Oh body, I hate you too, but it could be worse.

[tammaiya]

* Ugh, okay, so I would just like to add the last few days to my top ten "That was fun, let's do it again NEVER" experiences. ~___~ Actually really it was only from about 10pm Sunday night to maybe 4pm Monday that really sucked. But, to sum up, I got gastro again. Whooooo. On the bright side, unlike that time when I got it really badly two years ago, I didn't have to go to the hospital this time because I could still hold down fluids. So I spent about 24 hours or so subsisting solely on gatorade triple charge. I feel it's a sad indictment on the current state of my life that last night I ate bread and apples, and actually considered this to be an accomplishment.

The period that really sucked was midnight to about 6am on Saturday morning. I started feeling sick on the train home at 10pm Sunday and at first I assumed it was motion sickness-- it's rare for me to get it on trains, but not unheard of. However, it kept getting worse, not better. By midnight it was terrible and I was inducing vomit just to get rid of the queasiness. Man, I'd forgotten how much vomitting sucks. Or, rather, the sense of that dims with time. But it was still the lesser of two evils-- for as long as it lasted, at least, because the nausea returned about once an hour following that. At that point I decided it was food poisoning-- I hadn't entirely discounted gastro, but it hasn't been going around that I'm aware of and the nausea started not long after I ate sushi for dinner.

Anyway, that was really sucktastic, because I was SO TIRED even by 3am-- seriously, I was dead on my feet when I had to get up at 5. The nausea was actually waking me up, and there is no way that that isn't lame. >( It's weird, because that's what happened last time I got gastro too-- except the once an hour thing lasted until 8am, and the vomitting was uncontrollable and happened (as well as on the hour) every time I so much as took a sip of water. This time it was mostly me inducing it so the nausea would subside and I could sleep without worrying about it creeping up on me and then having to clean up, and just water was okay, which is why I didn't have to go to the hospital. (That, and I was more confident about giving myself insulin to keep my blood sugar from skyrocketting this time.)

I was still being overly optimistic when I tried to eat an apple, though. <<; Probably didn't help that I ate it with the peel. And after Elizabeth went to all the trouble of going out to buy them for me, too. (I'm so glad I have friends like that in the dorm. I texted her Monday morning to ask because I was worried about my blood sugar, thought I could at least eat an apple, but didn't feel like I could get as far as the fruit shop, and she went for me right away.)

Anyhoo, since regurgitating my stomach lining always seems to inspire the "i want my mummy ;___;" impulses even though I know logically there's nothing she can really do (especially from across the pacific ocean) I pinged my brother over google talk and asked him to ring mum, who fired off a bunch of questions and freaked out hardcore as soon as any upchucking was mentioned. I... really should have seen that coming. << Anyway, mum was all OH MY GOD GO TO THE HOSPITAL, GO TO THE HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW!!! and I was like, pathetically, "but I can still drink water..." and rang Kaori to ask what I should be doing. Kaori's phone was off, but she rang me back not long after-- turns out she's on a training course this week because she's in her last semester of university. She said she couldn't come to uni until 6pm, but that usually with food poisoning you go to the doctor and if it's bad they'll send you to hospital for 2 or 3 days. She wasn't sure if you could buy things with electrolytes in them in Japan even though I looked up the Japanese word-- not that I blame her, because I totally didn't know what "electrolytes" were either until I got gastro two years ago-- and meanwhile my mother rang my endocrinologist and phoned me internationally to tell me what he said.

