903. Reading from my Japanese hospital diaries 📘 (Sept 2002) | Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

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Hello listeners. Welcome back to Luke's English podcast.

How are you doing today?

Hope you're doing fine.

So, this is a podcast for learners of English hosted by me.

I'm Luke. I'm an English teacher from England and I've been doing this for ages now.

I mean this podcast but also teaching English.

Welcome to my podcast.

Most of you are familiar with it already but just in case you're not, yeah this is a podcast for learners of English and in my episodes I like to do different things.

Sometimes I'll teach you vocab grammar pronunciation, especially in premium episodes.

Sometimes I'll tell you stories.

Sometimes I have conversations with guests and other times I will just talk and talk about pretty much anything.

You know I'll just ramble on about life, the universe and everything and so here we are.

This should be episode number 903 and as you can see from the title I have decided to publish this episode which I did mention at the end of the last episode of this podcast.

So I said at the end of episode 902 which was the last one that I wasn't sure about publishing this episode which I think is going to be entitled something like reading from my Japanese hospital diary.

That's probably going to be the title.

I wasn't sure about publishing it but in the end I have decided to publish this as you can see.

But my main reason for not being sure about this was that I have actually told this story before several times on this podcast in episodes 118 and 771 and so I was a bit reluctant to repeat myself.

This will probably be the last time I tell this story on the podcast unless it comes up in a conversation sometime or something like that.

But yeah this one's going to be called reading from my Japanese hospital diary and I thought that this might be a bit different to those other episodes in which I talked about being sick in Japan because I'm actually reading directly from diaries that I wrote while I was in hospital and I thought that this would probably

include other details and I thought this would probably include other details that weren't in those episodes like more anecdotes and perhaps some just interesting stuff that I'd forgotten about.

It does have a lot of those things but also it is still largely a retelling of a story that some of you might have heard at least twice before so that's why I had my reservations about publishing it.

But anyway there were enough comments from listeners telling me that I should publish this because people wanted to hear it anyway and so I've decided to do it.

I mean after all I do need content don't I on this podcast.

Publishing new episodes every week does mean that I do need things to publish and it would be a shame to let this go to waste considering I took the time to sit down and record this at the beginning of last month.

Another reason I had my doubts about publishing this is because well I'm wondering if it isn't all a bit too self -indulgent or something.

Here I am talking about this in quite a long episode but in the grand scheme of things it's not that important really.

Is it to spend over two hours dwelling on this weird past experience that I had so many years ago?

But somehow it seems like an important moment for me personally in my life and after all this podcast has always been a personal thing and a way to share these kinds of experiences.

It feels like an important moment for me personally but I still can't quite put my finger on why.

I mean I think it was a time in my life when I broke down actually physically at least but also mentally in a way and those two weeks or is it more like 10 days I'm not sure.

But that time really marks a sort of break from the otherwise normal continuous flow of my life.

It's like my life was put on hold for a while and I had this weird experience and then it started up again and so I can't help looking back on this experience as a sort of threshold or line that I crossed at some point.

I don't know I shouldn't overthink it of course.

Let's just say it was just a weird moment and it seems like it could be interesting to read what I was thinking while it happened.

So now that I've really sold it to you I don't think I have but now that I've really sold the idea to you let's get started.

So this is what you're going to see now is what I recorded a few weeks ago at the beginning of September when I'd recently come back from three weeks of holiday and I still had a suntan which I think is completely gone now after weeks of rainy grey weather here in Paris where I live.

So you're going to see what I recorded a few weeks ago on something like the 23rd anniversary of the time when I had a really weird and quite scary experience while living quite far from home in a different part of the world.

I just want to say a shout out to all my Japanese listeners by the way.

Hello Japanese listeners.

I do want to make it clear that I have a tremendous amount of affection for your country.

I love Japan and I think about my time there very positively and warmly overall despite the sort of trouble that I had in this particular experience.

Also I want to give a shout out to anyone who's ever fallen ill in a foreign country many miles from home unable to speak the local language and feeling very lost and frightened.

If you've ever been in that situation then you will know how I felt when it happened to me.

So anyway let's rewind a few weeks to the beginning of September when I recorded this.

So now let the self -indulgent rambling continue.

Now in this episode what I'd like to do is actually read out some pages from a couple of old diaries which I rediscovered recently and these are diaries from the time when I was stuck in a Japanese hospital for two weeks a long time ago.

Is it a long time ago?

So I was in that hospital in Japan for about two weeks in September 2002 and I'm recording this in September 2024 so it's almost exactly 22 years ago and yeah so that's what I'm going to do.

Now a lot of listeners long -term listeners you'll be familiar with this story.

You've heard me talk about this experience of being sick in Japan.

I've told the story a few times maybe I don't know two or three times on this podcast before several episodes one where I was just in my room describing the story another one when I told the story in front of an audience at the British council and made a podcast episode about it and so here we go again and for some

reason I just can't seem to stop telling this story but the reason I'm doing it again is because yeah I kind of rediscovered these diaries so I took diaries I wrote a diary while I was in the hospital describing what was going on each day and how I felt and what I was thinking and it's pretty much every

single day of my stay there is recorded.

I think I lost track of the days and I'm not sure I wrote I think it's every day maybe not I'm not sure but anyway what I thought I'd do is actually read through the diary and share it with you.

Now I'm not completely sure how this episode will go if I'm honest with you.

I don't know maybe this is going to be very interesting maybe it won't be I have no idea really but I thought that I would just at least record it and see and see how it goes and maybe I'll never publish this maybe if I decide that it's just not really that interesting I won't publish it but obviously

if you are listening to this it means that I have decided to publish it but anyway we'll see we'll see.

There's what are some things I wanted to say about this so yeah I've told this story lots of times before yeah I found these diaries the other day I thought it could be interesting to revisit what happened and read what I actually wrote at the time so I ended up in a hospital in Japan you'll get the details

of why and how and stuff and I spent two weeks there but in the end luckily it wasn't serious it wasn't too serious but I didn't know that at the time and when I first went into the hospital I didn't know what was wrong with me I felt absolutely terrible and I didn't really understand what the problem

was I didn't really know what was going on around me in the hospital I was pretty much the only well almost the only non -japanese person in the hospital at that time you know people didn't really speak English people just didn't really speak English in the hospital and my Japanese wasn't very good so I

was really kind of lost and had no idea what was going on certainly the first couple of days and as well as feeling physically terrible I was completely exhausted my whole body was aching my head was pounding I couldn't eat because it was far too painful in my throat so as well as feeling so terrible

I also had like stomach issues which you don't want to know about as well as all those things as well as feeling completely horrible I was frankly terrified as well you'll get the details about why so on the on the first night in the hospital I remember just lying in the bed trying my best not to panic

I was having really bad panic attacks because obviously I wasn't physically in a very good state and it can be hard to relax when you are unwell you know it can be hard it can be hard to kind of feel comfortable and to relax and as I said I was also very scared so I kept having these horrible panic

attacks I was very stressed out I thought that I might be seriously ill or something I thought that they were going to operate on me this is what I was thinking that they were going to give me an operation so I was panicking you know and having sort of horrible panic attacks couldn't relax I knew I

just needed to rest and just out of a sense of survival I had to try to calm myself down and not panic and find ways to keep my mind occupied and then I ended up spending quite a lot of time in this hospital and yeah I found that I had to write I had to write a diary and I managed to buy notepads from the little

shop they had in the hospital and I quickly began scribbling down a lot of the things that were going on and that I was thinking about as I said before in the end it wasn't that bad and I'm very thankful that I wasn't too ill and it does make me think of people who are seriously ill and in hospital

and what that must be like I was actually quite lucky because after about a day I found out what it actually was what was wrong with me and I realised it wasn't as serious as I had sort of worried and then it was really just a case of getting plenty of rest and then you know that's what I did and then

I just had this very strange experience of being almost the only non -japanese person in this massive hospital on the other side of the world it turned into a very strange two weeks and a period that I often think about I mean it actually thinking about it was a sort of breakdown and recovery I suppose

anyway what happened what was I thinking about at the time well let's read the read the diary and find out as I said before this might I hope this is going to be interesting and not just too self -indulgent now one thing often when I do my episodes I make the text available if I write everything in advance

if I write notes or scripts in advance I make that text available either on the screen if you're watching the video version or on the website in this case for this episode there isn't really time for me to write out everything from these diaries there isn't really time for me to transcribe it all and write

it all out and then give you a pdf of it also these are you know just my diary so I don't necessarily want to make them freely available even though I'm going to read them out anyway there isn't let's just say there isn't really time for me to type these out I also don't really want to take photographs

of every single page and put them up so in this case there won't really there won't be text on the screen you're not going to be able to read the words that I'm actually saying in this episode so you'll just have to focus on the spoken word without relying on the written word this time I think this is this is actually

very good for your listening because if you think about it when you listen in normal life you don't get the text you don't get a transcript of what you're listening to so I encourage you just simply to focus on the words that you're hearing and just get hopefully get absorbed in the things I'm saying

and just try to follow what you are listening to this is a listening exercise let's say I will explain bits and pieces of English that come up during the episode essentially we will be learning English from the from me 22 years ago and you know when I'm when I was writing this diary that I was just

completely being myself and so certain bits of like vocabulary came up that kind of could be interesting for you to to learn so I'll explain some bits of vocab when this happened yeah I was in my mid -20s at the time my mid -20s I'd been to university I'd lived away from home already for a few years but nevertheless

I still think from this perspective now I think I wasn't very mature really I mean I was fairly mature in my mind I think but in terms of the practicalities of life like being able to look after yourself and being able to you know just cook and do all those things I think I wasn't very grown up still

and that's maybe one of the reasons why I ended up in this state that I wasn't really looking after myself very well now I think it's probably time for me to just start reading from the diaries and we'll and we'll see where we go I'm not going to read out every single thing I've written in here because some

of this is just too personal for me to share so I will be let's say skipping over certain things and maybe redacting certain details but I'll read most of it to you I think all right so if you're sitting comfortably or standing comfortably or whatever let's begin so this is my hospital diary and the two

of them first one was written on this lovely sort of turquoise pale pale blue greenish colored pad that I bought in the hospital shop and it starts like this Luke's Japanese hospital diary starting from the back so I actually decided that I would write from the back to the front just for the hell of it

and also out of respect for my host nation Japan I suppose that's kind of how I was feeling normally I would have just you know normally in the in where I'm from page one is the you know you get the idea so I decided I'd write back to front so day one well what the hell am I doing here I'm in a hospital

in Japan how did this happen well I don't know I don't know means I don't know I don't know and I can't be asked to think about it now if you can't be asked to do something that's asked A R S E D can't be asked means you can't be bothered you just feel like you don't have enough energy or you're too

lazy so how did this happen how did I end up in this place well I can't really be I can't be asked to think about it now it's an informal expression it's a little bit rude just means I can't be bothered to think about it I've just been filled with strange pink liquid and I'm feeling a little sleepy

so I think I'll tackle the whole why am I here problem a bit later still it's highly strange so I've been filled with a strange pink liquid that was I don't really know what it was someone in the comment section of one of my old episodes did explain to me what that was when I described it before but they

in the hospital part of the treatment is that they would hook me up to this IV drip at regular intervals I'd get a couple of these every day and the pink one was a kind of see -through pink liquid right a big bag of it I don't know how much it was but it was quite large and it would take a few hours

for it all to go into me so I had a little little thing attached to the one of the veins on my left hand it was it was like a little metal spike that went into the vein on my left hand I think it was on the vein on my hand and that's where they would attach the drip and then there would be this kind

of like metal sort of metal stand with wheels on it and then a hook at the top and then this plastic sack with this mysterious see -through pink liquid hanging from it and then a little tube coming down which would be attached to this thing on my hand and they'd open up the thing on my hand the catheter

