Well today I’ve felt generally much better, though eating a meal still takes me over 2 hours. They told me hospitalization in Japan was remarkably longer than in the US — 10 days compared to roughly 3 — although I can’t fathom how someone would be able to have gone home in 3 days after this… Perhaps if they ha parents or whoever at home to look after them. But since. I live alone I am so very glad I was in here for 8 days.

That’s right, 8! It’s official, I can go tomorrow. It feels like time off for good behavior at prison or something. But this hospital is great. It’s like a hotel really, so leaving isn’t exactly like breaking out… Except I’ll be glad not to have this moaning pornstar next to me (shut up, man).

I’ll also be glad to get back to my current hobby, editing the Wikipedia page on Echizen, Fukui. When I first came here, there was literally one sentence about my town, leaving me in the dark about this place. This month, though, I’ve been focusing on changing that, and day by day adding more to the page and updating the information already there. If you go there now I hope you’ll be impressed by the job I did!

Have I mentioned like 10 times yet how amazing the iPhone is?? This little tool is the cure to boredom and loneliness in a place like this. I’m sure I’d have been miserable or at least unhappy and bored without it. But I’m downright enjoying myself. It takes all the focus off the pain and lets me do a huge variety of things. This is the trinket I have been waiting for all my life. If I had this when I was a kid, there would never have been a chance for boredom in my life. I can’t imagine what all you old people must have done when you were kids without computers. That’s just not living!

Anyway, back to Dracula, chatting with Hitomi, and playing RPGs simultaneously on this thing…

Tomorrow I get to leave the hospital ahead of schedule! Yay!

I’m feeling much better today compared to the past 2 days. Plus I just had a shower, which always makes me feel a little better. The nurses here have all been really nice and friendly so far. And my really noisy neighbor finally moved out this morning, so it’s been nice and peaceful! The new neighbor is more quiet, but he’s constantly moaning like he’s trying out to be in a porno… I feel bad for him because he must be in a lot of pain, but really… I think he might just be overdoing it a bit. The guy across from me with his stomach sliced open is always bright and friendly, never complaining. Oh well, at least the other guy is gone. He kept me up all night and all day shouting with his 60 of more guests who visited him constantly… And every one of them knocked my curtains back ad didn’t fix them so I had to keep getting out of bed. What’s Japanese for “indoor voices please” I wonder…

I wish I had blogged more recently, as I’ve been neglecting this site for a while… But I guess the busier I am an the more things going on in my life, the less time I have to write about them. Catch 22.

I really really feel gamer’s withdrawal. I need 10cc’s of D&D and a line of Warhammer stat!

I didn’t get a chance to write anything before I came here, but I have some free time now anyway, as I sit in my hospital bed delirious with agony…

Actually it’s not THAT bad… Having my wisdom teeth out was much much worse. And up to yesterday I was feeling better and better by the day. Today took a turn for the painful though. The doctor says I look good though, so the reason for the pain is actually because the new skin is causing the old skin to dry and peel in my throat. Basically I’m growing a new throat now. And that’s exactly as comfortable as it sounds.

Having my iPhone has been a complete life saver. I can game, chat, send emails, read news, (blog — which of course I haven’t been doing) and so on. I had recently been dying to play some of the old school DOS games that ruled my childhood like Ultima Underworld, and Dragon Wars, and Wizardy, and to my delight I found one for the iPhone. It’s called Dragon Bane II and it’s just like Bard’s Tale down to the graphics. I love it! It’s been helping the time go by. I’ve also been using it as an ereader, so I finished Neuromancer and just started Dracula (which is really awesome — I’m glad high school never had a chance to ruin it for me like it did with Frankenstein).

I also have my laptop here, so when I was feeling ok yesterday I painted a lot. Yay!

Actually the #1 thing about staying here has been Hitomi. She has been here every free minute she has had, doing everything to make me comfortable. She even inserts my butt rocket pain killers instead of the nurses for me. How lucky! But seriously, she’s made this as enjoyable as a hospital stay can possibly be, so I’m really happy that she is here.

