Visiting a Doctor and Happy New Year!

So, I manged to get sick a few days ago (temp 37.5-38C, coughing, runny nose, chills).  Here, people tend to go to doctors quite often when they feel not normal.  I usually don't like to go to doctors.  Today I finally decided that it is time to check this thing to make sure I don't have some lung/etc problems.

I went to the nearby clinic (クリニック kurinikku in Japanese :P) but it was closed for the holidays.  The person inside suggested I go to the nearby hospital.  I went in, asked about the clinic - the receptionist asked me some things that I didn't understand, then told me to sit down and run off somewhere.  A nurse came, asked what's wrong so I told her the symptoms.  The receptionist brought me a form to fill out - I only wrote down my name and she filled out the rest from the address I gave her and my health insurance card infos.

After about 10 minutes of waiting, the doctor called me in.  Asked me what's wrong so I prepared a little note with the symptoms in Japanese so I was able to communicate somehow.  At the end the doctor started to speak English telling me what he will prescribe - hehe!  But I just got some pills for my cough and everything else looks good.  He wanted to prescribe some fever relief drugs but I said I have some ibuprofen from Canada and he said that will do so he didn't.  

So overall, the experience was quite nice.  The doctor and staff were really friendly and the doctor didn't try to give me every drug he can (like some doctors that give antibiotics to cure everything!).  Now I just need to get over this sickness!

Tonight is New Year's Eve.  I planned to go to see how people celebrate (basically to a large shrine in the city) but unfortunately I will stay home.  Well, let me take this opportunity to wish everybody a Happy New Year 2011 - may it be much better than it's predecessor! 

I got this nice card in the mail from the nice lady who administers our building:

ウサギ、がんばって！！！

Christmas in Nagoya

I basically always spend Christmas with family.  However, this year that was a bit difficult.  So I spent Christmas quietly in Japan.  It was quite an interesting experience with some very interesting twists so it ended up being quite enjoyable.

On December 23rd, I went to a Christmas song concert at a large Catholic church (the largest parish in the city). I learned about the concert from somebody that suggested that I go to it.  It was quite nice.  The whole church was packed full of people.  It was the first time for me to visit that church.  The concert consisted of songs played on a church organ, songs sung by a large girl choir, and readings from the bible by a nun.  The whole thing was very nice and lasted about 2 hours.

The choir came down in front of the altar at the end to get some well deserved applause.

 The altar from the top level.

 The organ:

After the concert, I went for coffee with the Japanese family that told me about the concert.  After that I biked back to school.  From school, I went to Sakae to buy myself a Bluray for Christmas :P.  Along the way I found this:

Interested in this church, I did a little looking around.  Plot tickens.... turns out that the main parish priest is Polish and there are in total 3 polish priests at that church!  The whole website is in Japanese so it was a bit difficult to get information.  So the next day, on Christmas Eve, I decided to go to the Christmas Eve mass at this church which was listed as joined Japanese and English.  It was a very nice mass with 3 priests and a packed church.  It was mainly in Japanese with one reading in English and some English commentating.

Plot thickens... It turned out that after the mass was a parish Christmas Party that the priest invited everybody to go to.  I kinda hesitated but finally went there and introduced myself to the priests.  Turned out that there were about 5 (+kids) polish people there that I ended up meeting and talking to.  Finally, I got invited to a Polish Christmass dinner at the church on Sunday.  

So I went and it was quite nice to be able to eat some polish food that the people have prepared and to meet and talk to people.  There were around 30 people there some in similar situations to myself.  Good times!

On Christmas Day, I met up with a friend of mine from Japanese class and we went to enjoy the festive mood of downtown Nagoya and take lots of pictures of the beautiful decorations.  It was a bit chilly but we managed to survive.  ... upcoming picture spam...

The Central park in Sakae had a great amount of decorations and some kind of festival going on.

 At the entrance was this awesome looking light tiger.

 A nice Christmas tree with the Nagoya TV tower in the background.

 Apart from the small lights, there were lamps all around the pathways, some decorated with writing and pictures.

 People were able to walk around and look at them all.

 アカリナイト (akarinaito) - light/lamp night? map - central park is quite large, many city blocks in length.

 The TV tower illuminated by lights.

 View of the Oasis21 building

 One of the famous Japanese department stores.

 Side view of the Sunshine Sakae ferris wheel.

 A fountain.

 Phoenix?

 There were lots of little huts where you could buy food.

 Dragon!

 Boat.  On this picture you see a laser beam from the TV tower in the background to basically on the other side of the street from where I took this picture (which is about 6 city blocks distance).  In front is the boat statue.