right they'd open up that and open up the bag and the stuff would just slowly make its way into my into my blood into my body so yeah so I've just been filled with this strange pink liquid and I'm feeling a little sleepy so I think I'll tackle the whole why am I here problem a bit later if you tackle

a problem it just means you deal with it a bit like in football if you tackle someone you try and get the ball from them you can also tackle a problem meaning deal with it okay it's a bit later about 2pm and I still feel drowsy meaning sleepy but I don't want to sleep now I'd rather leave that for later

also I want to stay awake because I'll have to go downstairs to get a call from mum and dad on my mobile which has to stay switched off up here so bear in mind everyone that this happened in 2002 which is before the days of like smartphones and I mean we had the internet but the internet was not quite

as pervasive meaning everywhere as it is today and I had a little flip phone a little j phone which allowed me to make phone calls and send SMS text messages but I wasn't on the internet I didn't have any of the things that we have today I didn't have access to the internet I wasn't on youtube no social

media none of that stuff that would these days probably have kept me distracted and kept me entertained I had none of that so it's just me in a in a bed with kind of nothing I did get some books I did get some mini discs and a mini disc player so I could listen to music but a lot of the time I was just

sitting there completely bored just with my own thoughts so I said I had to go downstairs to get a phone call from my mum and dad on my mobile so I'll continue I must say this hospital is very relaxing there isn't really anything for me to do except sleep and daydream which is a nice change from my

usual Saturday spent in nova rushing around without a moment to plan each lesson so I used to work in Japan I used to work for this company called nova which was a language school I think they don't exist anymore I think they went bankrupt so nova was a very well known language school as a brand it

was as well known as probably McDonald's or something like that and you know you would see nova language schools English schools just everywhere in Japan all the major cities all the major stations had a nova next to them and not the best reputation it was kind of like you know what McDonald's did for food

nova did for learning English something like that but there were lots of jobs for at nova a lot of people like me would go and work at nova it was easy to get a job there pretty much I mean you know they had they had they had standards you know they they had high standards anyway so working at nova was quite

quite hard work you would have to work very hard teaching fairly long days very intensive teaching all the way through the day I've talked about it before the the routine of coming into work not knowing exactly what your teaching program would be for that day looking at the program which would be put

on the board maybe just half an hour before the day starts and you'd have a look you wouldn't really have much time to prepare your lessons you'd be rushing into the classroom teaching maybe 50 minutes with a small group of Japanese people often quite unprepared and then when the lesson finished you'd

have 10 minutes to do the quick lesson report giving notes for each student put the files back find the the the names of the students in your next class which were which was going to start within just a few minutes grab their files work out which lessons they needed to do find the relevant course books

have a look the pages quickly prepare something in like a minute or two and then rush into the classroom and start the next lesson and you'd have about nine lessons like that back to back with a lunch break and often one of those at least one of those lessons would be a kids class where you'd like eight

little kids so very intensive teaching great kind of training for me but the you know the the work was quite intensive so anyway it was a nice change sitting in this hospital bed on this saturday when normally i would be rushing around without a moment to plan each lesson so the diary continues i still

can't escape that feeling of i'm sick it's a little dark cloud hanging over me my body isn't working properly and it's become dangerous so i've been put in this place to get special treatment i'd i never expected this it's quite an experience i arrived yesterday after what is already a long story which i'll

cut short here so this is a kind of like quick summary of the story so the summer was too hot and too humid i was also very busy and i exhausted myself i think my girlfriend so that's a japanese girlfriend i had at the time she was japanese her dad was like half american her family were lovely not that i

really met them very much in fact i met her dad because i was sick and that was embarrassing i have to say i'll probably get to that in a bit but i met her mum once or twice lovely family lovely girl and but when i got sick they were all out of the country and so like the only people who perhaps i could have asked

for help weren't there there was the company there was the school i worked for but for me i didn't feel like they were someone i could turn to because really i would just call them to tell them i was sick so i didn't have to work and then on a personal level it was probably my girlfriend who it was the one

who who would perhaps be the japanese person that i would i would look to to for help i had another couple of japanese friends as well but anyway so um my girlfriend went on holiday to the uk ironically enough and i came down with a strange fever i had to work on i had to work an eight day week that's

working eight days consecutively without a day off and for most of that time i was feeling under the weather so if you feel under the weather it just means you feel kind of sick my nightmare kids class so that's a kids class that i had to teach that was a total nightmare and they used to completely

exhaust me and i couldn't control them and it was just i used to dread going into that class my nightmare kids class also took its toll if something takes its toll it means it's sort of like um um you you kind of have to pay for it it it takes something from you uh it um it takes your energy away or it

somehow yeah it takes something from you a toll is normally a payment that you have to make to use a certain road so to travel down this road you have to pay a toll so if something takes its toll on you we use the preposition on take its toll on you it means basically that it takes something from you

normally it makes you tired so the my nightmare kids class also took its toll i got to my three day weekend so that's after eight days of feeling terrible because i was sick with something and you know the teaching in this way for eight days straight and it was still very hot and humid this is kind

of near the end of a japanese summer and summers in japan in in the area where i was living kanagawa prefecture not far from tokyo the temperature gets very hot and it's very humid so i got to my three day weekend and spent it lying in bed recovering from flu uh slash fever so i thought that i had influenza and that was the those

are the symptoms i had i was just very tired i remember my back aching so much i didn't have the energy to do anything i could only lie down in bed and my back had this kind of really horrible deep aching feeling in it especially up at the top and across my shoulders like deep sort of aching tiredness

it was horrible um i also took a day off sick the previous week i guess that's before the eight day week that's why i had to work an eight day week and by wednesday that was my third day of weekend third day of lying down in bed trying to rest by the third day off i was feeling a bit better and i decided

i decided i would go out so that it would be a good idea for me to get out of the apartment and maybe go for a walk or something and i went out to kamakura which was a place near where i used to live that had lots of nice places to go walking with interesting old japanese temples so i went out for a walk

in kamakura and coincidentally enough while i was walking around one of those temples i happened to bump into dave grohl from the foo fighters and nirvana you know the drummer from nirvana dave grohl of the foo fighters i just i happened to meet him by coincidence which was kind of an extraordinary

moment for me and uh yeah i was just leaving one of these temples and i saw a group of um like foreign people when i say foreign people i mean non -japanese people which is at that time was still quite rare you didn't see that many foreign people even in a touristy place like that and so when you when i

saw foreigners i'd sometimes just kind of like even sometimes you'd say hello or you just at least have a look at them um to kind of maybe guess where they come from or something and i remember walking past this group and there was the person at the front of the group i kind of took a look at him and i

thought oh funny i know him i'm sure i know him and i kept walking because i was trying to keep myself to myself i kept walking and then after a few steps i realized oh my god that's dave grohl and uh i was a big fan i mean i still am but certainly just like maybe the year before i'd spent kind of a year

on my own and my living at my parents in the countryside i say living on my own i was living with my parents but it was a very quiet year a kind of year of a lot of solitude of of kind of working in a working in a job i wasn't really enjoying and spending a lot of time on my own uh all my other friends

at all you know we're all living in different places after having been at university and i ended up sort of on my own spent a lot of time driving around in my dad's car and i had this tape which was this Foo Fighters album uh there's nothing left to lose and i would just for some reason this particular

album was the album i listened to all the time in the car and it made me feel comfortable you know one of those comfortable albums that you listen to that kind of makes you feel better it was one of those periods so and then so then out there i was in japan and then working as an english teacher my

first english teaching job and then yeah this weird day when i went for a walk and suddenly there's dave grohl it was just so weird and i talked to him and stuff um i went back to work on the thursday and the friday and saturday and sunday by saturday by the saturday i could feel the illness coming

back on sunday i knew it was tonsillitis so tonsillitis is an infection of glands in your throat and the the glands the tonsils at the back of your throat they get swollen and when it gets bad they get really infected and you can actually see the bacterial infection on the tonsils they kind of change

color they they swell up and they become incredibly painful now i thought it was maybe just tonsillitis but it was not i didn't only have tonsillitis so on sunday i knew it was tonsillitis i could feel the pain in my throat i looked at them in the mirror i could see that they were swollen um my girlfriend

i think came back from her holiday with her family around this time and on the sunday sunday night i managed to arrange with her to see a doctor the next day which was my day off um and i absolutely had to see a doctor because it felt terrible and i was already now i've written in this diary i was shitting

myself um and that's obviously a rude expression that just means i was really scared so i felt so bad and i was really scared now tonsillitis is you know it's not that bad but if you leave it and it doesn't get treated then it can lead to more serious things it first of all it can get so bad the infection in your

tonsils can get so bad that they that it can lead to what's called abscesses these are here like holes in your in this case it would be holes in my throat that were deeply infected and that would be very very very painful and then any infection in your body if you don't get it if you don't deal with it

then the infection can move to different parts of the body and ultimately the infection could move into your blood and if your blood gets infected that's called sepsis and that is life threatening so i mean you know that's that's what would happen eventually but luckily i was living in a place where there

were doctors and medicine and stuff like that but i i still felt you know very alienated as someone as a foreigner in this country i'd only been there for a few months really at this time maybe six or seven months uh seven or eight months no nine months anyway i i arrived in january of that year so i

hadn't even been there for a year and i still felt very alienated and kind of helpless uh not i didn't i had no idea how to arrange a doctor's appointment um nothing like that and remember there's no internet really there wasn't i didn't have a computer at home so i couldn't just like log on to the internet

and just google it that was not an option um so i had you know i had to rely on other people and so anyway i had to get my girlfriend to help me arrange a doctor's appointment so and that was for the next day the monday and i had to because it felt terrible and already i was shitting myself uh monday

was a national holiday which means everything is closed so my girlfriend's mum and dad had to take me to an emergency clinic the whole experience was totally upsetting and the start of one of my worst weeks so i remember i i looked like a zombie i felt terrible um i looked awful and this was the first

time i met my girlfriend's dad and um i just felt so ashamed and embarrassed and i felt like he must have thought who the hell is this guy uh i mean i've got to say a big thank you to my girlfriend and her family i don't know if they're watching i mean you know we um we didn't it wasn't like that serious

it we weren't even in that much of a serious relationship we'd only been seeing each other for a couple of months maybe um and then suddenly like that you know her and her family are having to look after me so i have to say a big thanks to them so much i don't you know i doubt that they're listening

to this but in any case just i don't know if i ever showed my gratitude really i don't know if i i don't remember i must have done i must have said a big thank you and maybe i bought flowers i don't remember but um still i i would really like to show my gratitude for them to them because they really

helped me so the whole experience was totally upsetting start off one of my worst weeks i was very frightened because i'd never been ill seriously in japan before and i was in a lot of pain and everyone around me was speaking another language so i was i really didn't know what was happening luckily

my girlfriend's mum and dad uh speak good english and helped me uh the doctor was very scary i sat in an upright examining chair and the whole vibe was very old -fashioned yeah i remember this sitting in like this upright chair with like a neck brace and or my neck was like in this kind of brace thing

which holds your neck and head in position very uncomfortable upright chair um i sat in the chair and to my left there was like a kind of a a table or a cabinet on my left and in the cabinet were all his tools which really scared me i could see all these different knives and uh instruments and all these

different tools all it all were just there right next to me i could see them and that really scared me you know just looking at all those knives and blades and things and scalpels and there was a big light in my face and the nurse was wandering around behind me i felt like there was no real effort to

make the patient feel relaxed in my experience in england in those situations normally there's there's a sort of bedside manner which is like a kind of uh some level of effort to try and make the patient feel a bit more bit comfortable and relaxed in this particular doctor's surgery i didn't get that at all

and my overall feeling not understanding what they were talking about my overall feeling was a very unfriendly uh um atmosphere no effort to make me feel relaxed or comfortable um he put antiseptic on a swab so that's a swab was like a kind of first of all a long metal kind of long metal uh rod like

