Spring stories...

Now that summer is here (hot humid and sticky) and I have got all my photos off my camera I can tell you about spring.  I have also finished my first subject of my graduate certificate, which gives me a little more time for writing.  

So, spring in Japan.  All Japanese people love spring.  They complained when it was too cold and now they're complaining that it's too hot.  (I even had one teacher today tell me how much he preferred winter over summer.... interesting, I remember he didn't like winter at all!!).  One thing I have learnt in Japan is to like what you have or otherwise you'll never be happy.  Apart from a few weeks in autumn or spring the weather in Japan is not that great.  As you can see (or possibly know) spring is about cherry blossom trees.  Sakura is the Japanese word for cherry blossom.  They really like cherry blossoms - they have elaborate picnic drinking parties under the trees, the locals take photos of the trees and they even make cherry blossom flavoured soft drinks.  And yes, it tasted terrible!  The cherry blossom chocolate was ok though.  

At the end of spring is Golden Week, almost a week of public holidays.  Children seem to be rather important at this time and there are different festivals and activities for boys and girls over this time.  Lots of fish-flags are put up (our neighbours made a lot of nice that Saturday morning).  The picture is near our local castle where flags have been coloured in/painted and strung up over the water.  While you might think a week of public holidays is a good time to travel, guess again!  Every Japanese persons thinks so too.  So we had a very nice relaxful time close to home.  (That was also the week I did some serious work on my essay for uni).

The last thing of interest was "the mystery of the swollen eyes."   One night I woke up halfway through the night and discovered that one of my eyes had swollen shut.  It was a bit of a surprise.  At that time I thought I'd just gotten bitten by a mozzie (I'd had a few bites on my face previously and they swelled a little but were always ok by morning).  I wasn't quite sure whether to put cream on, so I just left it and went back to sleep.  In the morning both my eyes were swollen.  As always these things happen on a day off work, and after some debate (and the realisation that it wasn't going to go away on it's own) I decided to go to the doctor.

The incredible thing is when you go to a doctor in another country, there are some things you just don't have to explain.   Once they decided that I didn't have renal failure, and it was probably just an allergic reaction, I was able to go to the chemist (more stares and exclamations), get some antihistamines or something and it went down over the next few days.  Ready for me to go back to work!  But the mystery remains: allergic to what?  something I ate? mozzie bites?  my new feather pillow?  Incidentally I decided Dan could keep the feather pillows, and I used the opportunity to ask my employer (who organised my apartment) about fly screens.