Moving Upstairs

I'm in the midst of packing and moving my stuff upstairs to one of the Guest rooms.  It's a matter of schedule that I'm moving this week.  My replacements here at the Guest Home will be arriving on August 29 and they need to live here. I would like to take a bit of a holiday while things are relatively quiet here and have the opportunity to go to my favorite place in the woods in the mountains in Karuizawa.  My quilting class is having a party at our sensei's summer home in Naka Karuizawa on August 26. So, if you put all of those things on a calendar you come up with my needing to move this week. A friend got me a discount on tickets on the Shinkansen, so that really means I have to go on the planned day and time, no excuses.

One thing that makes it a little easier is that in my mind I've never moved in to this apartment.  The circumstances of my taking on the job of managing the Guest Home and the relentlessness of the work itself has meant that I sleep in the bed, I use the shower and the kitchen, but my stuff pretty much sits on the top.  Not stashed away too far.  So for the last day and a half I've been putting things in boxes so that I can get them out of here quickly and then I'll clean the house so that I can go on my vacation.

This morning I did another job that was on my list.  I went for my annual check up with my local doctor. I was due for a blood draw in any case, so I also had the urine test, chest x-ray, and EKG.  They also check your height weight, waist measurement, and such.  Because of my age and because I am part of the National Health Plan this annual check is free for the things I mentioned.  The only thing he asked me about adding was the liver function tests on the blood samples.  This added about $4.50 to my usual fee (like a co-pay). I could go to a bigger clinic and get a mammogram and swallow a camera for a stomach cancer test, but I have chosen to defer those till I get home. The doctor I see has a small clinic very near here.  It's great for getting my maintenance medications and for colds or other ailments.  The best part is that he understands most of my questions/responses in English and attempts to use as much English as he can pull up from his memory when speaking to me. So it has worked for me. When I told him I was moving back to America in September he didn't make much of a response, so I said, "Will you miss me?" He said, "I suppose."

The Quintessential Ichikawa Summer Event

Most summers the city of Ichikawa puts on an event the first Saturday of August.  It's a fireworks display down by the Edogawa River. Sometimes I have gone down to the riverside and sat on a tarp with crowds of others to see the show close up and other years like this one I went up to the flat roof of the Guest Home building.  The weather conditions this year were near optimal and the view was great.  Fireworks in Japanese are Hanabi which can be roughly translated as "Fire Flowers."  Here's a short clip of the 75 minute show.