a long metal stick and on the end of it was like a soft um uh piece of piece of fabric which he dipped into some antiseptic antiseptic is stuff that would put on like a an injury or a cut to try and kill bacteria so he got this long metal um rod with this swab on the end he dipped it into this antiseptic

and he poked it right into my throat and directly cleaned he cleaned my tonsils now bear in mind at the time my tonsils were hugely swollen incredibly sensitive and not just covered in gray bacteria but it got so bad that i remember looking in the mirror and it was the bacteria's gray green color all

over my tonsils and they were starting to go black as well it was the worst tonsillitis i'd ever had and i've had tonsillitis quite a lot of times in my life and it was so bad that the the the tonsils were even starting to go black and then and so his his solution was just to just directly clean them

rub them with this antiseptic it was very painful he also sprayed them a fair amount like he sprayed them with antiseptics and and that caused me even more pain uh at one moment i remember i coughed i involuntarily coughed this stuff back into his face it was horrible so he's there with this thing like

rubbing my tonsils and spraying them and i kind of went you know i couldn't help it and it coughed it all back into his face i felt so terrible you know it was awful because you know what you want to be able to do is say oh god i'm so sorry but i just was unable to do that and at this point i was holding

back tears so i was actually trying not to cry i felt so awful in in every way i felt physically awful i also socially just felt so ashamed as well so i left the emergency ward or the emergency clinic with four pills of antibiotics and the night before i had been praying for antibiotics he gave me four

pills which as far as i could tell was about a day's worth now i'd had and i'd had tonsillitis quite a lot of times before this particular moment to be honest i should have had them removed but i never i never got that done i should have had them removed but in my late teens and early 20s i got tonsillitis quite

a lot of times and i was always given a course of antibiotics that would last maybe five days and that would stop the tonsillitis and they'd go back to normal and i'd just carry on feel better this so i knew how much antibiotics i needed and it was always the same whenever i had i had tonsillitis i

would take antibiotics for a couple of days and it wouldn't make any difference for maybe two days and it wasn't until the third day that it would kick in and i would definitely feel that the infection was going and then by five you know five days later i'd feel completely better again this guy gave

me four pills which was supposed to be like a day or two of antibiotics and they weren't big pills either uh so he gave me some antibiotics and some mouthwash my girlfriend's parents were mega helpful i got the train back from zushi that was the place where i went to the doctors that's also the place

i used to work spent monday feeling terrible the antibiotics didn't do anything i remember i because my throat was so horribly infected um and so painful i couldn't eat i couldn't really eat anything i tried to eat some mouthfuls of banana and i tried to drink miso soup but that's pretty much it it

was just too painful to eat even just drinking water and staying hydrated was horribly painful on tuesday i went back to that doctor at his own surgery with my girlfriend this time so he could examine me again and give me more antibiotics i was feeling super crap like feeling really bad i got back on tuesday

and couldn't eat because of pain the doctor gave me painkillers that didn't kill pain and antibiotics that didn't do whatever they're supposed to do very upsetting spent two days feeling really miserable at this point i was just really miserable i just really wanted just to be home i just wanted to

be out of this shitty little room where i was living just the outside world at that point where i was just seemed so foreign to me and so uninviting i just really wanted to be home but i was miles away i was like a 12 hour plane journey which you know is like a thousand pound um ticket which the money

i didn't have uh i felt very far from home and all i wanted to do was just to be home so i spent two days feeling really miserable a thursday i met my girlfriend's mum and we decided to go to a different doctor okay so this is the third attempt really to get this dealt with this new doctor turned out

to be one of my students so i went to this doctor in this town called zushi and went into the doctor's surgery waited and stuff went in and surprise surprise it's one of my students and i had a lot of students who lived in that town who would go and have english lessons you know for example maybe with me

on a saturday morning or something and so he he was one of my students which was um pretty good because he was more friendly and we could communicate better the other doctor i mentioned was really unfriendly and seemed like a kind of i don't know if i don't know if he was cruel and mean but i felt like

that i felt like he he never really looked at me like a person i was just a thing in front of him whereas this other doctor was way more friendly and already knew me as his teacher and i felt like we could communicate better although having said that he was a2 level so that means he was kind of elementary

pre -intermediate level in english so his english was quite basic but still just the fact that i knew him and he was nice a nice guy made a huge difference he diagnosed me with acute tonsillitis acute tonsillitis that means very like like advanced tonsillitis which makes it sound good like c1 level tonsillitis but like

basically very bad tonsillitis your tonsils remember those glands at the back of your throat itis often is a suffix that's added meaning uh an infection right um so in this case tonsillitis an infection of the tonsils um laryngitis for example an infection of the larynx another part of your throat so he

he diagnosed me with acute tonsillitis and put me on an antibiotic drip for 30 minutes so i remember i lay down in a room in his surgery while this little bag of antibiotics dripped into my arm for about 30 minutes and he gave me good painkillers and better antibiotics he also took a blood test now

the doctor had diagnosed me with having tonsillitis but that wasn't the only thing i had i think the tonsillitis was maybe a consequence of this other thing that i had after the drip i felt better and a lot of the pain in my tonsils went and i could actually eat more now the next day was friday which is yesterday

so the day before i read i wrote this stuff so this was written on a saturday day one let's say or maybe day two was a saturday and so the day before i went back to see the new doctor with my girlfriend and he gave me the results of my blood test and this bit was really scary because and this this was where there

was a bit of a miscommunication and a bit of a misunderstanding which caused me to be very upset so um he gave me the results of my blood test he said i had liver damage and high a high level of white blood cells and i had the eb virus i had no idea what the eb virus is and when writing this i wrote

what the hell is that i wrote and that i need an operation so i remember distinctly he said here's your liver damage your liver is a really important organ in your body which helps to filter all the blood in your body and it breaks down poisonous substances in your body now because i had this infection a lot

of that infection was in in my blood now my blood wasn't infected it was my lip my you know my throat that was infected but a lot of the um the result of that infection meant that my blood needed to be cleaned a lot of the white blood cells which are there to try to fight against the infection those

white blood cells can actually still be very damaging to your body as well and your liver has to do a lot of the work of trying to like essentially clean up your blood and so my your liver gets damaged in this situation and i had sort of quite a high level of liver damage which was very worrying because i

knew that the liver was a one of the most important organs in the body so he said you've got liver damage you have high a high level of white blood cells it was like here's the normal level and here's your level and it was it seemed to be much higher than it should be and i had the eb virus and i remember

at the time thinking what on earth is the eb virus and i was terrified i thought it was one of those like horrible sort of tropical diseases or something like that i didn't know and he said you will need to go to a hospital and you will need an operation and at that point you know the all the blood

drained from my face and i think i i just instantly burst out crying or something because i was so exhausted it was like the the culmination of so many horrible horrible days and feeling so tired and desperate and exhausted and when he told me all those things i suddenly decided or assumed that actually

i was really really ill and it you know i don't know you kind of hold on and then when someone tells you that i don't know i just maybe i sort of like um assumed the worst or something i was very upset and uh again it was a misunderstanding kind of which i'll explain in a bit so this was the worst news

for me i think he may have made it sound more serious than it really is but i will be in hospital for a week turns out i was there for longer for me the liver damage and the hospital bits were the scariest i expected him to tell me i was getting better and i'd be fine in a couple of weeks but that's

not what he said anyway i checked into this hospital which is okay because i'm being looked after and i'm not all alone in my apartment shitting myself again meaning feeling really scared and speculating about everything more later so yeah the fact that i was in hospital was a good thing because you

know finally i was in a place where i could be looked after right much better than being on my own in my apartment where i was speculating about everything meaning my imagination was running running riot you know getting carried away um getting a you know getting scared and and stuff so it felt good

to be in a hospital but still so i arrived yesterday and first i had to see the hospital doctor who is a pretty cool dude a young guy with a sense of humor he checked out my tonsils cleaned up my nose etc also i had an x -ray no problem and a cardiogram that's kind of like a that's when they check your

heart i had a cardiogram which showed that i was having a few irregularities in that department due to stress and nerves so i mentioned before i was having panic attacks i could feel that heart palpitations like an irregular heartbeat so i'm i'm so i'm just staying chilled out so i was just trying to

chill out and just trying to relax um my girlfriend stayed with me last night while i ate my dinner and then left when her parents arrived with my stuff i don't know where they got my stuff from uh her dad has even given me a pair of slippers wow they were so nice uh skip past that bit uh after my girlfriend

and her parents left the nurse hooked me up to another drip my first in the hospital one bag of antibiotics and one with vitamins and other things to make my throat and tonsils feel better the drip was weird and slow it lasted about four hours it's a kind of horrible feeling having all this fluid dripping

right into your body i can taste it too and it's all in my snot and saliva so i could i could actually kind of taste it was very weird it was obviously going into my bloodstream but i felt it was all in my body everywhere and i could taste it in my mouth i had this weird taste in my mouth and i could it

was in my snot that's like the green stuff that comes out of your nose and in my saliva and even i felt like my fingernails were kind of greasy it's really really weird still i expect it's making me better right um i have to go downstairs now to get that phone call then back up here for another drip

hey the party never stops so uh my somehow i'd communicated a little bit with my parents and i think uh my girlfriend's mum was also in communication with my parents which is also weird because it's like normally you know you don't introduce your your your girlfriend's parents to each other until you

get like really serious and we weren't really that serious so it was all a bit kind of a bit much for us so okay i continue i finished the drip i'm full of antibiotics again i got the phone call from home too everything seems pretty calm there so um i had been in touch with my parents while feeling

sick and they were trying to you know comfort me and stuff but they didn't know what was up and uh and but i think that maybe uh my girlfriend's mum had been telling my parents what it was and they my girlfriend's mum was the one who knew what was going on you know i didn't really know what was going

on anyway so my it was actually my parents who told me so i'm i'm i'm continuing to read they told me i've got glandular fever and that i'm actually in the right kind i'm getting the right kind of care this makes me feel a bit better knowing that i've got a common thing or popular virus as one of the doctors

said this week my student actually i'll have to set him straight on that when i see him next so it turned out i had glandular fever which is also known as mononucleosis yes a very common thing which loads of people especially sort of people in their teens or early 20s often get it's a common virus which causes

exhaustion and it can lead to things like tonsillitis so that was actually very reassuring because i knew that it wasn't that serious and it was actually very common now mononucleosis can be it can you know you can get it badly you can get it less badly some people get mononucleosis and it maybe they

just sort of have to rest for a few days and then they carry on fine other people get glandular fever or mononucleosis and it's a bit more a bit stronger and it affects them a bit more and for some people they get it and it really knocks them out for quite a long time and it can be weeks of rest that you

need and some people you get the feeling you never really quite recover from it that there's always this lingering feeling of tiredness that stays with you or that you feel the symptoms of it come back every now and then and that's kind of how it was for me it took me quite a long time to recover from this mononucleosis and i

felt low energy for quite a long time afterwards even for like a year the following year i would kind of go up and down and sometimes i would feel it was it had come back and i'd feel that sense of deep tiredness again and even to this day it comes back to me and i get that feeling so after having mononucleosis i

used to get migraine headaches and these headaches would come and be incredibly incredibly powerful headaches which would make it very difficult for me to do things moving around would make my head pound bright light would be really really difficult to look at and still to this day i periodically get

these migraines where you know it's just a headache that stays with you for a long time accompanied by that kind of weird sense of tiredness and i remember i used to get like aches and pains in the back of my head and it was very disturbing so so going back to the misunderstanding from my doctor he

said so the thing about the liver damage was was correct the eb virus is actually the virus that causes mononucleosis it's called eps steam bar the Epstein bar virus it's the yeah the cause of of mononucleosis then you will need to go to a hospital meant that you should go and and you need to go and rest

you need to be given care because you're really not okay you can't stay at home you've got to be looked after for a while you need at least a week in hospital so that's what that was for rest and then you will need an operation what i was worried about i was thinking i'm going to need a liver transplant