The upshot of all this was I finally dragged my sorry carcas out of the dorm and to the health centre, where I proved my Japanese language ability still functions when I'm miserably sick (who knew?) and it turned out I had gastro, not food poisoning as I'd previously assumed, because I had a slight fever and that meant it was viral. So the doctor gave me three types of medicine to help with the symptoms (I love the health centre for not only seeing me for free but GIVING ME FREE MEDICINE, I may have mentioned this back in April) and told me to drink sports drinks, which is where the electrolytes here are hiding (...should've thought of that) and said so long as I controlled my blood sugar (which I was managing fine) and kept my fluids up my ketones would also be under control and I wouldn't need to go to the hospital. \o/

So I got Gaterade from one of the many vending machines on my tiny campus-- yay Japan-- and took medicine, and gradually, all became right with the world again. Even if I DID have to go to all four periods of class (10.40 - 6pm with an hour for lunch from 12.10) on nothing but Gaterade in my stomach. << I wasn't exactly hungry, weirdly, but it was still not cool, especially since I could feel I still had a slight fever. Oh well.

At least I now have a week off classes!

* Aaah, week off classes. I've mentioned this before, but this week is the Gaigo-sai-- GaigoDai festival. Today they're setting up so the festival hasn't started yet but there are no classes. Which is even more excellent to me in my still somewhat dubious physical state than it would otherwise be. I slept in, and it was glorious. To be fair the reason I really needed to sleep in was because I'd had trouble getting to sleep in the FIRST place and then woke up with a hypo at around 5.30, but if I'd had to get up for class on top of that it would have really sucked, so.

* Hm, the subsequent downhill nature of my Sunday evening distracted me from what I was originally intending to post about when I was out on Sunday-- it was quite a pity because I was having a fairly good day until, you know, the inevitable ugh. I took photos of Ikebukuro being Christmas-y which I will eventually upload (note on Christmas: it is not a public holiday, it is not a big gift-giving goodwill for all mankind etc event, but it is fairly popular as a holiday for lovers-- so you wouldn't get presents from your parents but you probably would from your boy- or girlfriend. And Japan is in favour of anything that allows for shiny decorations and muzac, so there are Christmas displays and lights and trees and music ALL OVER Sunshine Road and the area outside Ikebukuro station right now). Then I was drawn to the eight storey electronics department store next to the station-- I spent a lot of my time loitering on the third and fourth floors, the third because I actually was in need of some relatively inexpensive earphones that would sound less crappy and not fall out of my ears all the time and sometimes cut out in the right bud like the ones I had (achieved on all three counts! for just under 2000 yen), and the fourth because... well. It was the gaming floor. And I am drawn like a magnet. *weak like a very weak thing*

Considering I wasn't even looking for anything specific, I spent a ridiculous amount of time there. You know, ogling the Chrono Trigger display, snickering when I found the Kamen Rider aisle (it wasn't just video games, despite the floor labelling), eyeing the game offerings, watching the promo vids, contemplating the gaming accessories, generally prowling around looking at displays-- they had one for a new game which just came out on DS which looks mildly interesting (right next to the one for Prince Caspian, which reminded me that, um, I still haven't even seen The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe *cough*), and there was also a display devoted entirely to Squeenix. XD

But, uh, yeah, I seriously had to drag myself out of there before I accidentally bought myself an XBox360, because OH GOD, so tempting. They had the basic model new for under 20,000 yen with 3 years warrenty! ;____; I swear, if I had a proper tv-- or alternatively if I wasn't going travelling in a month and a half and had more money to burn-- that would have been it, WHOOSH, there goes the last of my willpower.

Waaaaant.

* On my way home I stopped off at Musashi Sakai for washing detergent, and coincidentally ran into the lady from the dog cafe (who I know only as Kaa-chan). It turned out she was on her way home from Ikebukuro too-- she works at an interior design shop there. She saw me outside the department store on her way to her bike. She'd forgotten my name and was actually calling her husband to ask when she remembered so she could call out to me, which is really nice, because if someone is willing to go to that much effort it lets you really feel appreciated and like they're not just being polite. :) So she offered to treat me at the coffee shop and I had hot chocolate (which I regretted subsequently but enjoyed at the time)-- it turned out it was her birthday so I feel like I should have treated her instead, but I didn't know that until after and when I'd offered to pay for my drink at the counter I only managed to persuade her to let me chip in 10 yen so the change would come out at exactly 500.

