Meds and lush land.

Each year employees at CAJ are required to have a physical done.  One of the days before teaching begins, there is a group of medical folks that come to school, set up their instruments and each of us goes through the process of handing in a urine and stool sample, have blood drawn, blood pressure taken, height and weight taken, an EKG, an eye test, a hearing test, a chest X-ray, and I can't remember what else.  It is all done very efficiently.  A few weeks later, we get a print out of the results with and letter grade beside each item reported on.  Well, when I received mine, I had a couple of things I knew were going to be concerns and that I would have to deal with them now.  Since arriving in Japan, I haven't had too much concern about my health.  I have been bicycling and exercising fairly regularly, but I knew that the diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol may be an issue.  So, I decided I had better take care of that.  Dr. Ishibashi does speak English and also is the family doctor for a number people who work at CAJ.  I did have a consult visit at school with Dr. Ishibashi and he recommended that I arrange an office visit.  I did so and had Nobuko (she works in the Academic Office) come with me in case there is any Japanese translation needed. The result of the visit was 3 prescriptions, one for diabetes, one for high cholesterol and one for high blood pressure.  Later in the day I went to a pharmacy (Nobuko did some research and found one that had English speakers) and I dropped off my prescriptions and had them filled.  This is what I got back...

I take one pill once in the morning after breakfast.  

I take one pill once in the morning and once after dinner.

I take one pill after dinner. 

The white papers are actually an envelop that contained the pills still in blister packs and wrapped with a rubber band.  When I picked up the pills the pharmacist did tell me how to take the pills, in English, but of course by the time I got home, I wasn't sure which pill was which, so I did a little investigating and knew that since I was given 3 weeks of pills, the one with 42 pills would be the one taken 2 times a day.  The other ones I figured out by where the stamp was to the right of where the medication and dosage was written.  I also did a google translate to figure out "after dinner" just to be sure.  By the way, the ランデラーデイニー is how they write my name in Japanese.  It's pronounced something like "randeraa deinii."  The "i" is like a long e sound like the ea in tea.  :)  I have to listen very carefully when they call my name, because sometimes I don't recognize it.  

Saturday, I went to help out at the cross country meet in Tama, for the last time this season.  It was the finals for all the levels.  It was beautiful weather, sunny and not so humid.  I took a couple of pictures.  

I hadn't realized that my brother invested in a farm in Tokyo!

Looks pretty fertile, eh? 

The soil looks dark, which I usually associate with fertile!

Tama River

Next week the top cross country runners from CAJ fly to Guam for the final competition, so unless I just take a bicycle ride down, I probably won't be down this way too soon again.  

Saturday afternoon I spent some time with Norm Overway.  He is taking a 3 week tour here in Japan.  I  was able to show him CAJ and have dinner with him.  It was nice to catch up.  Last March, his daughter, Laurie came out for a visit as well.  

It was a great week and God has blessed me by having the opportunity to be here in Japan, working in a great place like CAJ, with great supportive colleagues.