that's what i was thinking that they're going to operate on me they're going to remove my liver which has got this weird damage and this problem and i'm going to be given a new liver and one of the crazy things that i was worried about was that i'd be given a japanese liver and i don't know what in when you're

in that state you kind of worry you kind of think does would a japanese liver work would that would that work for me i don't know it's just human it's a human body and stuff and it's just a liver is a liver but i was kind of worried thinking is that how's that going to be having a japanese liver and then

i used to think would that mean that i'd still be able to drink because some japanese people there's it's every i don't know what the what the ratio is but okay sometimes you go to a bar in japan and having a few drinks and there'd always be one japanese person who'd have one or two drinks and they'd

go all red in the face and they'd fall over and pass out because they lacked a certain enzyme which meant they couldn't break down the alcohol and they they'd get really badly affected by the alcohol i was thinking oh my god i'm going to get that guy's liver aren't i knowing my luck so all these sort

of stupid things were flying around my head but what the doctor actually meant was you should have your live your liver you should have your tonsils removed that's the operation he was talking about is that at some point you should have your tonsils removed because it seems that you they can be infected

quite easily i never did get my tonsils removed and i still got tonsillitis occasionally for years after that these days i don't get it so much anymore but probably should get them removed but you know when you're busy you don't always have time to get all these things done um let's continue the diary

is this interesting i hope there's more i should fly through this more quickly i sent an email to azusa that was a friend of mine i was in a band with her um i was playing drums azusa was the bass player sent an email to azusa saying i won't be able to make it to band practice and to tell yusuke yusuke

was uh the other guy in the band i hope she does and that they work something out with this new singer who i'm really interested in meeting it turns out looks like we were looking at having a new singer in the band it should be pretty interesting with two girls and two guys in the band and me and yusuke

have been hitting it off well recently hitting it off meaning getting on well sort of having a good relationship recently blah blah blah i've got plenty more to write but dinner is on its way and i can't really write a lot in one go anyway more later now i remember that morning the first morning uh

i didn't write this in the diary but i remember this that first morning i kind of woke up after a bad night where i hadn't slept very well i woke up in the morning in this hospital and one of the first things that happened is that a nurse came to me with um a sort of questionnaire and the questions

had been translated into english and she she read out the english questions but the translation was really bad and they the questions didn't make much sense to me so i tried to answer them as well as i could you know she asked me about how i'd slept and how i felt and stuff and one of the questions

was what were your movements last night what were your or can you describe your movements last night and i thought she meant like how much i had moved in bed during the night like my body position or something so that's what i thought she was talking about so i was like well and i tried to explain i

was like maybe two hours on this side maybe an hour like this maybe a few hours on this side but i turned lots of turning turning in bed and she looked at me and she sort of went ah and wrote something down and later what i realized is what that meant was what were your bowel movements last night because actually

when i went to the hospital as well as all the other things i also had diarrhea so bowel movements means uh doing doing poo okay your bowels are part of let's say part of your bum and when you when you move your bowels it means um when poo comes out of your bum okay that's a poo and how many times i

had done a poo last night because i had diarrhea so she what she thought she was asking me was can you describe your poo last night and my response was well a couple of hours on this side a couple of hours on that side and lay on my back for a while she must have thought i was completely mad or something

i don't know um so i continue the diary it's about seven p .m now and i've finished dinner taking all my medicine i've got tons of stuff to take one antibiotic one little cup of painkiller from a bottle it looks like milk but it tastes of lemon one pill for my blocked nose a sachet of stuff to stop diarrhea also i

have some little throat sweets which taste of strawberry and are nice to suck and some mouthwash for gargling so i had like a whole collection of medicine on the side of the on the bed side table i've been just communicating with a few words like finished okay call daijoubu itai chotto this is weird

so daijoubu is basically like okay right feeling okay or okay itai means it hurts chotto means a little bit the guy opposite me so i was in a hot i was in a ward a room in the hospital with about probably eight beds in it something like that i was in one bed in the corner of the room next to the window

luckily but there were about seven other beds in the room one opposite me one right next to me so the guy opposite me is watching the baseball and i keep sneaking glances at his tv so i keep i kept sort of having a look at his television watching the baseball i've got a tv too but i need a card to get

it working and i can't be asked to get it i can't be asked to get one i should though check out the baseball and stuff i'm a bit bored now which isn't good i think getting that tv card is the right thing for me to do i never actually did get the tv card i've written next i couldn't get a tv card no change

i didn't have any money it doesn't matter i'll have to find another way to amuse myself i was able to walk around the hospital a bit and i wrote walking around this place there are some really ill people about people in wheelchairs very old women really weak lying in a bed people towing frames that carry

bags of their urine and drips so there were people walking around sort of like with with these metal frames and they were dragging the frames along on little wheels and the frames seemed to carry bags of their urine it's really weird in the toilet there is a rack with loads of really stinky bags of urine

hanging from it so you'd go into the toilet and on the side there'd be all these bags of yellow urine hanging up and it would really it would sort of smell really bad i said bad smell but these people are sick i'm really the odd one out here i'm young i'm not too sick and i'm english the place is filled

with old japanese people what am i doing here how did i get to be how did i get to be here doing this it's ridiculous and funny i'm just alone with my thoughts but i'm keeping myself amused i can't push myself here so i'm just playing dumb games to pass the time i just really wanted to try and not to

challenge myself mentally or physically in any way right i just felt like i was just recovering from this horrible mental condition as well as physical um so i can't push myself here so i'm just playing dumb games to pass the time last night i spent a lot of time playing the abc game basically i think

of a topic however ordinary or stupid and think of a word associated it for each letter of the alphabet with some dumb ass results for example animals you just go through the entire alphabet thinking of an animal that begins with a then b a anaconda b bear c crocodile d uh duck you know and you just

keep doing it try not to think too much it just keeps your mind occupied so that you don't completely panic or get really depressed or something like that animals easy movie names places or objects in movies characters in movies food sports past times art forms forms or genres of music musical instruments

musical sounds on a yamaha keyboard bands songs Beatles songs place names boys names girls names different feelings etc etc etc and i would just keep playing that in order to make sure that my mind didn't start thinking about other things and getting sort of scared or upset i always get stuck on k and q

because i can only think of zoo uh sorry i always get stuck on k and q so i could never think of words beginning with k and words beginning with q especially and because i can only think of zoo and zebra for z i have to incorporate these into every category somehow for example sports you've got like

zebra racing past times zoo going to the art forms zoo painting musical genres Zimbabwe music sounds general zoo noise or zebra nay etc etc you get the picture a nurse has arrived and i know dot dot dot so then a nurse arrived and i i said i know meaning i know she's going to do something and i stopped

writing and then after she'd gone i continued actually i thought she was going to talk to me in japanese but she took my temperature 37 .1 degrees and went away over here they are really conscious about their body temperature and usually know it down to the decimal point in england we don't give it we

don't really give a crap about it i think sometimes we're hot sometimes cold i think that's not entirely true i think in the uk we probably still do pay attention to our temperature and take our temperature especially in especially doctors and nurses but still i think that maybe in japan they're a bit

more focused on specific body temperatures anyway i think i should chill out and play the abc game again this time different smells z zoo smell okay i played the abc game i may have to think of something else i've just i've just about pushed that one to its limit i reckon i just met a funny nurse who asked

me what i want to eat next week she gave me options like chicken or fish etc i know i'll be eating a lot of chicken and fish and on one day some pork and one day tempura and udon actually looking back on it now it's pretty good you know i got to eat all this pretty nice japanese food i mean hospital

food we know is not the best food ever is it but this food that i got in this hospital was not too bad and it was all classic japanese dishes the guy opposite me is still watching baseball what a boring game just an excuse for waving your ass in the air and looking serious i feel restless and like my

heart is nervous i'm bored mainly i don't need stimulation i need release or something best to just slow it all down and just chill out right here in the moment day two okay it's about 2 pm i slept really well last night but my mouth was so dry whenever i woke up and my lips are all cracked i've got

the air conditioner next to me in my bed i've got the air conditioner next to my bed and i think it may be drying me out a bit when i close the curtain at night still i like this spot i'm in the corner out of the way i'm not too close to anyone else i've got the window with with a good view no worries

from the window i can see a view of the valley stretching away from me with some round hills at the sides in the valley are random buildings typically japanese i can also see black kites gliding around so this hospital was in a place called yokosuka which is like just down the coast from tokyo and yokohama and it's

quite a nice part of the world part of japan really not not far from the from the seaside and you've got these hills that sort of go down towards the the coast and i said i can see black kites gliding around black kites are these birds of prey like kind of like hawks that would glide around looking

for looking for things to eat i spent most of the day lying around listening to the orb and the beetles the orb so this is the album by the group called the orb the sort of ambient techno uh group called the orb the album was adventures beyond the ultra world this is their best album but uf orb is pretty

good because of the tunes blue room and towers of dub i think sergeant pepper is my favorite beatles album it seems to be somehow warm and snug and a bit removed from their other stuff i had a bit of excitement with my drip today so remember i was still getting this uh intravenous drip um going into

my into a vein in my hand connected to these bags of mysterious fluid hanging from a metal um sort of frame that was next to my bed so i had an excitement with a bit of excitement with the drip um the drip was nearly finished and i really needed the toilet and then my lunch came i decided to try and walk

with the drip to the toilet because obviously i wanted to be able to eat my lunch without feeling like i really needed the toilet so i decided right i'll go to the toilet now even though the drip isn't finished i'll i'll go and i'll take the drip with me on the on its metal frame so i decided to try

and walk with the drip to the toilet it's on wheels so i thought it would be okay i got to the toilet and noticed the tube so the tube coming out of my hand going into the bag i noticed the tube up to the drip was all red and filled with my blood so for some reason it had started going the other way

my blood had started going out into the tube and was heading to the bag so i was losing blood into the drip um so i slowly went back to the bed and had to lie down again the drip started dripping again and the blood went back into my arm i just had to wait about 15 minutes before the drip finished and the nurse

came to remove it then i went to the toilet relieved myself washed my hands and came back to eat my lunch delicious pork with rice balls and some eggplant not bad how exciting so that was like one of the most exciting moments of that particular day all day the guy opposite me has been watching go on tv

i can't understand that game so go is like this old board game it's like where you have all these pieces on a board it's a bit like um kind of like um drafts or something um i could not understand it and the guy who just watched go this game on tv all day long so later about 8 pm i had a few visitors

today my girlfriend's mum and dad they bought me some flowers they brought me some flowers from my girlfriend really sweet um her parents were really kind and said i looked better i can't believe it they've been so helpful and caring my girlfriend is coming tomorrow and she's going to bring the two

towers by Tolkien the lord of the rings because i've just about finished fellowship of the ring so lord of the rings is in three volumes so i was actually reading the fellowship of the ring and had just about finished it and luckily my girlfriend decided that she'd bring the next book as well so i could read

that then my nova student doctor visited me with his son i was very surprised at that he was the doctor who arranged for me to come here very thoughtful of him to check up on me this evening a couple of my colleagues visited which was a big surprise they also brought me some flowers so i'm mr popular

they stayed for a while and we chatted they seem genuinely concerned and everything how nice now it's 8 15 pm and i'm just about to finish fellowship of the ring and then probably listen to some tunes and go to sleep very pleasant how nice also i learned from one of my colleagues that it's possible

to get glandular fever from a mosquito it all clicks into place i've been feeling terrible since a mosquito bit me more than 15 times in one night it's all gone downhill from there that was nearly a week before my girlfriend went away and i got sick that damn mosquito i remember waking up in the middle

of the night and scratching my arm i looked and there was a smear of blood where i'd killed the mosquito instinctively as i woke up then i noticed all the bites three days later i was being driven insane by all the bites i felt really bad ever since it looks like i'll need a couple of weeks off after i

