Funky Skin Rashes and Ancient Languages

Funky Skin Rashes and Ancient Languages

I think I did upload it, or at least I did do other pics like when I had a purple toe and black eye.

While in Japan I got some funky skin rashes. It’s called athlete’s foot in English, but in Japan they called it “mizu mushi”, which basically means water bug / insect. WTF? I have a water bug in my skin. Then I looked it up and the other word in English is ringworm. I guess the Japanese word is true. Its basically bacteria on the skin that starts doing the funky chicken or perhaps  in our case the funky worm.

I wasn’t sure how I got it, but I was rolling around doing judo groundwork with a lot of questionable people. I hoped it was from me wearing sweaty socks all the time including in winter, where I wore 3 pairs at once to stay warm.

According to Wikipedia athlete’s foot is a fungus and will grow more rapidly in the following conditions
1) Crowded or Humid conditions. That's me!
2) Sweat excessively. That's me!
3) Participate in close sports like wrestling and soccer. That's me!
4) Wear tight constrictive clothing with poor aeration. That's me!
5) Have a weakened immune system. Hope not!

I think I met 4 of the 5 best conditions for it to grow. Number 5 nope, at least I hope anyways.

Summer seemed to be the worst though, that damn humidity never lets up. I saw all the teachers wore socks inside, but sometimes I was so sweaty, I took them off. I’m sure they were horrified.
But what else is new? I did wear underwear (despite what you may have heard through the rumour mill).

I finally decided it was getting progressively worse so I went to the doctor. The Japanese doctor looked at it and said you need to go to the skin doctor.
So, off on my jolly way I went.
It was my first time to a skin doctor. I had never been to one in Canada either so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I envisioned a room full of people with goiters on their necks (big huge weird balls of skin).
When I arrived I found a room full of people waiting. It had a very “countryside” feel to it.
A girl looked at me, “Mama there is a gaijin (foreigner) here”. I contemplated responding “Ya and I understand you.” But, alas I decided against it.
My name was called from the front “Mr.Gaijin”. I was like ummm that’s not really my name but OK. I entered the room where a chipper older Japanese doctor sat. He had a big smile on his face, like he was happy to see me.
“Konnichi wa Mr.Gaijin. Do you understand Japanese?” he pondered. “Well, yes a little”, I answered. He looked even more happy. “You are the first gaijin to my office. I am happy to meet you. Are you American?”. “No”, I answered. “Oh, where are you from, perhaps a Brit?”. “Ahem, no, I’m Canadian”. He seemed to think about that for a minute like it didn’t register. Finally “Good. That’s good, let’s have a look at your hairy gorilla like skin”. No! He didn’t say that, but I think it would have been funny if he had.
He started inspecting my skin with a magnifying glass. He then grabbed a knife and my foot and locked it between his legs. I had a feeling he was about to filet my toes. Instead he grabbed my foot and scrapped a bunch of skin from my foot. It was pretty painful, but I tried to keep my mouth shut..
He took the skin fragments and looked at them with his high powered microscope.
“Ah HA!” he yelled. “Just as I expected, its Tinea pedis”. I was like “Sorry, what? Tina who?”. As far as I recall I don’t remembering doing judo with anyone named Tina. He seemed surprised I didn’t understand and handed me a book of skin conditions, it had Japanese on one side and some weird language on the other. He pointed to it, “Here it's written in English”. I was like ummmm….. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it sure wasn’t English, maybe Polish or Russian I thought. After a minute I realized it must be Latin cause it had roots of things that never made sense to me like “magnus” “corporis” , “malus”, “Ginormous”. That last one I added in myself, I was just trying to go with the flow. In-case you didn’t know ginormous was recently added into English dictionaries due to its popular usage on the pop culture scene.
I finally told the doctor “Actually its called Latin. English does have some roots in it, but I don’t speak or understand it.”. He looked baffled. “Do you mean you don’t speak your own language?”, he asked. “No, I do. Its just that this is not my language. I mean it did add words and stuff to my language but its not my language”, I answered.
As always I don’t think I did a great job of explaining it to him. He seemed baffled.
Being the smart alleck I am, I thought I would give him a great metaphor. “So you speak Japanese right? Japanese characters came from Chinese, so if someone shows you something in Chinese they might think you speak Chinese, but probably you can’t read it, well to a degree you can, cause the base of the character meaning would be the same”. Blank stare on his face. Then, “ I don’t speak Chinese”, he answered. I didn’t know how to answer him, I had done a piss poor job of explaining it to him, what else is new.
He started writing something down and told me I would need to take oral medicine five times a day. That’s annoying I thought. In Japan they always give low dosages of medicine, and most foreigners find it quite weak. Most books for foreigners coming to Japan recommend bringing your own medicine, half of our medicine is banned though, be careful.
He looked at me and said “If you don’t take care of the tinea pedis it will become tinea cruris”. 
Crap! He definitely did not comprehend I didn’t speak Latin.
I asked him to write the words down so I could perhaps look through a Latin dictionary later (if I could find one, maybe in the Vatican?) to decipher his dead archaic language.