I could go on in detail about minor things like the food, the view, the butt rockets… But I can’t imagine it being interesting to anyone but me. Besides, typing on the iPhone is not as fun as playing Dragon Bane II…

Oh yeah, and I can blog from my iPhone too, which is über awesome.

Did I just say über? It betrays me as part of the Wolfenstein Generation. Heh… and the iPhone automatically adds the umlaut too. Neat.

So last week I got a new cellphone (hoorah!) — an iPhone 3G! When I went to Tokyo last November for Kaori’s wedding, I bought an iPod Touch in the Ginza Apple Store, and I fell so in love with it. Prior to owning that I never expected I’d want and iPhone, as I’m not a big cell phone guy (although living in Japan — the land of magical cell phones — has changed that slightly). However, the iPod Touch was so darn awesome, and my only regret was that it didn’t have a speaker or a microphone. The iPhone is basically that. I was getting tired of carrying my iPod *and* my cellphone wherever I went, too, so I knew I had to get one as soon as it came to Japan.

The iPhone came out here on the 11th, and I was pretty set to pick on up after work on the 12th. I knew there were enormous lines in Tokyo, but I figured in Takefu the story might be a bit different… So Hitomi and I went to a Softbank Store and Yamada Denki after work on Saturday, but we were told they were all sold out. Bums to that, right? Not exactly… My friend Gabe had mentioned to me how each store actually has a secret number of phones — say 30 — that they can sell each day. Once they sell that number, they have to say they’re sold out. So the next day around 1pm, Hitomi and I went back to the Softbank store and were told by the salesman, “たぶん一年間待ったら良い” — the wait list was at least 1 year long. Pffah! I can smell bullshit when I hear it and that was Grade A Quality Produce he was trying to serve us.

But just for caution’s sake we went to Yamada Denki again with the intent to reserve one for whenever they should come into stock. When we asked about them, we were prompty seated and told they had them in stock. “Whhhaaaaaaa?” That’s right! So, we sat down and went through all the papers, the salesguy asking me in triplicate all kinds of “are you aware…?” questions meant to discourage less serious buyers from making such an expensive investment — apparantly countless businessmen signed up for the iPhone only to have their wives tell them there was no way in hell they could get one… The iPhone is such an expensive piece of hardware that the installment payment plan can’t be retracted. Unfortunately for me, being a foreigner, I couldn’t sign up for Apple’s “cheaper” installment plan, and I had to fork out the whole cost of the phone up front. On the other hand, that means my monthly fee is the same as my previous one, so that’s fine by me. After all, I wanted the iPhone because it’s a computer I can carry in my pocket, not because it’s a cell phone that elicits erections in hipsters and metrosexuals throughout the US.

OVerall I’m very happy with my phone, but it does have shortcomings compared to Japanese cell phones — no TV, no instant payment system, no MMS, no video calls. Not that I used most of those anyway. The lack of MMS is slightly unfortunate for me, and a total loss for any Japanese iPhone users, as MMS is the primary means of communication here. Nobody uses the phone to chat or to send SMS like they do in the US. Everyone here wants to send photo mails and colorful animated smiley faces — which is why my older handset had over 9 pages of animated emoticons to pick from. It was fun for me, but by no means necessary; and certainly not worth more than the ability to do just about anything that a computer can do with my phone. The only other complaint I have is the crappy notification system for emails. If I get an SMS it beeps and buzzes like a regular phone. But, as we don’t use SMS in Japan, I only get a visual notification if I get an email to my phone, rather than a buzz or a beep. That’s not going to kill the phone for me, but it’s too bad. Although, if Apple wants to survive in Japan, I imagine they will be updating and fixing that *very* soon. After all, no Japanese is going to want to use the phone for long without those feature.

The iPhone has only been out here for slightly over a week, and that’s about as long as I’ve had mine… but I’m sure those complaints by Japanese users will be addressed soon. Anyway I’m waiting mostly for the ability to jailbreak my phone and install any application I want on it, like I did with my iPod Touch. For the time, I love the phone though.