I get ready to go to my 3rd job of the day on Tuesday around 5pm.
This typhoon was gusting up to be a real doozy, and it had already started to rain in a pretty serious manner. Last week, I had a really bad case of Noro virus, and the nausea seems to have kept lurking around, hiding behind bouts of feel-good normalcy, to jump out and ambush me with a sickly rush of spinney woe.
Just before I left for work I started to feel ill again. Two or three blocks from the bus stop, I was fighting with my umbrella, and having the storm come up underneath it, to smack me around the chops. I suddenly doubled over in pain, and dry retched right there in the pouring rain. After a minute or so of hurling, I decided to call my classes, and tell them it had all gone pear-shaped, and it was all off for this evening, I was still feeling ill. I spent an eternity searching in my bag, trying to hold onto my umbrella, and not spew in my back pack.
I discovered two things,
1. I had left my bloody phone at home, and I was exactly half way to the bus stop, and
2. I felt better for the little hurl and I had enough time to still make it to the bus, because I could hear the bell ringing for 5:30.
I had no choice but to soldier on.
Worst case? I would make it to class, they would be so freaked out by my ghost-like visage and possible projectile-vomit incidents, that they would pay me, and still send me home to be sick at my own house.
I lurched towards the Little Rainbow shopping bus, getting soaked, no matter how hard I tried to hold on to my brolly. Rain in Japan is tricky. It doesn't just fall down, it comes at you sideways, paired up with it's little mate the wind, it seizes your umbrella, and then leaps up from underneath to splatter you in the face, and show you who is the boss. You don't just get a bit damp. Typhoons here are seriously about making everything in Japan soggy, and they go on for days.
I sloshed my way on to the bus, and dripped, miserable and sick, packed in with other soggy members of the community.
In the steamy confines of the Little Shopping Bus, I was pressure cooked for 20 minutes until my hair was all frizzy and I had dead man's fingers. The Little Bus disgorged me again into the pouring rain, an I did the Umbrella Dance all the way to the community centre, a 1-2-3, 1-2-3 dip!
Inside, I was given a nice comfy chair, a towel, and a glass of ice water. I started to feel better.
Two and a half hours later, I was on the mend. My classes had gone well, they handed the money over, there was no accidental vomit at all, and it was time to go home.
The buses finish at 7pm here , so it's a fair walk home for me (but I probably need the exercise) and I thought that the worst of the storm might have been over, with any luck.
I am not a lucky person, as such. I got downstairs, and some one had thoughtfully dried off my umbrella for me, and I took a look out the window. Hmmm, blowing a bit of a gale.
My older students came down the stairs to look fearfully out the glass doors at the front. Just as I am about to step outside, the wind picks up a plastic lawn chair from some unfortunate persons front garden, and smashes it at head height violently against the glass. After a beat, I say ,
"Well, lucky it was only plastic, hey?" and make my way to the front door, to the horrified stares of students and staff.
Mr. Y. followed me out, and said ,
" Are you SURE you will be alright on the way home, Sensei?"
I assure him this is just a little soggy inconvenience, and I am fully drip dry. He looks unconvinced. I go to step off the front stairs, and look down to see a deep water fall, of about 10 centimetres off each step. I decide I will use the wheelchair ramp, instead.
Now, my city is full to the brim with old people. EVERYWHERE needs a ramp. It's not just wheelchairs, it's walkers, walking sticks, and quite a few blind people, who find stairs a pain.
I slosh down the ramp, and it's pitch dark. The lights on the street are out, and the clouds are so low they are almost touching the top of the building. My shoe touches something solid, and I look down to see a dirty great rock, right in the middle of the wheelchair ramp. Can't think how it got there, as it's all concrete all around. I mumble under my breath,
" That's a dangerous thing to be putting here" and I reach down to pick it up, when it suddenly leaps onto my sandal, and I let out a blood curdling scream,
"KIIIyyyyaaaaAAAHHH!" like a little girl.
It's a bloody huge toad.
I have just given the entire community centre the shock of their lives, and 24 students and two staff rushed out into the wild gale and pouring rain, just to see me dance away from a toad. I was told the next day the centre manager was so worried I had been struck by lightening, he was just about to call the ambulance, until he heard Mr. Y. call out
"It's OK, she just touched a frog".
