Dr Takahama, and hippies

Hi everyone, sorry about the lack of updates.... busy week of work, and then one of "those" weekends, A lot to talk about.... and really hard to believe I've been here a month now....
Most significantly I feel really settled now, I don't feel odd cycling the streets anymore I still don't feel like a local, but I no longer really feel like a tourist, which is big step. I'm certainly getting the hang of many Japanisms. One of the things that really threw me here this week, was hand gestures. Sounds simple enough, but in reality all the hand signals have different meanings and they are all really heavily used, unlike at home, where the only really common gesture I can think of is flipping the bird. There's the peace sign which is REALLY popular here, just like in the stereotype, it's often used in photos or amongst close friends. It doesn't seem have any negative stigma at all, where at home it's a bit naff really. Then there's the "right" or "ok" sign (make a circle with your thumb and finger) which means "I understand" or "agree". There's the "wrong" sign (take two fingers from each hand and cross them) meaning "no" or "I don't understand" There's "follow me" (put your finger on your nose while talking) which I didn't get at first, and preceded to wander off, when people wanted me to follow them!!!! Then finally there "thank you" or "I'm sorry" (take your right hand with your thumb facing towards your face and bring your hand up to your head and kind of shake your hand) I'll make you a video so you can see what I mean... I'll put it on the youtube channel, as always. Along with that video compilation I've been promising to make myself for ages.


Well anyway last week, the inevitable happened. We were invited out by Dr.Takahama.
We were understandably quite anxious about this. The previous gappers left a book full of thoughts, and musings on life here in Nishio. One of the largest sections was talking about this Dr. Takahama, and to avoid him like the black plague, but didn't really elaborate why... From talking to people the general impression we got, was that he is quite a senior doctor at the hospital and has a real thing for foreigners, and that he's a bit eccentric.


He offered to take us out for a river boat cruise one evening, and a meal, all expenses paid. We accepted of course, out of politeness and curiosity. When we first met him he seemed to be a really nice bloke, everything seemed very normal. We got to the river got onto the boat, it was dark, and there was quite an atmosphere (I've included pictures and videos) a really beautiful traditional Japanese river boat, never really had a meal quite like it! Especially as the boat sailed up and down the river too. Although you can't really tell in the video.

Well anyway things with Takahama seemed pretty normal up to the point when he, completely out of the blue very randomly told us that he could teach us "The Japanese word for tits". Naturally we were all a bit taken aback by this random outburst and there was a few seconds uncomfortable silence until Taba (a good guy our age we met from Hawaii) rescued the conversation by stating "Yeah, in hawaiien its the same word as pregnancy" (whether this is true or not, or he just came up with it to stop the awkward silence I'm not sure) The rest of the evening was great and Takahama had some really interesting stories to tell, and was really excited about his recent trip to china. But every now and again, he'd come up with something really weird, like "hahahaha look at the name of that shop! It's Hard Off, that's really close word to Hard On, hahahaha" But he was an incredible generous man and very kind to take us out for what must have been a very expensive evening. (and he's offered to do it again two weekends from now). His heart's in the right place, but a little bit of an oddball, and I mean that in the nicest way!


Apart from that exciting trip with Dr Takahama I've discovered that the hippy culture that I observed at Doujin Bar a few weeks ago, goes a lot further than that. It's like a whole hidden world beneath "mainstream" Japanese society. The people I've met (and I'm not going into too much detail, as I would imagine some of them probably wouldn't want to be named) are really incredible, intriguing people. One person we've visited a few times, lives in an old coffee shop. The shop closed years ago, but you go inside his "house" and the first thing you see is an enormous rusty old icecream machine and cash register, mixed in with semi modern fridge, which acts as the kitchen, behind the old shop counter. Bits of old machinery and other equipment are scattered everywhere. A really amazing place. I wouldn't mind staying a few nights, but I probably wouldn't want to live there. There's so much more to this than there first appears.


At work I spent my first week on Roken 3F. The high security area for dementia patients. Even though at first the situation was a bit intimidating, and at times horrifying. (old ladies screaming in their sleep, a man who just says "Yes" to himself all day, old ladies screaming in terror because they don't understand that the staff members are trying to give them medicine, A woman who's face bone structure has collapsed, and just spits food in your face when you try and feed her etc) quite quickly I started looking past that, and seeing them for all their own little personalities and habits, and most importantly as human beings. It's still hard to really appreciate who these people really are with my limited Japanese, and I really want to know more about them. One of my favourites is a 98 year old women named Ai-san. She looks incredidbly spritely for a women of her age, and my favourite thing about her, is that whenever she sees me, she incredibly cheerfully calls out to everyone in a sing song voice, at quite a volume "DAVIDO-SAN DESU! DAVIDO-SAN DESU!!!!!" (It's Mr David, It's Mr David!!!!) This made all the staff laugh quite hard, and I found it quite touching, and enthusiatically returned the greeting, which she seemed to love. Unfortunately as she has senile dementia this little activity repeats itself about every 10 minutes, for the whole day. But the good thing is, if you don't return the greeting once or twice, she won't remember. The weird thing is, she never forgets who I am, she just seems to forget she's seen me.

There are so many things I could mention, but I should leave it there, as it's getting late and I have another exciting day in the X-ray room tomorrow.

PS I'm not being sarcastic either, I love working in there!!