Anyway, she's a really lovely person and it was nice to catch up with her. After we finished with our drinks she came up with me to the top floor while I bought my washing detergent, which as it turned out was a good thing, because, um. WELL. It turns out that what I thought was detergent was in fact fabric brightener? orz *FAILS AS A HUMAN BEING* The sad thing is I think this is less a statement on my Japanese abilities and more a statement on me personally because I think I'd be just as baffled if I had to buy my own laundry products back in Australia. Except if I were back in Australia I'd just choose everything the same as my mother always buys. XD

Strangely for the fact it's not actually detergent the fabric brightener has done a fairly good job keeping my clothes clean and non-smelly, considering I didn't actually notice it wasn't detergent, but I still felt it was a good idea to buy ACTUAL detergent from the brand that matched my brightener. Which I also got more of, because hey, it works. Thank god Kaa-chan was there, though, because I was SO BAFFLED by all those cleaning products. XD;

* Moving back forward in time, I have an amusing anecdote to tell about my Shinto myths class. We were doing Amaterasu and Susanoo yesterday-- I totally didn't know about the thing with the children, and I was staring down at my printouts where it said "the delivery of five male children between them proved Susanoo's pure heart" or something like that and I was kind of like, "UM, OKAY, I KIND OF FAIL TO SEE HOW BONING YOUR SISTER PROVES YOUR PURITY OF HEART, BUT MAYBE THAT'S JUST ME" except it turns out the children sprung forth from the sword and hair decoration that Amaterasu and Susanoo exchanged when he made his vow that he had no evil intentions, so it's only pseudo incest. Still mildly hilarious, though.

Not, however, as hilarious as the video we watched about the story of Amaterasu hiding in the cave.

Kattaiya: oh man, I saw the most hilarious thing EVER yesterday in my shinto myths class.
Kattaiya: it was a movie-- or I guess the excerpt from a movie-- of the story with Amaterasu hiding in the cave
Kattaiya: made by Toho, who made Godzilla, not long after Godzilla
Kattaiya: The completely random sheet draping costumes the gods were wearing were pretty hilarious
Kattaiya: but my favourite part, hands down, was when Susanoo skipped across a field, picked up a horse (with really bad Godzilla-eque SFX), threw it off a hill and went MWAHAHAHHAA~! :D :D :D while the other gods went EEEEEE!!!! *flail* really unconvincingly. XD
Kattaiya: although, the fact that Amaterasu was totally a dude came a close second. Like, not even a stereotypically androgynous Japanese pretty boy-- we're talking DRAG QUEEN here, with really square jaw and broad shoulders. Like, what? what? *cries with laughter*
Kattaiya: I cannot even fathom the thought processes that must have gone behind that. *shakes head*

You cannot know how much I am not exaggerating. Susanoo REALLY WAS SKIPPING. (In a ridiculously short tunic.) His laughter ACTUALLY SOUNDED like MWAHAHAHAHAH. And Amaterasu really did look like a drag queen. XDDDDDD

And on that note, I believe I shall end this post!

Comments

[ontogenesis.livejournal.com]

Oh no! I guess you thought you had gotten poisoned at the sushi place. At least you're OK now.

Hahaha, Japanese drag queen goddesses.

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I was totally like D: because I like that sushi place, so that's a plus! Not that catching gastro is really all that awesome either, but you know.

I know, like... the hell? It's not even like there was a GOOD REASON to not use a female actress or whatever, like back in traditional kabuki plays (or Shakespeare, given how westernised it was for a Japanese movie about Shinto mythology). XDDD

[intergal.livejournal.com]

D: I'm sorry to hear you were ill, but it's good to know that you're getting better... Japanese hospitals are mad. I'm starting to wish that I had done to the University Health Centre now, but the people in the Asahi-cho place were really sweet.

BUT AMATERASU WAS LIEK REALLY A DRAG QUEEN?