This typhoon was gusting up to be a real doozy, and it had already started to rain in a pretty serious manner. Last week, I had a really bad case of Noro virus, and the nausea seems to have kept lurking around, hiding behind bouts of feel-good normalcy, to jump out and ambush me with a sickly rush of spinney woe.
Just before I left for work I started to feel ill again. Two or three blocks from the bus stop, I was fighting with my umbrella, and having the storm come up underneath it, to smack me around the chops. I suddenly doubled over in pain, and dry retched right there in the pouring rain. After a minute or so of hurling, I decided to call my classes, and tell them it had all gone pear-shaped, and it was all off for this evening, I was still feeling ill. I spent an eternity searching in my bag, trying to hold onto my umbrella, and not spew in my back pack.
I discovered two things,
1. I had left my bloody phone at home, and I was exactly half way to the bus stop, and
2. I felt better for the little hurl and I had enough time to still make it to the bus, because I could hear the bell ringing for 5:30.
I had no choice but to soldier on.
Worst case? I would make it to class, they would be so freaked out by my ghost-like visage and possible projectile-vomit incidents, that they would pay me, and still send me home to be sick at my own house.
I lurched towards the Little Rainbow shopping bus, getting soaked, no matter how hard I tried to hold on to my brolly. Rain in Japan is tricky. It doesn't just fall down, it comes at you sideways, paired up with it's little mate the wind, it seizes your umbrella, and then leaps up from underneath to splatter you in the face, and show you who is the boss. You don't just get a bit damp. Typhoons here are seriously about making everything in Japan soggy, and they go on for days.
I sloshed my way on to the bus, and dripped, miserable and sick, packed in with other soggy members of the community.
In the steamy confines of the Little Shopping Bus, I was pressure cooked for 20 minutes until my hair was all frizzy and I had dead man's fingers. The Little Bus disgorged me again into the pouring rain, an I did the Umbrella Dance all the way to the community centre, a 1-2-3, 1-2-3 dip!
Inside, I was given a nice comfy chair, a towel, and a glass of ice water. I started to feel better.
Two and a half hours later, I was on the mend. My classes had gone well, they handed the money over, there was no accidental vomit at all, and it was time to go home.
The buses finish at 7pm here , so it's a fair walk home for me (but I probably need the exercise) and I thought that the worst of the storm might have been over, with any luck.
I am not a lucky person, as such. I got downstairs, and some one had thoughtfully dried off my umbrella for me, and I took a look out the window. Hmmm, blowing a bit of a gale.
My older students came down the stairs to look fearfully out the glass doors at the front. Just as I am about to step outside, the wind picks up a plastic lawn chair from some unfortunate persons front garden, and smashes it at head height violently against the glass. After a beat, I say ,
"Well, lucky it was only plastic, hey?" and make my way to the front door, to the horrified stares of students and staff.
Mr. Y. followed me out, and said ,
" Are you SURE you will be alright on the way home, Sensei?"
I assure him this is just a little soggy inconvenience, and I am fully drip dry. He looks unconvinced. I go to step off the front stairs, and look down to see a deep water fall, of about 10 centimetres off each step. I decide I will use the wheelchair ramp, instead.
Now, my city is full to the brim with old people. EVERYWHERE needs a ramp. It's not just wheelchairs, it's walkers, walking sticks, and quite a few blind people, who find stairs a pain.
I slosh down the ramp, and it's pitch dark. The lights on the street are out, and the clouds are so low they are almost touching the top of the building. My shoe touches something solid, and I look down to see a dirty great rock, right in the middle of the wheelchair ramp. Can't think how it got there, as it's all concrete all around. I mumble under my breath,
" That's a dangerous thing to be putting here" and I reach down to pick it up, when it suddenly leaps onto my sandal, and I let out a blood curdling scream,
"KIIIyyyyaaaaAAAHHH!" like a little girl.
It's a bloody huge toad.
I have just given the entire community centre the shock of their lives, and 24 students and two staff rushed out into the wild gale and pouring rain, just to see me dance away from a toad. I was told the next day the centre manager was so worried I had been struck by lightening, he was just about to call the ambulance, until he heard Mr. Y. call out
"It's OK, she just touched a frog".
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