Most of August!

We are surviving the summer but very grateful for the rainy days we have.  They can get a bit strong sometimes and the area where we live is famous for thunder and lightning so we've even lost power a couple of times but there has been no major damage to our town.  Other places in Japan have not fared so well with major flooding in the cities.  It seems as if Japan is always recovering from typhoons or heavy rains or earthquakes...

Whenever I can, I enjoy the airconditioning and at the beginning of summer I started some crochet.  Unfortunately it is going slowly and I have a feeling that I'm not going to get the summer sweater I was hoping to make for myself done before autumn...  I don't even remember what I'd done to my back (that memo by my sketch) but it cleared up pretty quickly.

In my last post I showed a picture of a small Japanese character panel that was my trial run before I started on the real thing.  Well, I got the four panels done for a church group and though there were a few things I experimented with for the first time, I think everyone was happy with the results.  I traced the characters of the original artist (from our church) and bonded those to some kimono fabric from a kimono I'd torn apart and sewn with before.  It was interesting to me that though the first and third characters and the second and fourth characters are actually the same, the artist had calligraphed them a bit differently so I tried to stay true to the original artist.  I free-hand machine quilted the characters down, and got to thinking about border and binding...  

Though Japanese calligraphy is usually done in pitch black sumi ink, the panels seemed a bit drab and so I tore into ANOTHER kimono that I had, red this time and followed YouTube to make flange binding.  That was fairly successful and then I decided to add a family seal of the original artist on the front of the last panel which is the custom.  I had Tetsu draw me out the man's name on a small square of fabric and then I embroidered that and hand appliqued it to a red square and added those to the panel.  

Tetsu had also written out the man's first name and I had embroidered that too and see-sawed between which "seal" to use on the front and once I'd decided to use the last name, it seemed a waste to throw out the "seal" of the man's first name so I used that on my label on the back of one of the panels.  This was a very rewarding project that suddenly fell in my lap and I am so happy I got a chance to put my thinking cap on to make these panels for the church group!

I have a bit of a complicated story about the results from Tetsu's colonoscopy which I wrote about in the last post.  He had his procedure, the doctor removed a polyp, he went back a week later so get the lab results from the polyp.  I waited at home and didn't give it too much thought as the doctor had said a week earlier that there was probably nothing to worry about.

Well, Tetsu sent a message to my phone just as I was sitting down to lunch.  Did you ever notice that when these messages come in, only one or two lines of the whole message flashes on your screen in a notification?  Then you open up the message and can read the complete communication.  Did you ever notice that?  I never had but anyway, only the first two lines of the communication are shown at first glance.  

The complicated point to this story is that Japanese grammar and English grammar are opposite and the verb comes at the end of a sentence instead of at the beginning.  In English we'd say "I like ice cream."  In Japanese we say something like "Ice cream I like."  The affirmative or negative of the verb also gets tacked on AFTER the verb instead of in front of the verb.  "Ice cream I like not."  ANYWAY....  I get this message on my phone from Tetsu and the only two lines that come up are "The test results are malignant..."  I about dropped my chopsticks and grabbed my chest!  Oh no...  Not at all what we were expecting!  With heart beating I opened up the whole message and it says "The test results are not malignant."  ("The test results malignant not.")  Whew!  Well, Tetsu could have just written "The test results were benign." but he chose to phrase the sentence in the negative.  I guess I can only be upset with the Japanese language!  

The construction behind our house continues with lots of rumbling while the tractors and bull dozers and trucks rumble past our house and on to where the main factory will be built.  The scenery sure has changed in these past few years...

The rice fields are still there a few yards beyond the factory entrance though.

Another story.  The day before yesterday I went for my usual checkup at the university hospital about an hour away from us.  I get checked for rheumatism there and then get my prescription filled at the pharmacy connected with the hospital.  It is a HUGE pharmacy and I think I was told it is the largest in Japan.  There must be 40 or 50 pharmacists working there at a time and there are about 25 windows where consultations and medications are handed out.  Tetsu and I figure that in a single day over 700 patients are served there.  Anyway, a major operation goes on daily.

So I waited for about 15 minutes, reading my Kindle, while waiting to have my prescription filled and then we drove home.  That evening I got a phone call that I was hesitant to answer because there was no ID for the caller.  However, a voice message was left.  

"Good evening.  Is this Tanya Watanabe's telephone?  This is the **** Pharmacy.  Is it possible that you forgot something that looks like a tablet at the pharmacy today?  Please give us a call if we've contacted the right person."

Sigh.  Yes.  It was me and it was my Kindle that I'd left at the pharmacy.  How did they ever figure out it was me who had left it?  I didn't have my name or address or phone number in it...  I called the pharmacy back confirming that it was my Kindle I'd forgotten and yesterday Tetsu and I drove the hour there and an hour back to get it.  The pharmacy was overjoyed that they'd been able to return the Kindle to its rightful owner.

"How did you know to call me?"  

Well, opening it up they could see it was English... but I'm not always recognized as being a foreigner especially with a medical mask on and besides, there are always quite a lot of foreigners at the hospital and pharmacy.  They explained that looking at the Kindle's settings page they found my name and then they checked my records and confirmed that I'd been there that day and since they had my telephone number they were able to call me.  It is remarkable to me that something can be lost, and in Japan usually people will make the effort to find the owner and everyone is so happy about it too!  Like they've really accomplished something with a little effort!  

Cleo is still with us.  It's been four months since I thought he was on his last legs but he peacefully sleeps most of the day away on a cushion (he can't get up and down from a bed anymore) and usually in the evening he will snuggle with me for awhile, he'll roam around his blocked off room in the middle of the night, and VERY early in the mornings he'll be happy to cuddle some more.   We're taking good care of him while we have him.

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Leiya and family have successfully moved to a new house not far from Indianapolis and Luka has started kindergarten at the nearby elementary school.  

And I guess that's about it from Japan.  Last week was the holiday of Obon so families returned to their home towns to visit graves and welcome spirits back.  Now we are all getting ready for school to start again.