get out of hospital i might not even go to work until after my parents come on holiday my parents were due to come like the next month for a couple of weeks to have a holiday in japan and see me so yeah the mosquito thing i don't know if it's possible to get glandular fever or mononucleosis from a mosquito

i've i've googled it since and have sort of seen some things that suggest it might be possible but i think it's rare but anyway like a week before i i got really sick there was one particular night where in my room in in my apartment um so uh i had like this sliding glass door that led out onto the balcony

and um i would always make sure the door was closed because mosquitoes would come in and they would like tiger mosquitoes as well like really aggressive ones the the door had a an insect screen as well that one of those kind of mesh screens that allows the air to come in but uh not insects and just

this one particular night i opened the mesh screen to go out and hang something on my balcony just for a moment opened the mesh screen and closed it again and in that moment a mosquito must have come in because i instantly then went to sleep and i was lying down um mostly naked without a lot of covers

on me because it was so boiling hot and that mosquito that night i think just bit me about 15 times all over my body and as i said i woke up sort of i woke up instinctively scratching my arm and i actually killed the mosquito in my sleep so i woke up looking at this blood on my arm thinking what's going

on and then realized i've been bitten all over my body by this bloody mosquito and it was so annoying like the bites were so itchy and even prevented me from being able to sleep very well and i wonder you know i wonder if that mosquito might have caused this infection but it you know as i said it all

went downhill from there so who knows it might have been that i mean they call glandular fever the kissing kissing fever kissing disease or something and it's typical that it gets shared between people um when they kiss but you know i hadn't been going around kissing lots of people i mean i had my girlfriend

i wouldn't like to suggest that she gave it to me who knows who knows oops but anyway it was interesting so one of my colleagues had told me that that uh you can get glandular fever from a mosquito but it's it's certainly pretty mysterious but i do remember definitely feeling really bad like after that mosquito

incident but maybe it's just a coincidence um day three it's about 3 10 in the afternoon and i'm getting a bit bored now i spent the day finishing fellowship of the ring getting a really long drip dozing and listening to my favorites mini mini discs so i had these mini discs and a mini disc player the mini

discs uh had like compilations of some of my favorite music on it on them not very exciting i had a shower and a shave today that's quite exciting also i spoke to the bloke opposite briefly so the man opposite he asked me yokosuka and i answered with zushi which i thought meant i i'm an english teacher

zushi which meant uh you know uh the zushi nova the nova in zushi the zushi of nova he was like ah sukka and that was about it so that was the depth of the conversation i had with the guy opposite me he was like yokosuka i said zushi uh english teacher um nova in zushi ah that was it so exciting i'm

feeling better although i can still feel all my glands are swollen and my back aches that may be my kidneys or something the tonsil infection seems to have gone but they're still swollen i slept well last night another nine hours wow mom and dad are going to call me again at 3 45 although they don't

need to i should phone azusa just to check that she got my mail i also my email and phone matt and motoki motoki moto we're going to see oasis on sunday the 29th so i should just let them know where i am and what's happening so actually i had a plan to i had tickets to see oasis in japan and i was going

to go with a couple of friends also my girlfriend's going to come and visit me today i don't know when though that should be pretty nice i'll have to thank her for the flowers uh anyway i'll go downstairs in about 10 minutes to receive that phone call my girlfriend's bringing the two towers that's the next

lord of the rings book with her so i can get stuck into that later i bet i go stir crazy later this week if you go stir crazy it means you sort of go a bit mad normally because you're stuck in one particular situation a bit like when you're in prison if you just go mad because you're stuck in one room

you go stir crazy i'll probably go it'll probably go much faster than i expect more later so day three it's six day four or day three i lost track it's 6 55 am first thing in the morning i was just woken up by a nurse who is really genki that means sort of energetic and she said ohio because i'm us

and wake up and she gave me a hot towel and put it in my face just put this hot towel in my face i'm half asleep i had a strange dream last night i worked in some big company but i'd been away sick so i'd lost touch with my job and i was doing really badly i didn't know what was going on my widowed

mother that's my mum who's lost her husband so my widowed mother like so my dad apparently in this dream had died my widowed mother was getting married to fred ward fred ward is a hollywood actor so my widowed mother was getting married to fred ward who was an utter bastard and we hated each other i

remember holding a little plant pot with a little green plant and pleading with him to treat my mother well so standing there with this little plant pot with a little green plant in it maybe maybe something like this standing there with this little plant pot and saying to me please treat my mother well

i said please we both want the same thing this is in my weird dream my nightmare but he just slapped the plant pot out of my hands then we went into the house and discovered that an upstairs bedroom was haunted by a ghost it had happened before but we were all really scared and we stayed in a downstairs

room while i began to phone the police or someone we could hear noises of the poltergeist this ghost upstairs then a lamp floated down the stairs and threw itself at me this is all in my dream right i knocked it away with my hand and i shouted it threw that at me but my mum who i think was played by holly

hunter another hollywood actor which is strange said to me but it didn't hit you did it and i said only because i defended myself then a glass of brandy floated into the room and that came towards me and i knocked it away but then i realized that the ghost was offering it to me in order to say sorry

very strange dreams are weird aren't they what do they mean so more stuff to write today yesterday my girlfriend came to visit which was nice although we were interrupted twice and didn't really say goodbye to each other properly anyway she brought me the two towers and i paid her back and she also brought

return of the king which is the third book because her mum had bought it for me as a gift i was surprised i didn't expect her to buy me another present i think she's enjoying taking care of me to be honest my girlfriend also brought me some water and tangerines moto also visited me which was a real

surprise shout out to my friend moto i'd only left a message on his phone about two hours before so i was really surprised when he turned up it turned out that james my brother had told him i was ill and had given him the address of the hospital he brought me some kettle chips that's like crisps and shortbread

as well as an antonio carless joebam cd it's like a brazilian bossa nova artist well chosen i was really glad to see him and he spoke to my girlfriend for a then nadia this is another one of my colleagues nadia was a sort of amazing person really very eccentric and energetic and the sort of person who did

lots of things organized things and everyone else got involved in her energetic plans um i say nadia was because unfortunately she's no longer with us i learned when was it 10 15 years ago that nadia had died uh which is kind of sad um but anyway nadia visited me and brought some kind of jelly snacks

and a couple of copies of viz viz is a kind of funny magazine she brought me a couple of copies of viz bless her i introduced her to my girlfriend but they didn't talk a lot nadia was quite direct as she is and maybe she scared my girlfriend away or something anyway i chatted to nadia for a while which was funny

because she's pretty eccentric and a good laugh now it's nearly one p .m and i've just finished lunch and taken my drugs there are two new patients in the room two old guys i've no idea what's wrong with them they arrived earlier with their shirts and trousers and ties uh their shirts and trousers and ties

on and they're now lying in their respective beds wearing their pajamas i got clean ones too the pajamas are a bit like jinbei so they're kind of like look like a little looks a little bit like traditional japanese clothing where you fold them over and tie them on the side i'm getting quite attached

to mine anyway these guys are pretty quiet but one of them is in the bed right next to me he's just right there on the other side of the curtain i think he smells a bit he smells a bit of those bags in the toilet but maybe i'm just overreacting sometimes he mutters in japanese sort of like he seems

to sort of like be talking to himself and i listen when he talks to the nurses on the other side of my bed on the other side of my bed i'm lucky because i have the big window and i get tons of natural light on the whole it's very it's a very pleasant place to be in the morning i get sunlight on my feet

and in the afternoon i get to watch the view lit by sun from behind today it's a really clear day so the sky is blue and it's really nice and cool outside my kind of weather the natural light seems very clean and blue it's very nice i think i'll listen to a bit of the orb i can't believe it this is really

pleasant but i suppose that's the idea the doctor is going to analyze my blood tomorrow then i'll see how i'm doing actually that guy next door does smell of those bags in the toilet nasty maybe i should stop taking my decongestants so i can't smell anything so decongestants are it's a kind of medicine

that you take to clear up congestion in your nose it clears the snot out of your nose so i said maybe i should stop taking them so that my nose gets blocked again so i can't smell anything actually that guy next door does smell of those bags i've just read that it's about 7 30 pm now i'm still not completely

sure when i when i'll be getting here sorry i'm not completely sure when i'll be getting out of here i expect it'll be at around i expect it will be around saturday but even then i'm not sure i'll be able to go back to work depending on my health i may have to stay away from work until after my holiday

with the family that will mean that i'll miss about one month of pay also the expenses from this time are going to cost about 200 000 yen i'll have to pay that when i leave and then claim it back from the health insurance company i'll be buggered for cash though meaning i won't have any cash for the next

two paydays that's like two more months so basically it was going to be a very expensive time i wouldn't have any money um so there go my savings each month i can't save anything until at least december bollocks i'm still at about nine i'm still about 900 pounds overdrawn that's basically in debt japan is such

an expensive place 8 42 pm i haven't written about this yet but there's a guy who works in the hospital who speaks english i was introduced to him when i first got here and he has helped me out a few times since then he's actually from indonesia where they learn english properly in school and are more

skillful in picking up foreign languages i expect not sure that's true but they certainly they learn english um in a different way to the japanese and learn it earlier any indonesians i've met spoke good english his name is chandra san although i thought it was sandra at first so i thought his name

was sandra which is a girl's name but it turns out his name was chandra chanderasan anyway he's a nice guy and has been and has been really helpful especially when seeing the doctor and when explaining my medicine to me although he's indonesian he seems very comfortable in japan and also seems quite

japanese in character polite a bit nervous or uncomfortable or awkward but he's quite chatty and has a laugh today he was helping me choose food from the menu i had to choose all of next week's food although i hope i won't be here next week sandra san had to explain all the food and there were some

really funny moments where he was in stitches meaning laughing a lot trying to explain all the typical japanese foods on the menu sometimes he was laughing uncontrollably i think the japanese and their eating habits are very funny particularly when it comes to eating things like natto natto is a kind

of infamous japanese food it's basically uh soy beans which are starting to um is it ferment fermented or decomposing soy beans and they go all sticky and they got this very pungent smell and it's kind of like uh marmite in the uk either you love it or you absolutely hate it so natto is a very sort

of characteristic japanese food um i think the they're funny with their eating habits especially when it comes to eating things like natto the culture obviously suits chandra well and i think he's quite tickled by its nuances and ins and outs tickled meaning sort of amused that's one of the charms of japan their

whole attitude towards their culture is so charming just the little details and how it's quite clear that they get a lot of pleasure from little customs like eating and preparing certain types of food observing and commenting on japanese everyday customs is always a great source of amusement well the guy

next to me is sound asleep like fast asleep completely asleep i think i think he still smells a bit but i can't complain this is a hospital after all he keeps muttering in japanese though and does cliched yawns with his mouth open making a sound i remember that he used to the guy i i just hear him going

like a cartoon like a cartoon sound effect of someone yawning but i noticed that a lot of japanese men would do those really really sort of like cartoon sound effect stock sound effect yawning sounds like that and also sneezes actually japanese guys also have mega cliched sneezes too achoo they don't

hold it back either they just let the sneeze take hold and do its business and they let the vocal chords relax while it happens often i hear really loud and expressive sneezes achaa very funny like you'd hear that at the station in the morning come down onto the platform and you'd often hear like businessmen

just going achoo day four 7 40 a .m the guy in the bed next to me was really noisy last night he spent a lot of time talking in his sleep and appeared to wake with a start a few times so if you wake with a start you kind of wake up like that suddenly lots and lots of sleep talking and him going today

i woke with a kind of ulcer on my tongue an ulcer is like a little painful little spot a painful little spot on your tongue i get ulcers in my mouth a lot actually and on my tongue and i got them a lot during this period after having glandular fever i remember i used to get a lot of ulcers and i tend

