknown words; almost every line has one unknown word and every page has a French phrase. But while I kept reading it without mention about the unknown words, I got accustomed to reading a book full of unknown words by guessing the blank spaces. It is rather enjoyable for me to create my original story from an antique documents. I think this way of reading is not bad to improve my reading skill because it helps me to read many books for a short time. When I was a student, I was obliged to look up a dictionary on every unknown word, but it was boring and I often lost the story itself. So, I'm reading this book using a dictionary as little as possible.

The doll festival

March 3 is the day of the doll festival in Japan. It is a traditional festival for girls. From a few weeks before the festival, this kind of dolls are displayed in every home where there is a girl. My house has no girls, but my mother displays these dolls every year. Although it is a very tiny pair of king and queen, in some house they display a full set of dolls on a special tiered stand with a red cloth. The number of dolls comes to more than ten or twenty: the king and queen, their servants, and their furniture. It is said and believed that if they miss clearing up the dolls on March 3, the girl cannot marry. My mother doesn't mind the superstition and keeps displaying these dolls until April. So, although I am a boy, I don't marry.

Spam mails

Every day and night, I receive more than hundred spam mails such as, "Enlarge your penis" or "Get ROLEX for a reasonable price" or "Ensure your Citibank account." They are not only garbage but sometimes harmful for me because they sometimes contain virus files and if I just open the file, my PC would be infected. Of course I'm using virus protection and spam assassin systems, still some mails reach my mail box. So I have to check them and decide how to deal with them; delete or save. Until a few years ago, my decision process was simple, that is if the title was written in English I could delete them without even read the title because I didn't possibly receive an English email. But now, I have some English speaking friends and some times they send me an email in English. So, I have to look through all the English emails most of which are boring and harmful spam.

Food cost in Japan

It is often said that the food cost in Japan is very high. That is natural because Japan is a small island and we have to depend on the imported foods from other countries to satisfy the huge demand. But nowadays, as far as the cost of eating out goes, I feel it is getting lower. For example, thinking about the cheapest fast food, a slice of pizza costs $1.2 including tax in Vancouver. For the same price, we can have a bowl of white noodle with soup in Tokyo. As for the cost in restaurants, I think we can enjoy dishes more reasonably in Tokyo than in Vancouver, because we don't have to pay tips and because the consumption taxes are much cheaper in Tokyo. As the food material costs are still expensive in Tokyo, I guess the restaurant business in Tokyo is facing a great hardship.

Digital diary

Apart from this English blog, I have been keeping a Japanese diary for more than ten years. A few days ago, I converted all my diary data into MovableType, one of the most popular blog system. As my old diary was in the format of digital text files, it was not difficult to convert it. And now I can search whole of my ten-year-diary with any keywords I like. It is very interesting. For example, by choosing one of my friends' name I can read the diary of the day when I first met him or her. I can also research what I did today of last year or ten years ago. Although each of my diary is plain, light and boring, the ten-year accumulation of them is very interesting and effective at least for me.

Power yoga

Recommended by my friend, I decided to start power yoga. A few days ago, I got an instruction DVD. It says that power yoga is a new type yoga excercise. It is a combination of traditional, static yoga excercise and dynamic stretching excercise. As it is effective both to the body and mental, and it is popular among the New York celebrities, its popularity is heated up in Japan. Anyway, I tried to do it and failed. There are two reason for that. One is that my body is so inflexible that I can't even hold my ankle and I can't take the basic position. The other is that the ceiling of my house in Tokyo doesn't have enough height and when I try to take the standing position of stretching my body, my fingers hit the ceiling. There seem to be a lot of obstacles in front of me, but I won't give up. I'm thinking about making my body flexible enough so that I can touch my floor in a standing position. And after I come back to Vancouver, I'm going to start power yoga seriously.

The best treatment

This morning, when I woke up, I felt sore throat. It was the first cold I had in these several years. I was shocked and I didn't want the cold get worse. So, I went down to the kitchen to gargle with salt water, had a cold medicine and came back to my bed to sleep more. It was about six o'clock and since then I had been sleeping until dusk. Although my sleep was interrupted once by a phone call from my friend, I was sleeping for more than eight hours today. And now, my cold seems to have gone away. I believe sleeping is the best treatment for a cold.