good beef don

The past couple of days, I've been struck several times with inexplicable happiness. I was walking up a road to a bakery, listening to music as usual and singing along and just feeling...happy! I still can't believe I'm here. That was a rainy day. The day before it was sunny and gorgeous and very California-like and it struck me that I already love this place more than I ever loved Harvard. For no especial reason. It's not particularly pretty; God knows the campus is in ruins right now due to construction, and even if it weren't under construction it would be a dismal concrete mass. My apartment is a dismal concrete mass. The city is criss-crossed with power lines, half the streets don't have sidewalks, and...well...it's generally ugly. It's nowhere near as cute as Cambridge. Of course, the castle is gorgeous, and there are various traditional-style houses and buildings that lend character to the city. But still! I've rarely (if ever? can't remember) felt just happy to be at Harvard, walking down the street, singing along to music, going somewhere nice by myself. I don't know if it was the workload, the people, or the atmosphere. But here, everybody is extraordinarily nice and I'm generally relaxed.

Along those lines of being happy, I had really great fastfood gyuu-don (beef donburi, or beef over rice) today for lunch. Mmm! A bowl of beef don and a mini bowl of udon cost me only 640 yen. Beats American fast food any day. Ahhh....

Part of the reason I had to eat out for lunch anyways was because I spent all morning in the hospital. My host mom, who is heavily pregnant, was scheduled to go to the hospital across from the university for a checkup. She invited me to go with her to get a look at how the Japanese hospital system works. I suppose it's about the same? Some differences included that for all the basic pre-seeing-doctor checkup stuff, like getting a blood test, blood pressure checked, urine sample, etc...had my poor host mom running all over the hospital, visiting this and that nurses' station. Well, in the US one hardly ever sees a doctor in the hospital unless one is actually admitted to the hospital. Most of the time, patient visits are in outpatient clinics, and in those places a nurse or technician does all the pre-seeing-doctor exams in one place, the exam room! Saves time and trouble that way. I spent all the waiting knitting a hat for the baby (gave her the matching booties that morning). I cast on after I got to the hospital, and was nearly done by the time the morning was over! In fact, I finished the hat just now. It's in gorgeous Noro Transitions color 19, beige-ish naturalish, with beautiful gradations in color, and soft and fuzzy and lovely. It's so nice I want to knit myself a hat in it too--still have two big skeins left.

But anyways, I got to see my host mom get an ultrasound (very fun). Cute baby? Well, it's hard to say that anything on an ultrasound image is cute. But I see the potential for cuteness. Unfortunately, she looks like she could might be delivering prematurely. She's not due until the end of December, but something about the baby suggests that she might deliver any moment! So she's been prescribed bed rest, which must suck royally. And on top of that, her husband (my host dad) has already scheduled two trips out of town next week for work, and so he can't stay with her. As a result of all that, they decided to admit her to the hospital right then and there! She's going to stay for at least 3 days, and then be re-evaluated. That's definitely something different from the US. I imagine that somebody prescribed bed rest in the US wouldn't be admitted to the hospital to stay indefinitely. Nobody to take care of you at home? Tough luck! Deal with it. From what I know, nights at a hospital are kept to an absolute minimum, reserved for those who are critically ill or dying. New mothers go home right away!