I looked up the word later, it said it meant jock itch.
NO THANKS I'LL PASS!

I started bathing my feet in vinegar everyday cause I read on the internet, it helps cure it.
My girlfriend commented a few times it smelled like “sushi rice”. Ha!
I don't think anyone wants to eat rice that has touched my feet.

If I ever go to a make your own wine place, I'm not drinking the wine I crush with my bare-feet.

Let's see. Doesn't look that hard to understand. Latin is the same as English right?

If you found anything above amusing or even slightly funny help me out and click one of those boxes above or give me a Google +1 or something. Might come in handy in the future. If only it could make me some money. That would be even nicer!

My Youtube Channel, wearing red tights and jumping around as Deadpool (but I say Dadpool to avoid copyright. Smarter than I look!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUXxArlapy0

Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


My Youtube Channel (makes no sense just like my blog)
http://www.youtube.com/user/judoka4eva

Farewell Party and Speech Bomb

Farewell Party and Speech bomb

Bonus that I lived the 3 years there.

You know regardless of how bad things are, you probably have a better connection with people you have gone through rough times with. At least that’s what I thought. I felt like I had come a long way during my 3 years in Japan. Most of the kids liked me (not the graduated ones, they still wanted to kill me). I felt like I had changed a few of their lives for the better and even helped them, not only through exposure to foreigners, but of me having a love of them and things about their culture. Not the bad ones though, of course I still distasted them. There was one boy and one girl I felt particularly close with that I felt like I was going to miss the most of all the students. They both tried so hard to talk to me. 
Lastly their personalities were similar to mine. Which means, I should have told them to write half of this blog and told them its homework for me. Oh ya!
On the last day of school I was told to do a speech in mostly English and a little bit of Japanese. I was so nervous and I didn’t know how much emotion I would feel. As an adult I don’t recall ever crying, but for whatever reason I had a bit of sadness inside me. Hard to believe I know, me a true samurai have wimpy feelings.
It finally occurred to me that this was the end, not only of my teaching, ever seeing these kids and teachers again, but also of Japan. I was going home and this was it.
I showed one of my teachers my speech just before I got on stage. They told me I had made an error with a Japanese word. I was fairly sure I hadn’t. "Sayonaraba", is not Japanese she told me.
I said sorry, but this word was introduced to me by the head of the prefecture, and has a stronger nuance then simply sayonara. It denotes a feeling of “If we should meet again one day...”, as opposed to sayonara which does mean goodbye (usually forever). I looked it up in my dictionary to confirm, yes it was there and says a stronger feeling than sayonara. I asked another Japanese teacher, “No, its not Japanese”, she said. I didn’t want to argue with her, since not only did someone tell me its Japanese, my dictionary lists it was Japanese. Look who is the native speaker? Them or me? Ok so its not me, but if someone told me it has a meaning and my dictionary say it has the same meaning, it means 1+1 = 2. 
I was thinking perhaps, its like Shakespeare words, I doth eat thou grapes. Or while it may be some ancient or somewhat unused expression, it is still Japanese, and varies little from sayonara, enough that everyone should understand the point of it.
As I got to my final sentence, I thought I felt a tear in my eye. I breathed deeply and felt my lungs fill with phloem. Yes, I don’t know why, but lots of phloem. "Teachers, Students......" I said. I looked around and saw a lot of grade 6 girls crying, "Sayonaraba!"...silence. Did they understand the last part or they all think I made a mistake and meant sayonara.
No one clapped. Ummm.... shouldn't I get a clap or something? I got the crap beat out of me for 3 years and no clap? That ain't cool.
A girl walked up on stage, it was one of my favorite students Yuki. In English she said “Myles from all of us we thank you for the 3 years you have been at this school, you have helped us and change our lives, thank you”. She came forward as if to hug me, I felt some more tears in my eyes, then she gave me flowers. I wasn’t sure if I should hug her, but I was getting my damn hug regardless if I was supposed to or not.
The next day was my final day at school. During the day I got an email from my co worker, which said something terrible had happened. A student had died. My school went into lockdown. I didn’t really understand what was happening, since it wasn’t at our school but perhaps the school only heard someone had died but not how and were worried for the children. My friend said the girl was bullied a lot and jumped from the 3rd floor.
Not a great day to say the least. To top it off it was my farewell party with the teachers that night. Its never good to have a dark cloud over the day you are being thanked, or you are trying to tell everyone how much you will miss them or try to do a funny speech. I forget sometimes that sarcasm doesn’t work so well in Japan. Big foreshadow here.
After a terrible day at school I went home. I got ready for my dinner and biked my granny bike with the uncool basket on the front for the last time. I arrived at the hotel lobby covered in sweat. Perfect, start this 3 year trip covered with sweat and end it that way too. At least this time I wasn't late (or was I?). That was nice no one offered me a ride on my last day, oh well.
It reminds me of the time I walked in -10 C temperatures on snowy days to school and saw at least 4 teachers drive by who waived to me but didn't offer to pick me up.
I met some of the teachers and waited outside the dining room we were about to eat in. The principal wanted to have a chat with me. Of course after 3 years and always speaking in Japanese, it was interesting for me that now he wanted to speak in English. I could tell he had forgot a lot, so he was nervous. “Myles even though today was a difficult today, don’t let it make tonight not good OK?”. OK I answered!
I had prepared a speech which I thought was absolutely hilarious. I pictured everyone would be hollowing with laughter and what a way to start a day that was so rough for everyone. Here’s how it went.
“I’m not looking forward to going back to Canada as there is someone special waiting for me there. As all of you know, she would like me to take her on a private trip from Victoria to Niagara falls. She thinks its one hour from my house, but she doesn’t get that its 5 days by car. No one laughed. Maybe they didn’t get how funny it was. Ya and she also wants me to take her to Newfoundland! That’s on the other side of Canada. Seriously!? hahahha. No one laughed. This crowd is tough I thought. OK I’ll pull out the big guns. 
These jokes were referring to the old lady that had bad breath and was an assistant English teacher. I wrote a blog post about it before. They were all well aware she kept asking me to tour her around Canada.
The big guns were my last resort, where I thought I would sing to the tune of a song I liked. I was trying to sing but I couldn’t remember the tone because I'm tone deaf. I asked the music teacher could she start it off for me. She does it. I'm like OK I can do it, to the tune of shima uta (Island Song) with the words I translated from Japanese “Island song, like the wind, I’m blowing across the sea, like a bird flying in the sky, I’ll be meeting someone, oh the someone you know on my little island song. Silence. No one got it! Crap! Bomb after bomb tonight, that’s nice. I tried to explain it that the someone was the teacher that had worked at the school who drove everyone nuts. I thought it was funny, but maybe it's rude to insult people who aren’t there or something. Common, let me be funny today, its my farewell. Silence, a few people forced laugh. OK I guess I bombed, hopefully they don’t hate me. Finally they said OK now we are going to do a game where you are a pervert.

