Friday night my friend Tomo took me to a shopping mall nearby. The mall was huge! It has been a while since I've gone to such a shopping mall. I am always seeing fabulous clothing in the stores of Japan; however, more often than not it would be way out my price range. So instead of trendy clothing, I decided to put my shopping money towards my very own yukata.
I had no idea how difficult a decision it would turn out to be. They were all sooo beautiful. We went to one store and I found one I liked, but since the store was towards the entrance we decided to see what else we could find because we could always go back. At the department store there were even more to choose from. Each time I thought I found the one, I would find another I liked even better. But I kept thinking about the yukata at the first store. Since I wasn't actually trying them on, it seemed okay that we just took pictures of me holding them up so it would be easier to remember what they looked like for comparison.
We went back to the first store, and I couldn't quite remember which one it was. I did however find 3 prospects, and was able to try them on and get a few pictures for comparison.
First there was the black with white and silver flowers and little bits of magenta in the flowers...
The second yukata I tried on is the one I chose, so I will show it last. The third was a black with blue, teal, and silver flowers also with hints of magenta. This one we tried with two different obi.
But the winner was the black with pink, white and purple flowers and lots of green leaves, as well as silver outlines of flowers. The obi is magenta on one side and silver on the other, and as shown in all the pictures there are several ways it can be worn to feature one color, the other or both equally.
Monday night we are heading to Otsu for the big fireworks display on Biwa Lake. The professor has a home there as well, and takes the lab members each year. From what I hear it is huge, 10,000 shots will be fired over the lake! This might make up for missing July 4th back home (except for not getting to hang out at the timber with the Stines, of course)! Perhaps it will be an opportunity for me to wear my new yukata :)
Today was a good day. My neighbor works at one of the hospitals in the area that serves both cities of Iwade and Kinokawa and today they put on a health fair. There were all sorts of demonstrations and booths. The EAD and CPR demonstration was great to watch. Although, it was in Japanese so I really didn't know what they were saying. The most I got from it was for CPR they use 2 chest compressions to 3 rescue breaths. From my days of Life Guard certification and white water rafting, I have seen that ratio change from 15 compressions:2 breaths to 5 compressions:1 breath. Does anyone know what it currently is in the States? We also got a tour of the hospital. I learned they are known for there gastroenterology research and care.
First they showed us the deluxe patient room. It is hard to tell with the curtain, but it had a very nice private bathroom and seemed much larger than most hospital rooms I have visited, it also had a kithenette and lounge area. This room goes for about 16,000 yen per day ($240), but a standard room is around 6300 yen per day ($80).
Next they took us to see one of their ultrasound machines. They gave a demonstration showing the abdomen of another hospital employee.
We also saw a demonstration in the endoscopy lab.
The last instrumentation was their mammography unit. There was no demonstration for this one, of course, though they explained the procedure and showed us some films.
Our very last stop was the basement. There are 2 black cylinders between the concrete in the left and right of the picture below. There are 80 of these spread out underneath the hospital to reduce the shock from earthquakes. From the diagrams they showed us, those cylinders look like they are flexible and allow the ground to move from side to side to absorbing the impact with little disruption to the building above.
After the hospital fair I met with a volunteer Japanese tutor for my first lesson. A little late considering I only have 2 weeks left in Iwade (so hard to believe). However, better late than never. It was quite fun. We just went over some survival Japanese, and the hiragana characters, which I taught myself before coming. After the lesson we had some coffee and cake with the owner of the little cafe we were at. The owner, her daughter and I played a card game with the hiragana flashcards. My tutor laid them all out on the table. She had an accompanying deck, one card with several words for each character. She would read the words and the first to find the card with the right character got to take the card. Believe it or not, I actually won! The score was me:28, the daughter:17, and the cafe owner:4. My tutor was very proud :) I will not have another lesson until the end of my last week here in Iwade, as she is going home for the Obon holiday. But she did give me plenty of homework to work on, and I told her I would try to get all the Katakana characters before we meet again.
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