Last week in Japan for me

Continuing in my backward progression on out Japan trip, somewhat out of order, as this will appear before the Akan trip, when it followed the trip.

We came back on Sunday, June 24 from Akan and went directly to visit Masae's favorite aunt and uncle. The rest of the family continued home and left us there. The plan was to take a cab home, or something.

Their house is more modern than the others I'd been in. Light colored walls, wood floor, it is more open and airy. They have a separate room that has a nice shrine with pictures of ancestors. There is also an alcove that has a banner or scroll of calligraphy done by their daughter when she was in school. It was very nice. It seemed traditional, reminding me of some rooms seen while touring Kyoto. In other houses, the shrines varied from small bread-box sized things, usually on a top shelf to less permanent structures.

We spent the afternoon there, drinking too many beers and eating a meal that was completely handmade, and perhaps grown by their son-in-law and daughter. I think they made the pasta, but did not grow the wheat. Everything else was from the garden.

There was a bit of a flavor of camping out, because there was a problem with the municipal water supply. When we got home, we had bottled water there too. The water was running there, but was kind of brownish. It was supposedly not unhealthy, but they were suggesting not to drink it, anyway.

Sam had been coughing for a while. He said that when he was at school, he didn't cough, so we were wondering if it was because the room was dusty at home. On Monday, school was cancelled due to the water problems.

On Tuesday, Sam woke up around 20 to 6 and was coughing. He was coughing up phlegm, which had never happened before, at least, not as bad. This was freaking him out. He was coughing and crying. At one point he said he was having trouble breathing. He came back upstairs and was crying and running around, so I grabbed him and sat him down, holding him. His heart was pounding. I asked him to calm down. He kind of looked up at me and asked if he was going to die. I said 'you have a cold, Sam ... people don't usually die of colds, especially young healthy people like you.' Your heart has to go out to the kid.

Masae and her family was worried, so they decided to call the ambulance and take Sam to the hospital. Particularly since he had complained of shortness of breath, I did not protest, although I figured it was just a cold. We could hear the siren coming, and I told Sam that was for him, and this would make a good entry into his journal. He had pretty much calmed down by then.

I remember two EMTs with the ambulance, one in a helmet. They got Sam in, along with Masae and Akemi, her sister. The ambulance stayed there for a while, I assume as they checked him over. As we waited, several neighbors came over. It was the first time I had seen the next-door neighbors. I remembered him from the wedding, as he is tall and has a goatee, which is somewhat unusual. Everyone was in their pajamas or hastily thrown on clothes. He said to me "Nihon no byouin wa daijoubu [desu]," which I was uncharacteristically able to understand completely and immediately as 'Japanese hospitals are ok or good.' He may have said something else reassuring, although I don't remember.

I stayed home because it was the first day of the quarter at CBC and I would have been next to useless at the hospital, anyway. Between this, phone calls from the insurance adjuster and the backlog of stuff that had happened already back in the US (it being around 2:30 p.m. PDT Monday), the beginning of a truely insane day was shaping up.

On top of all this, there was a problem with student authentication to Tegrity. I quickly put together a work-around tutorial for the instructors using it and started working with Tegrity to troubleshoot the problem. I spent hours investigating on my own, talking to Tegrity support, culminating in an online chat with a Tegrity tech in Tel-Aviv, Israel, and another in California. He was able to pin-point where the problem was and indicated it was a WebCT problem. I submitted a BlackBoard support request.

This was all in addition to whatever regular first-day crazyness there was.