This morning I woke up early. I still haven't adjusted entirely to time difference here so I still wake up at about 3 every morning and then it takes me anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to fall back asleep. Once back asleep I can usually sleep until 7 or 8. I woke up and made some breakfast. I was videochatting with Hope on Skype as I was eating breakfast and I heard a sound. The best way to describe this sound is if you took an ice cream truck and put a Japanese accent on it. I assumed that was what it was and ignored it. About 5 minutes later I heard it again. I finally started looking around and eventually realized it was my cell phone. Moto had texted me that he would be at the Michigan House (where I live) at 9 to meet us and go register for health insurance. It was 9:10. I hurried to throw on some clothes and ran downstairs.
Once downstairs Mike Hall (2 time defensive player of the year in his conference from BYU) walked with Moto to the train station which is about a 15 minute walk up the hill from where we live. We took the train and went to register for our health insurance. I got the paper and had no idea what the characters said. Moto translated it and told me what to write down. We got done and then had to wait for about 40 minutes until they were done. We sat in these benches that had to be half the height of benches in America. Mike impressed Moto showing off his skills of being able to count to 100. (He took a Japanese class in high school because his high school coach was the teacher, but still better than I can do as of right now.) Finally I got my health insurance card and we were on our way back to the apartment.
I now have national health insurance. For all of you wondering about how health care reform will end up I'm going to try it out and get back to you.
Shortly after our trainer, Shige, came and picked Mike and I up to go to the hospital for our physicals. He picked us up in our Shiga Lakestars Car. It is bright orange with blue painted decals all over. I will take a picture of it because it is pretty sweet. There are two seats in the back and they have lots of room. For such a small looking car the seats in the back are very roomy.
So we went to our physicals and it was an incredibly detailed physical. I had a bone bruise on my ankle about a month and a half ago. I had to be in a boot for about 3 weeks and then had a very sore sprained ankle basically after I was out of the boot. I haven't been able to play for awhile. The trainer wanted to get an MRI on my ankle and calf because my calf has some atrophy from being in the boot so long.
So I go in for the MRI and I ask the doctor who speaks no english how long it will be. He says 50 minutes. I try to explain to him that I do not want my head to go into the tunnel by hand signals and everything. The tunnel of the MRI here looks a whole lot smaller than the ones at home. After about 20 minutes he comes in and pulls me out of the tunnel (I was in to about my shoulders, thankfully). I try to figure out what is going on but he obviously messed something up. It ended up taking about an hour and 15 minutes. Afterwards I got into the rest of the physical.
There was in order - a bloodtest, ultrasound of my heart and my calf and ankle, ekg of my heart, chest x-ray of my heart, inspection of my knee by an orthopedic surgeon, took my blood pressure 3 times, met with a heart specialist about my results (she said that I'm normal and also that I eat very well), and then I had an eye exam where I had to take my contacts out(I have no idea why - I have my contacts for a reason...I am blind without them).
After all that we started driving home. On the way home I saw a giant ferris wheel on the side of the road. I realized it was the same one I went by on my bike ride yesterday before I got into the small Japanese town and got lost. The ride there took about 30 minutes. I traveled up the lake and then down and around the opposite side of the lake. The rough estimation of my ride distance is at about 25-30 miles. No wonder my butt is sore today - that seat doesn't work well for me.
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