JOECLONE Request!

Would a kind Joeclone please delete my mother's email address from her post above. She needs a lesson on what not to do on the web.

Nice artwork Donuel. I love it and so does Wakana!

Mother, please! I had things just the way I wanted and then you go encouraging Wakana! Have you no shame?

As for you, Judy, I'll have you know that it is cold and snowing again! But the best news is below and it means this cold weather will be behind me soon. Yesterday I was out walking without a jacket!

This morning we rose early to make an 8:30 doctor's appointment and for the first time experienced a USA hospital type event. When we got there the doctor had not yet arrived! We actually had to wait!

Then the Japanese system got things back on track. The hospital arranged for Wakana to go down for her physical therapy early instead of at 10:30. We did not request this, they just did it. When we returned the doctor was in and we went straight in to see him.

He looked over the MRI, the x-rays, and the previous reports and then talked to Wakana for a while. He announced that she was cured. She did not need surgery nor did she need any more PT! BUT she is to take things easy for a while. She needs to build up her strength and BE AWARE of what she is doing to herself!

So we are going home. Yippee! I love it here in Japan and the cold doesn't really bother me all that much but I want to go home.

When we go to the grocery store we can see a wooded hill far down at the end of the street. Wakana told me there is a park there that is related to the first settlers in this area. So yesterday I walked down there to take a look at it. I stopped along the way to buy two books in Japanese hiragana, the first of the three alphabets I have to learn. [I am making good progress. A few days ago I read a sign, Kusuli (pharmacy), and this morning I read the name tag on our waitress's uniform (Ishi).] I got Toy Story 2 and Winnie The Pooh.

Anyway, coming out of the bookstore I took the first left and walked down a narrow street with houses on the right and rice fields and greenhouses on the left. At one point I had to leave the road to make way for a huge fuel truck that was slowly picking its way down and around the streets. At the end of the street I met with a T-intersection. I chose the left and walked down past a construction site and around the curve at the bottom of the hill. I found a set of stone steps leading up hill. I climbed for a while but I was pretty tired by then and I also needed a bathroom. In Japan you do not need to look far to find one of those and I quickly spotted one at the bottom of the hill.

Behind it was a lovely pond with gravel paths and a wooden walkway crossing it. I stopped to rest on a bench and watch the ducks splash and swim. The park is pretty and I imagine it is beautiful in the bright greens of summer and the brilliant colors of autumn. As it is I found it pretty in the drab of late winter. The gray sky reflects poorly in the water giving it an unhealthy caste.

A duck spoke to me but I guess he spoke in Japanese for I did not understand him. I imagined he was asking what I was doing so I told him. He didn쳌ft seem to understand. I guess he doesn쳌ft speak English. He said something else that sounded a little derisive to me but I was getting cold so I packed up my notebook, gave him a farewell bow, and moved on.

Wakana쳌fs father is sick, flu, cold, or something, and it has the household in an uproar. He takes it as a matter of course that the women on the house will wait on him and see to his comfort. Wakana쳌fs parents are traditional Japanese and it would never occur to her mother to tell her father to stick it where the sun don쳌ft shine. Instead she makes him rice gruel and then, when he complains about the flavor, makes him a second bowl. Their쳌fs was an arranged marriage and he was not her first choice. I get the feeling she has regretted it for most of her life.

This morning we got up early to make it to the doctor쳌fs office. As we sat around the table at breakfast I listened to Wakana and her mother speaking in hushed voices and thought of other early morning tables I had experienced. I thought about harvest season and going out in the cold September pre-dawn dark to spend the whole day picking potatoes. I hated that job. I thought about deer hunting and rising early to get out into the woods before the sun drove the deer too deep into hiding for the day. Those were better memories. The family had a one room log cabin on a lake in Maine and we would use it as home base for fishing and hunting trips. I would wake up and listen as Dad moved around lighting fires and getting breakfast ready. I would be warm in my sleeping bag but I also knew that I would have to get out and dress quickly for his breath hung in the frosty air and meant that my clothes would be cold against my skin.