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Adventures in Health Care

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In March 2020 I had a long-awaited surgery to repair a left inguinal hernia. The hernia had been a bother since the Autumn of the previous year so finally getting it done was a relief. The surgery itself was rather straightforward; I was given anesthesia and while I was out the surgery was performed via a laparoscope. After a requisite few hours to recover from the anesthesia I was given a fistful of opioids for the post-surgery pain and two days later, I was back to my regular routine save for yoga stretches and resistance training that I needed to wait for a few weeks before I could resume. My out-of-pocket expense for the surgery was about $200 and my employer-provided health insurance covered the remaining $7000 cost of the surgery. From diagnosis to surgery took approximately 3 months. Fast forward to the late summer of 2022. We had been in Japan for about 6 weeks when I noticed symptoms not unlike my previous hernia but this time on the right side. I had just received my kokumin ...
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A Sense of Place

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 It has now been 116 days since we arrived in Japan. Since then the sweltering Japanese Summer has given way to a much welcome cooler and drier Autumn, we've settled into our place and have been slowly acclimating to our environment and Japan in general. So, what's it been like so far? We moved into our apartment in Sakae-ku, Kosugaya, 1 Chome on 21 July. The building in which we live is a mid-Showa era (1925 - 1989) building called a 'danshi' or a tower block, the exterior decor of which I have jokingly referred to as either 'prison block' or 'Soviet-era' chic. Cell Block 14 Our apartment is on the 14th of 15-floors and has east-facing windows that afford us a nice view of Kosugaya, the name of the area in which we live. Though our apartment is only 45 square meters (~480 square feet) it is well-appointed and comfortable for us.  Our home is also well located; the train station and bus stop are across the street, and there are two supermarkets, a bakery...
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Language and the Lack There-of

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 Since I was around 10 years old I've had a fascination with languages, especially those that did not use Latin script as part of their written expression. I learned the entire Cyrillic alphabet, dozens of Chinese characters, and even Phoenician script. None of this of course got me anywhere near actual written or spoken fluency but it was a start. Fast forward 10 years to when I entered college and began learning German; 1 hour a day, 5 days per week, and hours of study for 2 years. It was only when I began to learn another language that all the English grammar, verb tenses and conjugations that I could not comprehend when I was in middle school became crystal clear. I also discovered I had a natural aptitude for learning and speaking another language. I was on my way! Now, some 50 years since my interest in language began, I find myself living in a country where my native English tongue is not widely spoken and my Japanese language skills are put to the test like they never ...
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Service Supreme

Readers of my previous posts may notice I have changed the title of this journal to 'I'm a Stranger Here Myself', a tip of the hat to Bill Bryson's wonderful book of the same name.  After some reflction I  thought 'Stranger in a Strange Land' a bit of a cliche so using Bryson's title seemed to be a better fit. i'm sure he won't mind.  I think a few words praise on the level of customer service I have experienced here are in order. On more than one occasion most of you reading this have likely encountered rude and indifferent customer service from shop clerks, wait staff, and so on in the United States and elsewhere. In Japan, t hough the level of customer service is a different story. It is innate in the Japanese culture to be polite and the service industry here exemplifies that attribute. In every restaurant and shop I have visited we've been treated akin to VIPs. There are multiple businesses at every level competing for patrons and providing ...
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Getting From Here to There

One of the things Japan does very well is move millions of people a day via train and bus. Mass transit almost always runs efficiently and on time. Even the slightest delay in a train's arrival or departure will be cause for an apology issued via the train station's PA. ’ Moushiwakearimasen', meanin g we deeply apologize, is the word, albeit rarely, one hears on such occasions.  The whole system, at least in the metropolitan areas, is a marvel of system engineering, integration, and efficiency. Quite amazing really. Trains and buses will be our primary means of getting from A to B as we have no plans to buy a car so a top-drawer mass transit system is a blessing. In order to make use of the transit system, we needed to add an e-card app to our phones to purchase fares. Such apps are used not only for purchasing train and bus fares but also for food and drinks at train stations and konvini (convenience) stores. Suica and PassMo are the most ubiquitous apps so we loaded the S...
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Changing Horses in Mid-Stream: Moving from California to Japan

After 45 years of living in the San Francisco Bay Area, 22 of them married to a Japanese woman,  Ikuko and I decided to sell our home and move to Japan. We hatched this notion some 7 years ago and after much work prepping our house for sale. jettisoning a lifetime's accumulation of 'stuff' we no longer needed and overcoming a 2-year delay, primarily covid, we finally made our goal a reality. The purpose of this online journal (I never liked the word 'blog'. To my ears it's onomatopoeic for the sound one makes when projectile vomiting after a bought of Olympic-level drinking, but I digress) is to share with loved ones not so much day to day activities but my impressions of life in Japan from the point of view of a 'gaijin', which literally translates to 'outsider'. So, I will start at the airport... We arrived at Narita, Japan's main international airport, on 7 July at 1440 (Japan typically uses the 24-hour clock) Thursday afternoon Japan time...
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