to get them when i'm very tired so when i get into that kind of glandular fever feeling and i still get it to this day i get like a migraine headache that won't go away feel very tired and then ulcers appear in my mouth so today i woke with a kind of ulcer on my tongue although it doesn't hurt too much

my left tonsil is giving me some grief meaning it's painful and hurts a bit when i swallow so first thing this morning the nurse took a sample of my blood they're going to test it and then later i'll go to see the doctor with chandra san and she'll tell me how i'm doing i have no idea what the results

of the blood test will be but i have a feeling that it'll be it'll show i still have a high work that it'll show i still have a high white blood cell count and that the glandular fever is still with me now i'm looking forward to breakfast and i'm a bit pissed off about my tonsil hurting i'm flying through

the two towers that book and i'm more than halfway through already i'm glad my girlfriend's mum bought the return of the king for me it's nearly 2 pm now i've just got to write some notes now so i can clear up what's going on so this is i just this is like stuff i wrote down after having seen the doctor doc

says i can leave tomorrow so phone mr tatihana at nova to talk to him about payment hopefully he'll pay the hospital and send the relevant forms for the hospital to complete then the hospital sends a rio shusho and medical certificate to jma that's the insurance company and they refund mr tatihana no worries

so these notes were all for my own benefit so i remembered what was going on so phone mr tatihana phone nova phone the insurance company speak to mum and dad phone my girlfriend's mum and tell her when i'll be leaving apart from that i'll need a rio shusho which is some sort of like uh document and a medical

certificate myself for my own reference questions for the doctor what should i do after i leave when can i work will i need medicine will i have to report back to the hospital at all can i drink alcohol or should i avoid it how much rest time will i need can i take regular showers because they were telling

me that i shouldn't take showers because my temperature was too high can i do any kind of exercise and then when i get out i need to sort out the next two weeks with nova uh baba baba baba lots of other things 850 that evening looks like i'll be leaving tomorrow i've got quite a few questions for the doctor and chandrasan is going

to help me he's been really helpful and also really seems to have enjoyed helping me out i expect translating for me and being a kind of counselor for me has been much more exciting than his usual job maintenance of things like beds tables etc so chandrasan was actually like a he was kind of like a caretaker

he would he would repair tables and chairs do repairs on on things in the hospital he normally wasn't a translator but he was the only one who spoke any english in the hospital really some of the some of the high level doctors spoke some english but none of the nurses really did so chandrasan would be

asked to come and help me out so normally he'd be downstairs like fixing tables and then he'd come up and have to talk to me i wonder how often he gets to have personal contact with the patients anyway tomorrow will probably be quite will probably be quite busy and i must make sure i have everything

sorted out in my mind before i leave i've got to deal with the issues of my condition and how much rest i need after leaving etc so i thought i'd be leaving the next day but i didn't in fact i spent another week in the hospital the payment issues and stuff tomorrow i'll phone nova to tell them when i

can realistically return to work i'd like to put that off until after that after my parents holiday i actually had a holiday booked in my schedule in october but that was like a few weeks you know a few weeks away the idea of going back to work and going back into that working routine and teaching those

kids classes the idea of it was just horrible i had to have to say so i was really hoping um i would be able to find a way to avoid that and go back to work at the end of october um as for now i've just got one more night in my bed surrounded by my curtain the guy next door continues to make his grunting

sucking and yawning noises as well as bits of sleep talking and even laughter the room is quite full now seven people i think and i'm glad to have had this spot by the window i'll be saying goodbye to it all tomorrow the nurses who i've managed to communicate with and i've got to know their faces the view

from my window the bloke opposite and his chattering muttering conversation with his family every afternoon the toilet with its sliding door and disgusting smelling bags of urine on one wall with their steel lids urine stained and corroded the angelic choral music played throughout the the the ward

uh before lights out at nine p .m every night the regular cups of japanese tea poured from big steel teapots the meals brought on trays with onigiri fried fish salad and various japanese oddities all edible enough my medicine little bottle a little bottle with white liquid and my various pills having

the drip twice a day one large bottle of pink liquid and one small bottle of clear antibiotics strangely it became a bit pleasant having the liquid dripping directly into my body although i couldn't feel it except for the taste in my mouth and the buildup of snot in my nose the plastic attachment that sticks

into my left forearm so it was my arm actually and is stuck down with white bandage tape it doesn't hurt at all my cool japanese pajamas very comfortable the other patients who weren't overly accommodating but neither was neither was i to them but i expect they all had their own problems to deal with everyone

minded their own business mostly my lord of the rings trilogy which has taken up most of my time here regular visits to the outpatient area every morning examine examinations by the doctor yamamoto or the woman with short hair who spoke some english always i'd spend five minutes at the nebulizer which has tubes

that go either into the nose or the mouth and supply antibiotics i think as a kind of mist into uh to be inhaled so i'd have to sit in front of this machine this big machine and sit down and breathe into this sort of mask and apparently it would it was supplied this kind of antibiotic mist into my into

my system i'm leaving tomorrow but i don't think this will be over for a while it takes a few weeks to get over glandular fever so i expect i'll spend some time at home now getting bored and having to look after myself and having to put up with my flatmate um i had two flatmates the first flatmate i

had i didn't really get on with him very well and found him a bit annoying i mean looking back on it now he wasn't that bad um i've quite enjoyed the sanctuary of this hospital and the convenience having other people look after my health while i lie around all day reading daydreaming and listening to

music i'll have to continue this spirit when i get home and try to take care of myself i hope the doctor gives me more antibiotics and some instructions on what i should and shouldn't do a lot of rest is probably a good idea i expect i'll be over this eventually i can still feel the glands like a numb

stiff or tight feeling around my neck and head i had that for weeks afterwards also there's a bit of pain on my left tonsil a kind of dry pain just hanging on at the end i've also picked up a couple of mouth ulcers on the roof of my mouth for heaven's sake and on my tongue i hope they don't flare up

and i hope they don't spark any more infection in the tonsils anyway i fancy getting some sleep tonight so good night day five well i'm still here i'm not leaving today but i'm staying for a few more days until my condition improves my tonsils my tonsillitis has returned a bit and is quite painful although i'm

really tired also i'm really tired even though i spend most of my time lying down so i'm here because i need rest and care i wonder how long i'll stay and i wonder how long i can stay before the insurance companies say they won't pay anyway best not to worry about things things with the insurance company

and nova are started out for the time being and i'm a bit downhearted because my throat is painful again and i have ulcers on my tongue and on the roof of my mouth it's very uncomfortable the guy opposite me has left good for him i always thought he seemed pretty healthy he's been replaced by the guy

who was in the bed next to me he quickly claimed the only other window place in the room clever chap he's still yawning loudly and muttering in his sleep the room is quite full there are seven of us now so most people have their curtains drawn to protect their personal space a few of them have those

urine bags but they're not too smelly must be nasty having to carry one of them around though i don't really understand why they did they maybe they had um um maybe maybe they had urine issues or kidney issues i'm not sure um one guy seems to have lots of phlegm that's like stuff that you have to stuff

that stuff that makes you cough and he gurgles and coughs and spits into a little bowl lovely being sarcastic remember he sounded like daffy duck so he made these weird slightly scary noises when he was coughing and it made me feel like oh my god he seems so unwell he'd make these kind of noises so he'd

be over there going and then spitting into this bowl it was really horrible i got a great package from home today with good letters a card from james some photos of home which made me feel homesick information about glandular fever now i know a lot and it seems to make sense rest is most important and my

tonsils are sensitive because of the virus newspaper cuttings an edge magazine that's a magazine about computer games although i've got a bit cut off from the world of video games it's still interesting to read people's intelligent comments about it i used to be like really into video games for a while

the end of the 90s in the beginning of the noughties i was like quite interested in the industry and stuff maybe i could have worked in the video games industry if i'd if i'd stayed in liverpool after university and got maybe a a job at cygnosis which was a video games company that was based in liverpool

could have had a totally different career but i didn't anyway my girlfriend said she visit me today and i'll speak to mum and dad on the phone later not much more to tell to tell you chandra san has proved to be a very important person i bought another notebook where this will continue i also need da da da da da thursday

i'm staying until the doctors think i can go um for the insurance the doctor will complete the doctor's note when i leave and i'll give it to me to fax blah blah blah blah blah so then i moved on to the other notepad what did i do with it there it is okay i hope you're finding this interesting um like

i said i wasn't i'm not sure but i'm just doing this anyway because because kind of like i felt like i wrote these diaries right and when you write a diary you just kind of think what's the point is anyone ever going to read this um so i didn't want this all to be a complete waste of time writing all

this stuff and just no one ever reading it i don't know i just feel like at the time i was writing it i sort of hoped that someone might read it that someone might find it interesting and so that's why i'm i guess that's why i'm reading what's going to happen to these diaries when i when i die eventually

um my wife or my kids or whoever's left are going to have to go through my possessions they'll find this bag that i've got here in the office with all these diaries in it are they really going to read that stuff what's that i don't know i mean in any case maybe they'll just throw those things away they

might not have time to read them maybe they'll read them and find them fascinating maybe they'll read them and find them shocking because they will learn things about me that they didn't know before stuff that i'm not sharing in this episode in any case i felt like i wanted this stuff to be to be heard

so let me continue there's not that much more right so there's just really just a few more pages in this one um so day six five thirty p .m one of my colleagues just visited me she gave me a really cool star wars lego pen with interchangeable parts and a lego man darth vader with a little cape and a scarred

face under his helmet and everything there's a lot of sort of thing even when i was 25 years old there's a sort of thing that appealed to me uh my colleague diane is being really great and trying to sort things out for me with nova she was like my sort of line manager senior teacher at the school where i

worked and she was being very helpful thanks to diane for helping out a lot it looks like foreign personnel have mucked a few things up and haven't told the zushi school that i can't work over the next few days it's making life difficult for the staff and teachers diane is speaking to nova now and i

reckon it's going to get me some emerge she's going to get me some emergency leave so diane was really helpful in helping me get some time off diane also brought me some flowers from the japanese staff and from my new area manager very nice it also looks like i won't be able to see oasis on sunday i

never ever got to see them i've never seen oasis live and uh i'm not sure i ever will um depends if they if they stay together uh because they've reformed recently to do a few gigs if they if they stay together and do more shows maybe i'll go and see them but depends how much those tickets are anyway

uh i i won't be able to see oasis on sunday i might not even be able to be out of the hospital by then considering i know so i need so much rest also going to the gig wouldn't be a good idea i'm gutted i was looking forward to seeing the galagas and perhaps shouting some abuse at them or something um

i've got to arrange with matt how he can get the tickets from my apartment i'll probably have to speak to my flatmate and arrange for them to meet on sunday at the apartment i hope he's there if not matt will have to come and visit me here to get the key um this is before the days when all the tickets

were online you could just share them so easily there's a guy in the room now he arrived yesterday or a couple of days ago he must have some throat problem because he keeps coughing up phlegm and spitting it into a plastic bag or a bowl or something all the curtains are drawn around his bed it's grim

because of the noise it sounds like an angry sick daffy duck and is really nasty poor bloke sometimes it sounds like he's puking and clearing his throat it's a bit nasty but it's not as bad for me to hear as it is for him to suffer i've nearly finished the return of the king the whole lord of the ring

story is an absolute work of genius amazing storytelling and at times really beautiful the nurse opposite seems to be draining a guy's urine bag into a bucket the throat guy is calling for attention or something it's all comfortable here except for other people's suffering a few more days of rest here

and i should go home i won't be able to rest as well there but i feel like i'm not quite as sick as the other guys around me still rest is most important for me now and this is the best place for that tonsils and ulcers are still giving me jip meaning giving me pain giving me trouble and i'm tired the doctor says

i should just sleep i'll lie back and listen to the orb and vibe out and maybe drift off into sleep or something day eight i woke up yesterday with a red rash all over my face and neck that means red spots all over my whole body in fact so i woke up on day eight suddenly big red rash all over me today