 There was definitely many lights on trees in Sakae!

 Whole streets full of!

 To those complaining that there are no people in my pictures - see... people.. lots of people.. and cars... and lights...

 Sunshine Sakae bears at night.  It's funny, the next day, they were all covered with some warm stuff to prevent them from freezing I think?

 Cute bear:

 From Sakae, we walked to Nagoya train station (around 3km walk) and took some pictures along the way.

 The tallest building in Nagoya had a tree design made from lights!  You can see the observation deck where the blue is at the top.

 Some very fancy looking restaurant.

 Even the canals had lights!

 Finally made it to the train station - it was also quite decorated.

 The Pass'e department store looked nice in the dark.  This store has loads of women only clothes and from the looks of it, for younger women.  I go there often to buy women's clothes... no..hehe.. but I do go there to visit the Tower Records store at the 7th floor (I think 7th...).  Whenever I went there, I saw some girl dressed up in lolita fashion which was quite interesting!

 The grand train station buildings at night.

 Some lights show just outside of the buildings.

 I don't know why but the theme was hedgehogs... so pretty much every animal there was a hedgehog.

So after we sufficiently got cold and hungry walking around taking pictures... we went to this really nice Chinese restaurant near campus.  The food was delicious!!!  I missed the spiciness/kick of Chinese food.

 I would definitely go again!

 The result.. no food left (it turns out you don't eat the peppers... which I ate a few of and they were tasty!) and full and happy customers!

So that was my Christmas time - different than usual but quite enjoyable.  At the grocery store bakery, I bought a cool Christmas bun:

Merry Christmas!

Tasty Food Update

As you might have noticed, the number of food pictures has decreased recently.  Mostly due to the fact that there is a limited number of choices at the school cafeterias so things do repeat and I don't take multiple pictures of the same dish (at least not knowingly).  So here are some cafeteria choices:

A balanced lunch:

 Tasty fish set meal:

 Some teriyaki chicken don with pastry:

 Some misterious katsu (probably chicken - I don't remember):

 Tasty udon with meat and egg drop soup:

 One day I went to the nearby mall's ramen shop and had this.  The guy stated that it is very hot and asked if I'm okey with that - daijoubu!  It was spicy but quite delicious.

 At a small (maybe seats 12) restaurant near school, I had this shrimp tempura dish on rice.  Was pretty good.  It looked like this restaurant specialized in tempura.  I went there with a lab member who usually eats at school cafeterias but they were already closed for the winter break so we went there.

So, I managed to get sick right for New Years... I'll write another post about that, but while staying at home not going out, I run out of food.  Buono! came to my rescue and I remembered the Pizza-La chain of pizza delivery restaurants.  I registered on the website and managed to place an order for a medium pizza of some kind.  About 50min later, the pizza guy called since he couldn't find the place (no surprise, he wasn't the first one).  Luckily he was young and still remembered some English from school and we were able to successfully communicate ;P.  The pizza finally arrived at my door!  The box:

 The pizza looked and tasted quite good.  One thing I gotta say, this medium was advertised for 2-3 people (small was 1-2 people).  Well... the size was more like the Canadian small... and I ate the whole thing in one sitting.  Granted, I was quite hungry and sick..so... but I did really enjoy it - will definitely order from there again in time of need!  The delivery people drive these mopeds with the log on them.

 Thank you Airi, Momoko, and Miyabi!

 Also got a calendar fridge magnet with coupons!  Finally something to put on my fridge!  I just noticed that my fridge is called "it's" :P.

 After coming back from the doctor on New Years Eve, I went to the nearby store and bought a bunch of food for lunch/dinner.  There were tons of people at the store buying things.  New Years is the most important holiday here so quite a busy time.

 These were little fish - how little... well look at the fork.  Although I can't say that I like the taste.  The fish are ok but they taste kinda like licorice...

 No idea what this is..but it looked cute and was actually pretty ok to eat.  Looks like seaweed bundles.

 This was surprising... it was in the same section as the above and the fish but is actually sweet and makes a good dessert.  Some beans of some kind.

 I also bought a small package of dried persimmon since they are already out of season.

 Now of course you can't forget the mochi during the New Year.  It is the rabbit on the moon making it during this time - this being the year of the rabbit... very important ;P.  Rabbit... give me some good luck in the New Year ok?

While talking about rabbits, moon, and mochi, can't help but remember poor Mashimaro explaining how it works to the monkeys.  If any of you remember the bunny with a plunger stuck to his head sitting on a toilet that I had hanging off my car window - well... this is where it is from.