Doctors, School News and Lunch!

Hi There!

I will keep this week's update a bit shorter! I seem to have caught some sort of ear infection, so I have been trying to take it easy this weekend.

Symptoms started showing up earlier this week and they became more acute on Wednesday evening into Thursday. I was able to get into a doctor on Friday who prescribed me some medications that will hopefully help.

Finding a doctor was not too difficult. One thing that I have heard about Japan, though, is that there are not many "general practice" doctors available - if you go to one with a specific body problem, they will send you to a specialist who handles that issue.

I was able to find a few Ear, Nose, and Throat doctors nearby that support English speakers. Even though the doctor mostly spoke English, there were some things that were difficult to communicate. It is also hard to tell whether you are getting the best doctor or just the one who happens to speak English.

Hopefully the symptoms will improve soon!

In other news, I found out that my school has a website on which it shares news and photos. So you will see photos of many of the events that I have written about.

The text is all in Japanese, but you can use google translate or a browser plug-in to translate the pages if you want. You will see some pictures of the kids at nature school (5th graders are currently staying overnight at a nature camp for a few days), the swimming activities and pictures from sports day.

The website is available here - click this link to see it.

Aside from that, one thing interesting I found out this past week about school involved lunch.

I will keep the story brief, but almost every student in the school eats school lunch. There are a few students who have allergies or dietary restrictions, so they bring their own "bento" lunch box and do not eat the same food as the rest of the students.

The staff all eat the lunch as well.

The interesting thing that I found out is that at some schools, it is customary for the vice-principal of the school to eat lunch first before everyone else. According to what I read, he or she does this in order to "test" the lunch and make sure it is safe for for staff and students to eat.

There can be cases in which the vice principal notices something is wrong with the lunch and cancel it.

At my school, I do often see the vice principal eating the lunch earlier than everyone else. Always earlier than the students.

I am not sure, though, that he is doing so in order to ensure the safety of the lunch, or if he is just doing it because it is available to him earlier. I asked about this custom at my school and from the response I got, it might not be that common a practice nowadays.

Until next time,

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