it's much worse my face is all red and blotchy and there are red spots all over my neck body arms hands etc it's a side effect from the antibiotics but it looks really ugly and it's quite hot and itchy so it turns out that i'm allergic to penicillin which is a problem when they were pumping bags of it

into me every day um it's making me feel a bit depressed mainly because i just look so bad still it could be worse i'm not feeling all that bad my tonsils have cleared up a bit since a few days ago and my ulcers have calmed down the rash is a bit itchy though i'm a bit paranoid about people visiting

me now i feel okay about it but i wonder how other people would react i don't know what my girlfriend would think i suppose it would be interesting to see her reaction i've got a feeling it would be surprise and amazement rather than sympathy but i don't know i think she doesn't know how to react to

me sometimes because she doesn't know how i'll react or how i'll feel i think she doesn't say things that are on her mind because she thinks oh it'll piss me off she doesn't realize that i like it when people speak their minds and ask me personal questions anyway i want to see her so i hope she visits

me today it looks like i'll be here for another four or more days now that this rash has appeared they're taking another blood test tomorrow then i'm seeing the dermatologist on wednesday today is sunday i remember seeing that dermatologist so that's someone who specializes in skin conditions and he

had like he must have when he was younger he must have had like a really bad skin disease because his skin was all red with like like holes in it he had like really like a really terrible like his skin it was all scarred on his face that was interesting meeting him thinking wow this guy's got this guy

must have survived some horrible skin condition and that maybe this is why he became a dermatologist himself he was really nice guy i remember that i don't remember i don't mind staying in the hospital but i'm starting to get really bored now i'm running out of music and i've finished lord of the rings

i might have to get someone to run an errand through my apartment and pick up some more music some underpants and another book for me i'll be seeing the doctor in a while might be a bit embarrassing and chandrasan isn't here today so i'll have to struggle without him the doctor is really cool actually

he's quite young and friendly and has a sense of humor the nurses in this surgery really annoy me though they stand around while the doctor is talking to me and stare at me with the most amazing self -important and knowing expressions on their faces which i'm sure are not right they just like to look

like they're really important and they really understand and agree with what the doctor says and does also they nod knowingly when i'm explaining something to chandra in english when i know for sure that they can't understand what i'm saying it just proves that their whole demeanor is just for show

and isn't backed up by any real understanding it was a bit harsh off me wasn't it to write that the nurses were all so helpful but i was getting irritated at this point and for some reason the nurses behavior was starting to annoy me day nine the guy opposite has a visitor and i've seen him before he

wears tracksuit trousers and football boots with molded studs so the guy opposite would have these visitors and one guy would come and he'd be wearing football boots right now they weren't they it football boots with studs you know the studs on the bottom of football boots he would walk into the hospital

ward into the hospital room with these football boots on he walks into the room and makes the noise with his studs on the ground why the hell is he wearing football boots they're not muddy or anything either so i just this really bothered me i just couldn't understand why this guy was wearing football

boots i mean fair enough maybe he'd been playing football and then went to visit his uncle or something in the hospital but he'd imagine that he would take the football boots off right especially when walking with studs you know the sound of studs walking on a flat hard floor you just think it's not the sound

that would bother me it's just the fact that why is he why did he keep the football boots on i just could never understand that and i wrote here it's a typical japanese misunderstanding maybe he thinks they're just trainers unlikely why did why would i assume that he didn't understand but i didn't i

just couldn't get my head around why this guy walked in with his football boots on but there would often be those sort of moments in japan like things that i would i just see things and i'd just be thinking what what is going on i just can't understand that at all and then i maybe he's just come from a football

game but you'd expect him to take off his boots before visiting his friend or dad or uncle in hospital very strange my rash is worse and he's now all over my body my face looks ugly and blotchy and i've got spots all over my hands and arms and legs and chest and back everywhere it's pretty fucked up

and it just seems to be one thing after another um so after going through all the rest of it you know then i've got this rash and the rash got pretty bad in some areas and i've still got some little scars actually on some like parts of my elbows there's still scars where the rash got quite bad um i

didn't take my painkiller after lunch because i thought i didn't need it but now my tonsils are hurting a lot clearly i need the painkiller the doctor and nurses have stopped giving me antibiotics now so the rash should go away in a few days i'm getting so bored now i've listened to most of my mini

discs and have finished lord of the rings i've got some other books and magazines so i'll just get into them and write a couple of letters can't do much now when i've got my drip on though my girlfriend might visit tonight i hope she doesn't mind this rash i've just realized that i've lost track of all

the days in this diary i'll have to write the dates each time now it's nearly 10 pm and the guy opposite is making all kinds of over the top snoring noises so like that sucking and snorting etc he also moans and laughs and stuff in his sleep monday the 30th of september this is frustrating it's about 10

15 pm by which time i'm usually asleep here but instead i'm twisting and turning in my bed and going over all my failed opportunities with women in the past and getting more and more frustrated as i go along i can't believe it i'm in a hospital in japan with glandular fever and covered in a red rash

and all i can think about are all the embarrassing moments and failed opportunities i've had with women in my life this is just ridiculous and i can't believe it adding to the stupidity is the pen i'm using one of the students gave it to me via uh jodi one of my colleagues who visited me today it's

pink with a plastic merlion on the top from singapore when you press down on the nib of the pen the merlion lights up with a pink light it's crazy so i was just writing with this kind of silly pen and writing this quite serious feeling stuff i'm just missing my girlfriend blah blah blah blah blah da da da da i'm

just gonna skip past some of that stuff um i'm just frustrated stuck in this hospital bed with a painful throat and itchy skin tuesday the first of october it's about 7 30 pm there's a massive typhoon right overhead now like a big storm big weather system strong wind lots of rain very strong wind there's

a massive typhoon right overhead now it came in off the pacific ocean today and its path is directly over this area it's blasting the windows making them shake and whistle and threaten to break the whole hospital is shaking because of the wind it's quite mad really the doctor told me again that i can probably

go home today she and there are two doctors who i see one man and one woman has to consult the dermatologist who's going to have another look at me tomorrow as long as this rash isn't too serious it seems to have calmed down today i should be allowed to go about the rash and the nurses remember that after i've

been in the hospital for a while and i was the only let's say westerner in the hospital it seemed that word traveled around the hospital and some of the nurses decided that they wanted to come and see me because i don't know what it's like these days in japan but at that time it was still a little bit

rare for japanese people to have much contact with let's say non -japanese people or at least people from europe or from britain or something westerners it was still a little bit rare and it's still a little bit of a of a of a novelty for them so i actually used to get visits from nurses that i think

weren't even working in my ward and they would come just to kind of like have a look at me you know sometimes they'd be like two or three of them would come at a time and they'd come and sort of talk to me in japanese i couldn't really answer and they'd just come and stand there or maybe have a look

at me maybe sort of take my temperature or something and i got the distinct feeling they were there just because they wanted to see the come and see the english guy in the hospital and i remember once this nurse i'd never met before came and told me she was going to rub cream into my body and she took

my t -shirt off sorry my not my t -shirt my pajama top she took my pajama top off and spent quite a long time massaging my back and rubbing this cream into me that was interesting so um so i was saying i should be allowed to go home tomorrow i was really depressed and frustrated today i'm not even looking

forward to going home that much probably because i'm depressed but it feels like i don't like it when my flatmate is around and i just ignore the fact that a lot of what he does really annoys me it just seems to be little petty things that he doesn't realize he's doing and he'd probably think i was being

a wanker for bringing them up like if i complained to him about them he'd probably hate me for it still i reckon i'm right to get pissed off examples he doesn't clean or rinse the sink after a shave and leave stubble and shaving foam all over the sink so he'd shave and wash it it's fill the sink with water

shave right and then wash his razor in the water and then just pull the plug out and all the the water would go down into the plug but then all of the bits of stubble bits of hair that he'd shaved off his face and and uh shaving foam would be stuck to the side of the sink he wouldn't clean up the sink

afterwards he'd just leave it so i'd go in there to like wash my hands brush my teeth and stuff to go to bed and then i'd have to clean up his dirty sort of sink and other things he would see um other petty little stuff i said it's not too bad i suppose actually i'm probably being too sensitive and i

should just chill out anyway i'm really ready to get out of here the boredom is getting me down and i feel like it's making me tired and sick this typhoon is making everything uncomfortable along with my itchy rash i just want to be whisked away i'll try to go to sleep strange i finished lord of the rings

and i was so engrossed now it feels like there's an empty space in my life odd second of october 640 a .m the typhoon has gone and outside it's sunny with a perfectly blue sky and all is calm 5 p .m the doctor told me i can leave tomorrow i kept constantly being told i could leave but then told that i

couldn't the doctor told me i can leave tomorrow good i've been getting super bored over the last couple of days and feeling pissed off now i've got to deal with nova and apply for medical leave i'm trying to decide how much leave i should apply for the most healthy option would be all the way up to

my holiday which is about two weeks that way my body would completely recover my liver would repair itself fully etc or i could apply for about one week and work for a few days before the holiday one problem is that my holiday begins on the 18th but my family arrive on the 15th it would be easier if i

could leave right if i could get leave that means time off right up to my holiday so i could meet my family when they first get here i'll go for that i reckon it will also give me a chance to get properly well i'm screwed for money anyway i'm not quite sure what i'm going to do the next two weeks are going

to be very quiet and i'll have to try and save as much of the cash i have now as possible to last me for next month and for as long as possible i remember that two -week period i spent a lot of time just really slowing myself down just trying to live without any stress at all and it was a very sort of serene

and very peaceful period actually the weather had got better it wasn't boiling hot and humid anymore and i it was a really important learning experience for me learning how to de -stress and how to live slowly and how to live moment by moment in a day and how to start cooking proper food for myself and just

how to slow down and live in a more mentally healthy kind of way i just looked back on that time with it in a really really nice way even though at the time it was like not great but i kind of learned how to relax i've still got this rash although it's not as bad it itches though and the really the worst

most itchy part well i can't tell you what that was but it was extremely inconvenient and annoying eight o 'clock more visitors matt and moto visited me that was cool they brought me some food and magazines and stuff matt traveled a long way to see me um now i'm alone again this is probably my last night

here what a strange experience i was just thinking this hospital feels like a little box and i'm living inside but outside there are just many more boxes all connected i suddenly felt very claustrophobic in this country like there's no space or free air or room to breathe japan is great but i think

it's just too closed in for me i feel claustrophobic here i need more space i did used to get the feeling that i was always knocking my head on things or that rooms were always slightly too small for me but also got the feeling that so in the little room outside of that room was just everywhere like

everywhere where i lived i felt like was very um very urban like a very built up area very compressed with so many people all living in a small space and so much so many buildings on top of each other and then like high high -rise buildings with many floors and then under those buildings as well a whole

underground systems with train lines and underground car parks and basements and i just felt like i was in the middle of this incredibly compressed and crowded place i feel like i need more silence and more personal space at school it's kind of a constant probing of my personal life which i don't mind

this would be like the way the students would often be very curious about me which i understand because like i said before they didn't meet many non -japanese people that much or at least people from the uk and so in lessons a lot of the time people were very curious about me and would often probe my

personal life clearly since then i've got used to that and in fact that's kind of a lot of what i do on my podcast to an extent like this reading this diary out but at the time i remember it felt a bit invasive sometimes that students would often be very sort of curious about me all the time which i

didn't mind that much although i think being a nova teacher really feeds people's fevered egos this is also another feeling i would get that some of the teachers at the school would let this curiosity from the japanese and this sort of sense of interest that the japanese had in us that they would let

that go to their head it would make them arrogant i said it's a big ego thing because you feel like an important and special person but it's also quite pathetic because it's just not real or something or at least japanese people act really impressed with you because they're being polite right so maybe

