No Birthplan in an Earthquake Zone

So quite a few people have been curious as to what all happened, how I ended up in the Japanese healthcare system and not on base etc. if you have been following from Facebook and are wondering, here is the full saga of snafus…..I know many in the military have read “in a Japanese hospital” with concern as we usually go off base for health complications, but don’t worry – it has nothing to do with my health – it was just logistical due to those little things that Japan has now and then – you know – earthquakes…….you never know what will throw a kink in your plan I guess…..

About six weeks ago (more or less) we found out from the hospital on base that due to a number of unforeseen logistical problems (repairs from an earthquake that cracked the walls) the base hospital would be under construction during the due date. After looking at a number of possibilities, we settled on a nearby hospital just about twenty minutes from the base.

I saw the doctor several times before I disenrolled on base – I stayed in the military care system until the last night before the renovations were scheduled to start.

I went in for a routine appointment and they said I was measuring at nearly a four and suggested I consider inducing. I was having regular contractions, and know nothing about pregnancy and childbirth other than a lot of friends had induced and it seemed to work out well for them. The fluid was a bit low and she seemed a bit concerned about that. Besides, I just wanted those constant contractions to stop. So I agreed to it, and the medication (pitocin) seemed to work the opposite for me as everyone else. I haven’t really had any contractions since they tried to induce. When the contractions stopped, the doctor shut off the machine. I’d been on it for about seven hours. I’d gone from a four to a five, but that was it.

They were rather concerned about the fluid again, and suggested I stay while they run tests for another day to observe. In the meantime, they tried cervidil, which also had no effect. Best guess was that there was a slow leak of fluid – as the tests came back positive for it the first day and at the appointment a few days before. But there was none now. It seemed to have healed (in the middle of pitocin? How does that work?) so they kept me there for a couple days running tests and watching for infection then finally let me go home. Yeah, still at five centimeters, but I guess this kid isn’t ready to come out yet…….

The night nurses kept waking me up to run tests – and eventually the doctor just prescribed some antibiotics and kept checking my blood and other fluids for signs of infection every few hours.

I did appreciate the Japanese doctors not wanting to rush to anything more extreme. They seemed to have a good sense of when to just shut off the machine rather than upping the dosage anymore and not wanting to rush to a C-section instead.

In some ways – I am a little bit relieved to not have a baby yet. That whole “resting” thing I was planning on doing when I went on leave from work – yeah, still haven’t done that yet…….might be nice to try it…….I’ll probably just go back to the Japanese hospital when I actually go into labor…… Hopefully next time it’s real.

We’ll see what happens next……

UFC, Politics and the United States

I’ve been back in the US a few days now. It’s an election year.

Its easy to ignore it somewhat when you are overseas. I was surprised the first couple days back at how many Facebook posts are political. Then I realized, its because I am usually sleeping when everyone in America is posting. Ah. The light went on. That’s why.

It’s funny – I was in the US the last election, and it was mildly surreal, and I was in China during Bush/Kerry. I’ve been watching with a bit of a fascination and as we are in Arkansas, home of the Razorbacks, where team loyalty runs deep, I realized something…….

If you tune out the words, the discussions sound the same.

When did the election process become a sporting event? Has it always been this way?

I don’t really watch UFC, but my husband does, and I have seen it enough in the background to kind of get it. What struck me was how eerily familiar the game seems. Cheap shots, kicking, fouls the primaries were kind of like figuring out the weight divisions and then playing until the knock out while the fans scream and cheer and are rabid, shouting obscenities at each other. Finally the two champions face off for the knock out. They bruise and bloody each other and the fans scream until the referees determine who won. Sports commentators chatter their theories until the final devastating blow.

Then it’s over and everyone forgets until the next match……oh sure the fans trash talk each other regularly, but mostly they just go on with life. The focus switches to the next game. Football or soccer or Congress.

Great entertainment I suppose. But is this a good way to choose a leader? By making an entertaining game out of it?

Are the lines of entertainment and reality getting blurred?

Can Longhorns and Aggies fans get along after the game?

Are things really going to suddenly change our minds in a 24 hour news cycle that something significant will make us change our vote? Or is it just entertainment, like the games?

In medieval times the leaders were chosen by who won the fight – the strongest chieftain for example. Have we really changed that much? We just play word games now. Egging on our opponents fans until one comes out victorious.

Can we be civil in these games anymore? Or is the trash-talk just part of it?

