Winter beak is coming!

Winter break is starting this week already! That means Christmas and New Years is almost here! I'm really excited to have a Japanese Christmas and New Years. Apparently, around this time, the Japanese have 3 different parties. The first one is a Christmas party, the second is a year end party and the last is a New Year party. The end of the year is a fun time in Japan! I can't wait!

Visit to the doctor

Sorry for the late post this week. It turns out that my self diagnosis was correct and I did indeed have Shingles. With that plus the cold and the workload from school I've been bedridden for the past week or so. When I went to the doctor, he gave me A LOT of medicine. I had to take 12 pills a day (4 with every meal) and apply a cream to the Shingles twice a day. I was freaking out because I thought what I had was really bad if I needed that much medicine. However, getting that much medicine is apparently the norm here in Japan. In fact, one of my friends who is studying abroad here from China said that they get even more medicine in China! The most medicine I've ever had to take was probably about 4 a day so you could imagine my surprise when I received all that medicine. And it was expensive! With all the visits and medicine, the fees were over $100 with the insurance! But I'm pretty good now so I guess it was worth it.

Getting sick

Here's a nice fact for you all:

The hospitals in Japan close on the weekends and have relatively short hours on the weekdays (close at 6pm)

I have some sort of weird rash on my head that kind of came out of no where. I did some Googling and self diagnosed myself with Shingles. I've had this rash for about a week now and it's progressivly gotten worse. I decided I should go yesterday, but that's when I found out the hospitals close. Mind you, nearly all the doctors seemingly work in the hospitals, so you go to the hospital here even for just a cold. Odd huh? Anyway the hospitals will be open tomorrow so I'm going to go tomorrow. I'm a little nervous for my hospital experience since I'm sure I won't be able to understand all of the medical terms and such. I'll try my best!

Snowball fights!

This past week has been pretty eventful. It snowed to the point where I could finally have my first snowball fight! I thought my hands would be fine because I was wearing gloves but they got cold from making snowballs much faster than I had expected. I also ended up slipping on black ice a lot, but I didn't fall. However, people have been telling me it's only going to get worse so I ended up spending a lot of money on snow gear. I bought snow boots, some thermal wear and an electric heater and it all cost about $200. Not the kind of money I wanted to be spending on winter stuff, especially since when I go back to Hawaii I will have no use for it. Oh well, it can't really be helped.

Snow!

This morning I woke up to someone ringing my doorbell like the world was going to end. It was much to early for me to be getting out of bed. I almost ignored it and stayed in bed, but the doorbell ringing didn't stop for a good minute, so I ended up having to get up. It was one of my friends waking me up to see snow falling from the sky! It's the first time I'd seen snow fall. It was great! Glad I was woken up to see it!

Hakodate weather

Wow! This weather really isn't the kind of weather I'm used to! The temperature has been hanging around 10 and 0 degrees Celsius lately. That's between 50 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit. And this isn't even as cold as it's going to get! The wind has been really strong lately too. Last night I decided to go for a walk and when I came back, the wind was blowing so hard on my door that I couldn't open it. I thought I had locked it for a second before I realized that it was just the wind! When I opened my door and went inside, the wind blew so hard that it slammed the door in my face! It's really fun to experience new things, especially like this. Though, I am a little worried for when winter actually comes!

Cold~

It's starting to get really cold here! It still hasn't begun to snow yet. The snow shouldn't be coming for another month or so, but it's already so cold! Me and the guys were out walking one night and we were surprised to see that the temperature on the public thermometer read 1.2 degrees Celsius! It's gotten to the point where I need to use 2 thick blankets to not only sleep, but just to be in my room if I'm not wearing pants and a jacket! This island grown boy wasn't made for the cold. But I'm still excited to see snow!