In Flew Enza

It’s the last day of March and I wanted to get out a final post before the month closed out on me. I had planned to blog a lot more this week about all the cool places and wonderful things I planned on seeing. But some plans are not to be. Since last week I’ve had one interesting day, Wednesday, followed by a string of completely uninteresting days. Wednesday I went to Costco with some graduated seniors Aime and Rei, Amie’s dad, and Ishy. They were shopping for stuff for college; I was just there to spend time with them. I learned that Costco is like America town in Japan. They mass import American foodstuffs with all the English on it. In grocery stores most American brands, like Nabisco, will be in Japanese packaging. But at Costco everything was in English. It was like being in some weird tiny version of Sam’s Club where everyone was Asian. The store was huge for Japanese standards but puny for a Costco. I bought a giant thing of chocolate covered raisins so it was definitely worth the trip. Unfortunately the whole day was a lot colder than I anticipated and it turned out that I wore too little. So by the time I got home I had a fever and went straight to bed.

Fourteen hours later I woke up, still sick, to call Marianne and tell her I couldn’t go to Niigata. Marianne was disappointed but was kind enough to email me later and thank me for getting sick. Turns out I was not needed. I went to the doctor and found out I had the influenza and had to stay in bed. They take influenza very seriously around here, like to the point of insanity. It’s nuts. My host mother obviously had not idea of how to take care of a sick child. I had to tell her, “No I do not want take out pizza. Please just buy me some saltines and ginger ale and I’ll come out of my bed in three days.” Which is exactly what I did. Unfortunately, those three days were exactly the same three days that my family was traveling. So I missed going to Nikko too. Bummer. The good news is that I discovered a whole ton of awesome podcasts on iTunes because it hurt my eyes to watch movies or read. The downside is that I’ve listened to so much English over the past few days I feel like I’m losing my Japanese. But there are Japanese podcasts too.

Aside from recovering from illness (navigating the doctor’s office was fun) I’ve been packing. I’m almost done. With the exception of garbage, my alarm clock, and this computer, everything is in a box or bag. I got smart this time around and I’m sending a huge box of books, souvenirs, winter clothes, ski gear, and Styrofoam peanuts home. It severely lightens my load. Otherwise I don’t think it would all fit. I move tomorrow morning and I’m excited but also rather nervous. At this point I’d kind of just rather stay where I am.