How odd is that? For the record, I just saw “Hunger Games” on a flight, so that might contribute to the associations. It’s kind of funny actually in a shocking sort of way. My students asked me why our elections last so long in America – I think I have an answer. They are entertaining.

On the Side of the Narrow Road – (Flat Tire in Tokyo)

I think I have mentioned before that driving in Japan is not my favorite thing to do. Yesterday upped that sentiment by quite a lot.

Japan has narrow roads and shoulders that are not very wide. When you drive your car has to undergo a rigorous inspection every two years where they inspect everything and it usually ends up costing you quite a bit in repairs, because everything is based on prevention. To keep you from ending up on the side of the road. This I realized, is a very good system.

But if you run over something random (we still have no idea what happened) you can still end up on the side of the road.

Our tire blew on the Chuo. Chuo is major road (think I-35 in downtown Austin only much narrower) supposedly the speed limit is 80 kilometers per hour, but we get passed when we are going 120. There are sound barriers on either side, so there is no where to go to get off of the road. We were a little concerned about not getting over in time because traffic was moving so fast, and people were not slowing, to not to eat our wheel, but it was fine after all.

We got out of the car and looked at the tire – there were little pieces of it strewn quite a ways back down the road. We walked over to the “safety area” a little inlet with a phone that says “SOS” this is a clever invention, it lets you identify where you are and connects only with roadside service. Anthony called the base with his cell phone, and I tried to figure out the box. There was a button that said “push if you don’t speak Japanese well” I pushed that one, but wasn’t sure if anything happened or not. Anthony got a hold of the base interpreter.We decided to try and change the tire ourselves as roadside service would be about 15,000 yen. (Roughly $200).

All Japanese cars have flares in them. We pulled out the flares thinking that would keep the traffic back further from the car. Except that the instructions were in Japanese only. We never could figure out how to get those darns things to work. Okay – plan B.

If you have spent any amount of time driving in Japan, you will have encountered the red-stick-waving traffic directors. They are usually quite comical to watch – so I used the flares (that we couldn’t figure out how to ignite, so they resembled red-sticks) to wave the traffic further out. To my astonishment, the cars did exactly that. Unfortunately, the previous owners of our car had put on new rims, but hadn’t bought a new lug wrench. It didn’t fit.

Anthony called the base interpreter (thank you Mr. Kobayashi!) who called roadside service and gave them our location based on the SOS box number. About this time two highway patrol guys showed up – in a combination of bad-Japanese and halting English (their English was better than our Japanese for the record) and creative sign-language, they tried to help. They also did not have the right lug-wrench. But it was fun watching the guy waving the traffic around the car with a giant orange flag! They were super nice and were seemed really intent on helping us poor gaijin (foreigners) not to get hurt, emphasizing several times to stay behind the railed area in case of sleeping drivers. This English-Japanese-gesture conversation I wish I had on video!

Eventually they got another call and left us with a big orange cone behind our car. Japan AAA showed up just a few minutes later, towed the car to the nearest rest stop and changed the tire for us (he had the right lug wrench! Finally! When we sell this car we may have to charge extra for nice rims ). The spare donut seemed a little low on air though.

We were about 30 minutes from base, so the guy just towed us back to base. (We didn’t have enough yen to pay him anyway). Mr. Kobayashi came out to the gate as Mr. AAA seemed really intent on telling us something. Turns out our other back tire was cracking and he was concerned that it needed to be changed too. He charged only 10,000 yen ($130) and gave us the lug wrench attachment so that we could change our own tire next time.

It was days like yesterday that remind me how much I love Japan. In the midst of a crazy situation, we were really blessed by the kindness of the people who helped. And thank God for getting us off that crazy road alive and unharmed!

 

 

 

 

 

Patio Gardens

So the one thing that people always ask about living in an apartment rather than a house is about the yard. I love flowers and love gardens. But to be honest, I don’t miss the grass at all. The pictures are this years flowers, though it is only May, so I am hoping to see them grow quite a bit before the fall.

On the whole lawn question – I don’t miss it. I haven’t had one most of my adult life and when I did in Austin, it was more of a pain than anything else. Someone has to cut the grass. That someone is not me. I think of all the money we have saved over the years by not having a lawn – money I haven’t had to spend on paying someone else to mow the lawn, on equipment to mow said lawn, on water on lawn equipment maintenance etc.

Beyond that, from what I understand from friends on base, you can get ticketed if your lawn isn’t cut correctly at the right time. This seems to me like it would be a pain to deal with. And honestly – I am trying to think of what I would even do with a yard? All I did when I had one in Austin was sit on the patio. Which is the same thing I do with the balcony in Japan.

