Bowling, Swimming and Onsen

Last Friday we were invited to bowling by our mentor Oka-san. I was thinking it was just going to be Lucy and I with her until we discovered there was 150 people from the hospital going and we had to hand out the prizes! When we arrived we were given a bento box and a bottle of green tea- yum... The bento box was mainly fish and other strange looking things so i didnt eat much of that and the green tea was changed for a bottle of coke. I just cant get used to drinking it , especially cold. I was put in a team with two people i had never met before and three children. One of them was constantly climbing all over me as well. Unfortunately i suck at bowling but i did win a prize but possibly for the worst score. There was a also a man who was the spitting image of Robert Downey Jr! Overall it was a good night and was a change from sitting in and eating!

On the saturday we went to the outdoor pool across from our apartment to cool down. It was mainly filled with children but it was so good to relax and escape from the heat. At night we headed to the cinema to watch The Great Gatsby which was amazing! I was really excited to see it after reading the book in 6th year for my English exam. It was so glamorous and amazing!

This weekend Nagasaki had a weather warning for a typhoon which was due to hit Saturday morning so we were expecting to be stuck indoors all weekend. So on Friday night after work we headed up to the onsen, Fukunoyu on Mt Inasa to treat ourselves. We mainly went for the buffet which is amazing and we filled ourselves with every fried food you could imagine. After we couldnt eat anymore of that we stuffed our faces with ice cream and cakes covered in white and milk chocolate from the fountain. It was soo amazing, we literally ate till we could no longer move. Then we headed into the onsen to relax and got home around midnight.


I was fully prepared to spend the whole of Saturday in bed watching movies listening to the storm outside however when i woke Saturday morning the weather was perfectly fine and i couldn't deal with wasting it in bed. I decided to head to the shopping mall just for a wander around and ended up buying myself a dress, woops. Later that night Lucy and i headed over to Hamanomachi which is the covered shopping arcade and i bought myself another top. We found an irish cafe/bar where we had a couple cocktails and i finally had macaroni. It wasnt quite the same as my usual macaroni from The Swan but it was macaroni all the same and to make it even better it was fried! Afterwards we took a wander round Shianbashi and discovered Nagasaki's nightlife which we thought was non existent!

Sunday the rain began to start and so far i have been out to the mall and bought myself two new pairs of shoes, i just cant stop spending! Also i have been to the Italian for lunch.. i like to treat myself! After spending most of the weekend out i had to do all my cleaning and tidying up today boo :( This week i have a home visit with a nurse which i am looking forward to and another operation on friday so i shall write about those both next week!

Ward 5E.

I need to stop leaving it so long to write my blogs because now i have too much to write!
Well i finished up on ward 6E two weeks ago, they were lovely but i was glad to move on. I met a really lovely patient, Matsumoto san, on that ward who i took to the shop sometimes. She told me how she loved Nicholas Cage and that she loved the song Pretty Woman. She spoke a little bit of English and liked to ask questions about the UK as she is scared of flying and has never visited. Whenever i cleaned her room she would put sweets in my pocket, she was cute. There was one nurse on this ward who whenever she seen me just giggled and i have no idea why but she was nice all the same.
Last week i was back on ward 5E which is the first ward i worked on in the hospital as we have now made a full rotation of all the wards. This ward is definately my favourite although it isn't all that busy either. A new healthcare worked started and she didnt know i was a volunteer and thought i just worked there. I cant quite remember her name but she was nice and very shy!. She kept coming up to me and asking for things to do, asking for my permission to do things an most of the time i had absolutely no idea what she was saying to me. I had to explain to her i was a volunteer and that she should ask Shioya san but she still continued to follow me around everywhere. On Monday i will be back on Ward 6W but i will spend my last week in the hospital on 5E which is good.
Whilst i was working in the nursery last week it was really hot so the teachers decided to take the kids outside to play in their paddling pool. We all went out to play with them and i was looking forward to having a chance to cool down until when i dipped my feet in the water to discover it was HOT! 30 degrees outside and they are playing in a hot paddling pool, honestly Japanese people seem to love being hot.

Ward 6E and this weeks activites.

Iam officially half way through my time here in Japan and also probably about 3 stone heavier! For some reason i thought i would come to Japan and magically eat healthily and love vegetables and exercising. Unfortunately none of this has happened, i still love mcdonalds , crisps and chocolate and i still hate vegetables and exercising!  However i am trying some new foods, for instance last night i was ever so adventurous and healthy and instead of pasta and cheese for dinner i ate a chicken salad, followed by an ice cream ooppsss. Ill get there eventually!

 So unfortunately June is rainy season in Nagasaki, it is roughly 27degrees most days but about 85/90% humidity so it is soo hot in the hospital. For some reason there is never any air conditioning on in the patients rooms only in the nurses station so i try hang about in there as much as i can! This ward which i started last week is the only ward i have not yet worked on and everyone is really lovely here. Every ward i have been on so far has a team briefing in the mornings at which point i normally stand and day dream because i have no idea what is going on and it doesnt really include me as i just follow people around who give me jobs. On my first day on 6E, last monday, they began their team briefing in the morning and i went off into my usual day dream, probably thinking about food and next thing i know all the nurses were staring at me and i was pushed into the middle of them all. I had no idea what was going on and for some reason i waved at them all and day hey and at that point the head nurse said ' Good morning...' and then i realised i was supposed to have introduced myself. oops. Unfortunately there isn't much to do on this ward and on more than one occassion i have been told to go and sit in the linen cupboard and learn Japanese. I wouldn't mind this so much if it wasn't like sitting in a sauna!!
The patients on this ward keep trying to speak to me which is nice and some even try in English but  all they really manage is where are you from but it is lovely that they try! Ive had two seperate patients draw me a map of Britain, one knew where Scotland was which was a first! However he thought Glasgow was inbetween Liverpool and Manchester... The other patient could not grasp the concept of Scotland being a separate country from England and kept asking if people in Scotland spoke English. It is rather hard trying to explain when my Japanese isnt very good so in the end i gave up!
On Wednesday we were back at Tai-chi for the first time in two weeks so it was a little bit tough getting back into it, my legs were very sore in the morning. Not quite sure if that was from Tai-chi or my spontaneous jog down by the river which was not a good idea in the heat! After work on Thursday we went off to Ikebana and normally we have some food there. On the past two occassions they have made us chicken as they know it is basically all i like! However this week there was a huge bowl of prawns, mashed potatoes with fish eggs mixed in and various salads and vegetables. This was my worst nightmare, i tried to be polite and try the mash which was not to my taste but when Konaka-san offered the prawns i could not face it! Somehow i dont think i will ever like any kind of food which comes from the sea.