After Osaka I came back to Takefu and rested for a day, then danced in Takefu’s Furusato Matsuri like I did last year. Actually, the night was almost exactly like last year’s… I met the new JETs from Fukui prefectures as they came to Takefu to dance, I helped out with some translating and festival organizing, and I got free McDonald’s. The main differences were that this year I had an iPhone, so I was able to take better pictures, and this year I wore my own yukata, which was a nice feeling. I also was able to have real conversations with Japanese people outside, and I helped an old woman find a bus.
A dragon float
Lining up, getting ready to dance
Another float and dancers
After the dancing, I went to my room and painted. I was exhausted and sweatier than a Turk in a sauna. I started to get a slight sore throat by the end of the night, and when I woke up in the morning I had a full blown horrible fever from hell. I thought I would just rest it off in bed, but by noon I knew it wasn’t going away so I forced myself to go to the (dreaded) hospital — something which I had promised myself I wouldn’t do again. Luckily it wasn’t crowded, and I was able to speak with the hospital staff fairly well. I got an IV drip and they told me to come back twice a day, every day for 3 days — luckily since I live so close to the hospital I didn’t have to be admitted overnight. After that first trip I went home to take a nap when I realized I hadn’t had a chance to go shopping yet — there was no food, let alone vitamin drinks and such (which I had been told to drink by the doctor). I tried to go out, but I nearly collapsed, so I had to call my coworker Mayuko to bring my some food. I felt so horrible, but she brought me some drinks and a sandwich from the grocery store, and then that night Hitomi came back from Osaka to take care of me fore one night, then return to Osaka the next morning… Talk about an amazing girlfriend. That night was so awful — I was hallucinating and having fever spasms and all sorts of awful that I can’t remember — but Hitomi took care of me and wrote down all of my symptoms on a piece of paper for me to give the nurse the next day. The doctor and nurses were pretty concerned when he saw that, so they said maybe I should get my tonsils out. The infection apparently had come in through the canker sores I get almost monthly on my tonsils. (I think I’ve been mentioning that for years in my blog, so that’s nothing new.) I was so happy to finally hear someone mention taking them out — I had asked my doctor in the US 3 times if taking my tonsils out could stop the pain, or if I could do it at all, and each time I was told it was not worth doing, and I should just learn to deal with the horror of recurring throat ulcers. Bah. Well not anymore!
Anyway, just like last year, later in the week there was a fireworks festival at the Hino river. However, this year I was horribly horribly sick, so I didn’t go. I just played Civ 4 and watched them from my window. Luckily I still had a good view.
Fireworks from behind my prison bars
And that was pretty much my summer vacation. Hitomi came home that weekend and took care of my until I was better. Then on Monday we went to the Fukui Prefectural Hospital (the only hospital in the area that can perform such “major” surgery) and scheduled a tonsillectomy (October 8th, for the record). By the time I had to go back to work I was feeling better, but man that was a rough week.