I guess that’s just it – a matter of perspective. Everyone is different. So what one person might regard as a necessity, another might see as an inconvenience. We choose an apartment – we were actually offered a house with a yard when we came and turned it down. Sometimes while we might think what would I do without…..? Someone else might be thinking what would I possibly do with…..? It’s just a matter of perspective.

No Heat/ No Cool

After living in China and now on the base here in Japan, I have been through many seasons of no heat/no cool. For the unfamiliar, or uninitiated, this is where the government (whose government I am not positive perhaps this is just a local tradition that we don’t have in the US? I don’t really know…..) shuts off the heat and/or air conditioning for a time to save on electricity.
The timing always is fantastic – the heat is usually shut off right before a drop in temperature and the cool right before a spike. However, here are the compiled ways that I have heard over the years that people (myself may or may not be included )  have used to get through the seasons changes comfortably.

• Turn on the oven and open it just a crack. (This suggestion came from an individual from the fire department. He said this is a very bad idea…..but gives him something to do…….)
• Turn on the shower on “High” to the max amount of heat and open the door. (Also not recommended – the water bill is awful and my apt in China might have had a slight mold problem after a few days of this……eh – you live and learn….)
• Go to your local Pizza Hut and order their endless cup of coffee and camp out for six hours. (In China Pizza Hut serves coffee. The downside of this – severe caffeine high!)
• Drag a space heater with you around the apartment. Its good to buy one on wheels.
• Wear more layers – (this of course is the most obvious, but after months of winter who wants to do that?)
• Iron your clothes before you put them on in the morning. (One girl I heard of threw hers in the microwave. This also didn’t end well.)

For temperature spikes before the air comes on -

• Open the windows (problem: pollution, people barbequing etc. upside, cute little insect visitors!)
• Get a good fan and drag it around the apartment. (this is like the space heater suggestion – reversed)
• Drink lots of iced drinks.
• Take cold showers.

So relax enjoy! Let the creative juices flow…… May will come soon! In the meantime – see everyone at Starbucks where you too will be drinking coffee and mooching off someone else’s heat!

Hiatus

So – I unintentionally disappeared from the blogging world for about a month – my apologies to those who were eagerly anticipating my latest nonsense as it was not forthcoming. The wordpress App on my ipad died – and all those blogs ended up “failed” and disappeared off to blogging Heaven – it was quite depressing actually!

Anyway, for those of you who were worried that I had disappeared off the face of the earth – nothing to fear – I’m baaack

Gas Prices

I am not living in the US right now. I live in Japan, courtesy of the US military. So some of the headlines that I read from the US seem odd at times. I will be the first to admit I am often not entirely sure what is going on, I see mostly the news from the perspective of an outsider looking in and sometimes that is a very odd view. One thing that I remember very clearly was leaving Alaska in 2009 when the gas prices there had hovered above $4 for months. In summer of 2008, the US had hit an average of $4.11 a gallon, and there was a lot of talk about who was to blame. President Bush was in office then and I remember watching this (click on Link to Fox News video). “When you hear a politician say he or she will bring down oil prices, it is BS” -Bill O’Reilly That particular phrase stood out to me, because I saw that he was right. I had lived in China for four years, from 2003-2007 and could definitely see the wisdom in noting that the president (Bush) wasn’t responsible for the prices, but the international competition was a huge contributor.

I live in Japan right now. Off base, the price per gallon is over $7.00 – I have never seen it cheaper than that. China and India are adding more cars every day to their roads. I can personally attest to being stuck in Beijing traffic, and wondering how it was affecting the rest of the world. As more people in China and India rise to middle class and start driving, the competition increases and prices go up. Politicians can’t do anything about that.

It was a relief to come to Japan and be freed from the dependency on cars. The public transportation system here is the best I have seen anywhere and a lot of my friends get by perfectly fine without a car. I didn’t even have a bicycle the four years I spent in China, and could get anywhere around the city without one.But I also know that is a construct that America doesn’t really have. Perhaps we should.

What concerns me more though is the loss of civility in politics – Bush was not to blame then; Obama is not to blame now. It’s circumstantial. Can we get beyond the political rhetoric that plagues election seasons to do something about the problem? Something more constructive than getting someone elected, whatever party they may be? It seems there is a lot of finger pointing and not much action. I don’t know the solution. Whatever it maybe however, I don’t think pointing fingers at the latest guy in office is the answer.