So if I like this it means I am a pervert then! Damn!!

I was like WTF? They are like oh ya, its cool. You wear a sash that says “I’m a pervert and you walk around”. I don’t think I get it, who is that funny for. I’m not a pervert, at least I don’t think I am.
Finally they put this pervert sash on me. I started to realize that this was it, this was the last day with these people. Three years battling all these demons kids, but coming out alive was a bonus. I had expected to lose a finger or two. I mean ya, so my neck was permanently damaged (and still is), but at least I didn’t get stabbed (only the threat of).
So there was a group of female teachers standing together and the party was starting to end. The principal whispered to me that while we shouldn't really have a 2nd party due to the tragic event of the day, we still would because it was for me, but only a few select teachers would be invited. I prayed for it not to include that old lady I spoke about in the song.
I decided I better get my farewells in and get my final hugs. I went to some of the female teachers ready to get a hug. One of the female teachers looked at me, “What are you doing?”. That was direct I thought. “Ummmm, hoping for a hug, since this is the last time we meet”, I answered. One of the male teachers patted me on the shoulders, “You are a pervert (hentai)”. I was like WTF? I moved on to the next teacher whose face went a pale colour and she looked upset like I was about to do something terrible to her. As I tried to put my arms around her she brought her arms up into her chest, like she expected me to violate her. I know Japanese don’t touch a lot (especially PDA), but this is a bit crazy I thought. Three years together of all these rough times and I don’t even get a hug, rough. At least I will remember them everyday every moment of my life for the rest of my life. Every-time I breath due to my still broken ribs and cracked neck I thought.

Ouch, that hurts. He is feeling some pain for the rest of his life too.

If you found anything above amusing or even slightly funny help me out and click one of those boxes above or give me a Google +1 or something. Might come in handy in the future. If only it could make me some money. That would be even nicer!

My Youtube Channel, wearing red tights and jumping around as Deadpool (but I say Dadpool to avoid copyright. Smarter than I look!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUXxArlapy0

Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


My Youtube Channel (makes no sense just like my blog)
http://www.youtube.com/user/judoka4eva