japanese people are being polite when they seem so impressed and interested in you and everything you say is like oh wow that's fascinating maybe that's just politeness but for some people they would just go to their heads and make them big headed and arrogant i feel like there are a lot of people here

that love nova and get a lot out of it and it feeds their egos but at home they're just very ordinary and unspecial that's the charisma man phenomenon ego workout or something i want wide open spaces and no people from miles around thursday the third of october i was discharged today meaning allowed

to leave the hospital finally i just wrote a big final hospital diary entry but in the wrong diary now i can't find the other diary where that was written it wasn't in the first one i was reading from the some other diary i wrote this long entry but i can't find it anyway uh typical typical i wanted

the whole hospital escapade to be captured in this diary but you'll just have to check the other one again can't find it not that it really matters i wonder what will happen to all these diaries i suppose they just form a general collection of thoughts and comments a lot of it probably sounds the same

but as i said in the other diary i hope someone reads this and not just nosy flatmates sneaking into my bedroom but real people that i love maybe people i haven't met yet maybe people i have loved for a long time so i was imagining the future when maybe someone would discover these diaries and it could be

like now i'm married you know i'm married you know i've got two kids maybe those would be the people who would read this one day but at the time i wrote this i didn't have any significant others in my life you know other than my parents and my brother you know so i was imagining that maybe the people

one day who read this will be people i love or people i've loved for a long time uh or maybe people i know and i'm yet to love whoever you are i hope you have shared something with me after reading this and i hope it wasn't just funny and embarrassing but has at least shown you something about me or the world

or maybe even yourself i think i was being a little bit over -ambitious with that one i don't think it was quite as profound as i had thought but what i've the experience i had i felt was a very profound and weird different experience always very difficult to get those experiences and feelings down on paper

sometimes i write here just to please myself and sometimes i write with a reader in mind so i can actually reach someone through this it's very difficult to make emotional connections with people on an everyday basis imagine this as a kind of message in a bottle or a time capsule or maybe a fishing

line whatever however or whoever i don't think there is anything really special or very informative in my diaries but it's a part of me not a whole representation but an element of myself the part that writes in diaries so i hope you have felt something from reading this and maybe you've learned something

too that it's no good just saying the same old things to yourself and worrying about the same things if you always worry about the same things and that never seems to change why not choose to not worry about them what difference would it make to your life how about making a decision to try to make the most

of your life think positive worry less but be mindful and considerate of your actions enjoy yourself enrich your life take risks but be prepared to face the consequences or don't take risks but don't regret those decisions communicate with your loved ones and stick by your family if you have something

good to say say it even if it's just written in a diary it's there somewhere in the world representing you and your positive feeling don't be too quick to deal out judgment we can't see all the angles in every situation and there's usually some reason for something everyone has a place in the world

and we all affect each other somehow so try to trust the world around you this is beginning to sound like i'm preaching i hope you enjoyed my hospital diary i hope i captured the experience for you luke so that's it for what it's worth those were my japanese hospital diaries and i felt compelled to

read them out to you i hope that you've enjoyed listening to them and as i said there that you learned something from the experience leave your comments in the comment section listeners if you have any um i don't know what do you make of that whole experience that i had it i mean again i don't think

i really managed to kind of get through to the real sort of profound stuff but it felt like a fairly profound experience for me i guess i learned to perhaps look after myself i grew up a little bit um i learned perhaps how to control my mind a little bit more you know how to um i learned a certain amount

of i i got a bit of i learned how to find a bit more peacefulness in your mind or something okay this has got to be the last time i cover this story uh on this podcast i think i've probably got it out of my system now uh but let me know how that was for you was that interesting i mean what did you get

from that um have you ever had a similar experience did you ever have have you ever had glandular fever how was it for you and just which things that came up in this episode um stay in your mind which things struck a chord with you let me know in the comment section okay and i'll speak to you again in the next

episode actually hold on a second that's not the end because um after finishing this episode i went and had lunch and i just thought to myself about a couple of other things i wanted to add at the end of this episode just to kind of wrap this up one of those things was it's a pity that i couldn't find

that i can't find that other diary because i wrote one final diary entry which i think summarized the whole experience quite well and explained and told the story about what what happened when i left the hospital and stuff like that so it's a real pity i can't find that um and so that's that that's

one thing another thing is that i wanted to say something about writing a diary um let's say two let's see two things first thing is that um for me personally looking back at some of my old diaries again i feel like i wish i had written more about the actual things that happened to me people i met places

i went to and the stuff that happened so i wish i had given more of a an account of things that went on now this japanese holiday diary kind of a holiday this japanese hospital diary was a bit different because i was actually a lot of the time talking about things that were happening to me but my other

diaries um a lot of those ones are just filled with just very introspective stuff me trying to express my innermost feelings expressing just moments when i would feel frustrated or whatever that's when i would write in my diary and so it's kind of very internal introspective stuff and now several decades

or more after that i look back at those diaries and think to myself what would have been much better would be if i had actually written about the things that had happened places i'd been to people i'd seen and written more of an account of each day or account of moments in my life with my thoughts and feelings

attached to it because i think that would be much more interesting to read and also much more um uh evocative as well when you when you when you read those things again it really brings you back to the feelings emotions and also allows you to kind of see what happened how did i react to things i think

that's much more interesting so if you are writing a diary i would recommend that you do write about the things that have happened to you don't just write about your thoughts and feelings without without the events and moments that are attached to them as well another thing about writing a diary is that actually

it can be a very good exercise uh for your english and i've said before that if you're looking for ways to work on your english you've got to try and find various ways and for writing um it's i think it's a very good idea to write a diary in english and it doesn't have to be that ambitious you can just

write about a couple of things you did and the things that you learned from them or things you know the way you felt about them you can try and express your feelings describe things you did talk about how you feel try and write regularly even if it's just a paragraph each day that can be i think a good

exercise because it helps you to find your voice in english now i spent let's see i started writing a diary when i was about 16 and i more or less finished writing a diary um i don't know maybe about um 10 years ago 15 years ago something like that when i decided that uh it was time to stop for various

reasons uh what am i what was my point so yeah yeah so i wrote a diary for like from maybe the age of 16 to about the age of 36 something like that so that's about um is that 20 years that's about 20 years of diary writing quite a lot i think it did help me with my ability to talk and my ability to

articulate my thoughts and feelings i think it really did and i think that writing regularly in english you could be writing about anything but actually putting your ideas down trying to structure your ideas and express yourself in english is a very good exercise so i would recommend doing that writing

a diary obviously when you're improving your writing you've got to think about the kinds of writing that you will probably have to do in english which would probably mean writing emails writing reports maybe writing essays things like that you know what what what kinds of writing do you really will you

really need to do or do you really need to do so obviously it would be a good idea to practice writing those specific types of text because there's all of the you know there's all the the the structural things organizational things um text um um sort of conventions of those sorts of texts as well that you've

got to practice but at the basic level expressing yourself in english in writing um regularly i think is a very good exercise okay what else did i want to say i wanted to maybe just mention what happened after i left the hospital so i was discharged from the hospital i said goodbye to chandras and managed

to say goodbye to him i didn't i hadn't really developed any kind of relationship with anyone else in the hospital so i at least said goodbye to him and then off i went after spending yeah about two weeks in there and um uh i had a bag like a fairly large shoulder bag with all my stuff in it that people

had brought me uh clothes and books and my mini disc player and mini discs and other bits and pieces so i had that over my shoulder and um going out into the world was kind of weird going out into the busy bustling nature of the world just trying to walk down the street avoiding people crossing the road

and people getting in your way it was already exhausting just walking to the train station and it seemed like a really long and difficult journey just having i was only i was only in the hospital for just about two weeks it's not even that long but you get accustomed to that kind of pace of life and the quietness

and stuff and so being back outside was tiring i made it back to my apartment and was very tired it was exhausting carrying the bag walking up and down steps was really tiring i was i still had quite a lot of you know recovery to do from this not very serious um condition right um but the annoying thing

was i remember i got to my door and looked for my key card to open the door to my apartment and realized i didn't have it that i'd given it to one of my colleagues so they could go into my apartment and get my stuff for me so i got all the way to my apartment door and couldn't get in and it was in the middle

of the day it was like lunch time or something and i was so dejected and so sort of depressed at that moment i remember just sitting down on the steps with my bag and just feeling so bloody sorry for myself and such a loser eventually a friend of mine who lived in the same building as me i think i texted

him he um managed to bring me some keys he during his lunch break or something he came and gave me keys to his apartment so i went into his apartment and i spent a few hours until my other colleague was able to come and meet me and give me the key i spent a few hours just basically lying down on their

sofa listening to the new beck album and this was 2002 and beck's latest album was called sea change so i remember lying there listening to sea change which is actually quite a sort of sad album it's a fantastic album but it's quite sad so i had this very sad sort of moment lying there um listening

to this beck album um and then eventually got my keycard and i was then able to get back into my apartment it was weird to seal my stuff again and then you know that started my two -week recovery period where i didn't have to work very as i said before living very quietly and slowly um and uh then yeah

then my parents and my brother arrived and they were here for about they were here they were they were there for about 10 days and that was actually great obviously because i got to spend some time with them after having had this unpleasant experience and showed them around the place and we we visited

some tourist areas and then i you know i was feeling much better when it was time to work again and you know went back to work and learn how to pace myself learn how to learn various tricks as a teacher you sort of learn these tricks over the years of how to manage your energy levels how to prepare yourself

in advance and the course books that we used in that particular school i got to know lots of the lessons very very well and was able to kind of go into lessons knowing that i was going to do like lesson 7a and i just had it all every step of the lesson mapped out in my brain already and had work you

know doing those lessons again and again and again you you you kind of learn the best ways to do them so it got easier and easier and more and more enjoyable and the next year of my life in japan was one of the best years of my life um as a whole i think i had ups and downs and the glandular fever sort

of seemed to come back sometimes and i'd feel really tired and i'd get migraine headaches and stuff occasionally but um you know i deepened my experience in japan and kind of got involved in other things like i joined another band and played some really interesting concerts with them and just you know

basically went on to have a really great 12 months after two years i decided i had to leave japan one of the reasons for that was that my mum was ill and i wanted to be at be home to be there um luckily she recovered fully and the rest of it of course as you know because she's been on the podcast and the rest

of it but i wanted to go home and be there and another reason was that i knew that if i'd stayed if i stayed longer in japan then it would have been really hard for me to leave you know you kind of think right i'm going to get out now after two years because if i stay longer i'm i'm going to be here

for 15 years and i didn't want to be that far away from my family and i felt like my life back home which in a way felt like my real life was waiting for me and i had to go back and try and work on some other kind of career in the end i continued teaching english um so that's kind of part of what happened

um my girlfriend at the time who i've mentioned a lot during this episode we we broke up a couple of months after the events of this episode um not that we were ever really that serious i won't go into all the details her parents and and both her and her parents were lovely and very sweet her parents

were so patient and helpful with me um and my parents were particularly thankful to my girlfriend's parents um you know for looking after me when they couldn't um so that's all i wanted to add at the end of this episode okay all right so i hope you enjoyed this episode uh for what it's worth and i will speak

to you in the next one but for now it's time to say goodbye bye bye thanks for listening to luke's english podcast for more information visit teacherluke .co .uk you if you enjoyed this episode of luke's english podcast consider signing up for luke's english podcast premium you'll get regular premium

episodes with stories vocabulary grammar and pronunciation teaching from me and the usual moments of humor and fun plus with your subscription you will be directly supporting my work and making this whole podcast project possible for more information about luke's english podcast premium go to teacherluke

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[Reading from My Japanese Hospital Diary]-[903. Reading from my Japanese hospital diaries 📘 (Sept 2002)]

📋 Summary

A Personal Reflection on Vulnerability and Recovery

The Ordeal: Misdiagnosis and Cultural Alienation

Coping Mechanisms and Self-Discovery

Insights into Life and Resilience

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript