Sick in Japan: How I ended up in a Japanese hospital (From LEP#118)

hello there you're listening to luke's english podcast and this is luke and i'm talking to you right now in your ears welcome and i hope that you're well i hope you're enjoying yourself as you listen to this in this episode i'm going to tell you the complete story of how i ended up lying down in a hospital bed for two weeks in japan when i went to japan i certainly didn't expect to end up in a hospital on my own it was a very weird experience and i'm going to tell you all about it i'll be using a range of verb tenses so look out for those and also various other just phrases that pop out of my mouth as i explain the story so actually just over 10 years ago i decided to go to japan now i i i qualified as an english language teacher in 2001 and so just to give you a bit of background information at that time in my life i'd sort of recently graduated from university i did a media and cultural studies degree which was really interesting but it's not one of these degrees that gives you a vocation when you leave it's not like being an engineer or being a doctor or something you don't kind of get a job at the end of the of the degree it was fascinating and i got quite a good mark for it but i don't know really how that at the time when i finished university i had no idea how that was going to help me to find a job so i was wondering what to do with my life and for various reasons i decided that i would become an english language teacher certainly i i needed work i needed to to find some kind of career in my life also i wanted to travel so i thought i would kill two birds with one stone train to become an english language teacher get a job and also get the opportunity to travel so i did the course i completed it i got my initial qualification which allowed me to teach english to quite a high standard and to get work in in other countries and initially i thought that i would teach abroad somewhere in europe for some reason i had barcelona in mind probably because it was kind of fairly close to london and i knew that it was a great city to visit you know they've got the they've got the beach there they've got a lot of history and a lot of culture there's lots of great things about that city that make it very attractive plus there are you know english language schools in the city that i could have worked for so i looked for work in barcelona i looked for work in poland for some reason and various other countries in europe and then i remember i went for a drink with my friend neil who you have heard on the podcast before in the episode about the birmingham accent neil my friend i went for a drink with him and we were talking about you know where i should apply for work and he suggested that i apply for work in japan because i mentioned that there was quite a lot of work available there but i hadn't really considered working there because it was very far away and it was like a very different place i thought it might be very difficult for me to to kind of go and live there so i hadn't really considered it but he convinced me that it would be a good idea to go and you know he said to me why not go why not go like to japan that would be amazing and i was saying things like oh no it's a bit too far away you know it's very expensive to get there and things like that and he was really encouraging me to go there and in the end i realized wow he's right why should i if i'm gonna go abroad and and live abroad you know for a while and teach english why go somewhere close why not just go all the way over to the other side of the world go somewhere completely different somewhere where the culture is really really different to the culture of the uk and just have an amazing experience and so you know on neil's advice i decided that i would look for work in japan and so i looked on the internet and there was lots of lots of teaching jobs there because obviously there are so many people in japan they've got quite an advanced economy well one of the most advanced economies in the world and they have you know a lot of need to to to learn english because they all need to be competitive in their in their careers and things also they they tend to be very interested in sort of western culture so a lot of people in japan feel it's very important to learn english and there aren't very many foreigners english speakers living in japan so there was lots of work available so i applied for it for work i got a job and you know i thought wow this is going to be great because actually for for a while for quite a long time i'd been really interested in japan because they've got you know they've got like really interesting culture and i i really i used to love playing japanese computer games and watching japanese manga movies and stuff and i and i i'd always been kind of fascinated in japanese life you know it just seemed so uh different and so funny and so interesting and so kind of difficult to understand really just certain things about for example japanese movies that just seemed really kind of strange so i was quite curious to go and investigate so i got a job and the company that i worked for helped to find me an apartment and find me health insurance and things like that i saved up money by working in a restaurant i saved up my money to pay for my my plane ticket and so i had sort of a few months to prepare myself i kind of learned some basic japanese i read up some some i read up on some books about japanese culture and then you know i kind of started to get myself ready i didn't feel nervous at all in fact i was looking forward to it for the whole time for for months and months up until i actually left to go to japan i was really looking forward to it and then on the day when it came for me to leave you know i packed all my bags and my dad took me to the airport he took me to heathrow airport by car and when i left my mum was kind of upset because she was going to miss me and she cried as i as i left now i'd already lived away from home for a few years in fact at university in liverpool i lived away from home in a shared house for four years so i you know i already had experience of living away from home so you know it wasn't like a huge deal for me at the time you know it wasn't like it wasn't going to be a huge shock for me and so i was i was all right with it i was quite i was quite okay with it in fact i was to be honest really looking forward to just getting away just getting away from the country because you know after university i didn't really know what to do with myself i was kind of i just i was a bit fed up with my life to be honest because i just didn't feel like i was going anywhere and i was a bit frustrated and so i was really looking forward to just getting away from it all and going to a completely new place and just having an adventure and so yeah i felt fine i didn't feel nervous or anything like that i felt really confident until i got to the airport and my dad dropped me off there at heathrow airport with my bags and said goodbye to me and he he left and as soon as he left i just suddenly felt really nervous and really scared i was on my own i was about to travel all the way around the world to a completely new country where i didn't speak the language really i suddenly felt incredibly nervous i'd never taken a long flight like that on my own i was about how old was i was about 23 years old and so suddenly i felt nervous it was it was pretty awful pretty weird i remember i had some bags of english coins i had all these coins with me and i just i thought that i would be able to spend them in the airport on some duty-free but i remember walking around i was so nervous you know making sure that i had my passport and my ticket and my bag and everything i just couldn't somehow mentally bring myself to get the coins out of the bags and spend them on things so i was wandering around with these coins all these bags of coins in my hands and i in fact i ended up taking them all the way to japan with me and i had these bags of coins of english money in japan for the whole time i lived there which was pretty strange but i felt very nervous i got on the plane and i had a very uncomfortable flight i just couldn't really relax there were lots of movies available for me to watch but i just couldn't bring myself to watch them because i just couldn't relax enough all i could do was just sit in my seat and listen to you know they have like radio channels well i found the radio channel with the kind of relaxing classical music and i just listened to this music i couldn't eat because i was too nervous there was a guy sitting next to me who was really annoying he was like really tall and his elbows used up loads and loads of room and he tried to talk to me but i just i wasn't interested i just wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone and i remember at one point looking out of the window and i think we were flying somewhere over siberia or something and i just remember feeling really strange really freaked out and i was just thinking oh my god this is this is all a horrendous mistake what the hell am i doing with my life why have i decided to travel all the way to a different country where i can't speak the language i'm making a horrible mistake this is a terrible idea i should i should stay in england i should focus on my career in london i should be trying to find a job in the media or something why am i flying to japan for god's sake to work as an english teacher this was never part of my plan you know that's what i was thinking so i was having kind of horrible sort of moment of panic and self-doubt and everything and it was awful finally eventually the plane landed and for some reason as soon as the plane landed i sort of felt okay and we all got off the plane got into the airport and i realized actually no this is all right this is going to be fine because you know it's not going to be that different life continues they still have the same basic things in japan as they do in england you know they still got gravity and stuff like that it's not going to be that different i'm going to be okay i'm going to i'm going to enjoy this this is going to be great i'm not really going to miss my life in england in fact my life in england was boring this is going to be an amazing experience and immediately i started to enjoy it and i started to notice things about japan that were really interesting and and so strange to me like for example coming into the airport immediately i noticed there was standing at the doorway there were two guys in uniforms like really sort of uh fancy looking uniforms standing there with white gloves and there were these just just these two guys standing at the doorway i couldn't really see why they were standing there what they what their purpose was but they just stood there with their white gloves on and their suits and i just thought okay that's pretty weird who are these guys and is is it really necessary for them to just stand by the door doing nothing that was just really the first weird experience that i the weird thing that i noticed that i didn't really understand i mean now i realize that in japan well it's it's just part of their culture to have like these members of staff who dress very smartly and maybe wearing white gloves just shows that they're extra smart and they stand there to make you feel like you're safe that this is a a high quality airport and that they have lots of staff who are very professional and that kind of thing it now i understand it but at the time i was thinking who is who the hell's this weird guy in a suit and why is he what's the point of that and so anyway i kind of settled into my my life in in japan and it was fine it was really great in fact i i kind of settled in obviously i had my periods of feeling homesick which is normal and it kind of goes up and down you sometimes you feel uh really comfortable and really excited about living in another country and sometimes you kind of start to feel homesick and you you realize that you don't really understand what you're doing and and the culture seems to be strange and frustrating but generally speaking it was it was great the company that i worked for basically looked after me they helped me find my apartment helped to sort out health insurance and a mobile phone contract for me and things like that so they looked after me although they they paid me peanuts i mean well not literally peanuts they didn't obviously just every month kind gonna bring me a bag of peanuts no that's just an expression it's an idiom which means that they didn't pay me very much so they paid me peanuts they just you know paid me quite a low wage particularly at the beginning on my probationary period after about six months i got a pay rise but at the beginning really they paid me peanuts but really at that time i didn't really know to be honest how to look after myself even after spending four years away from home university where to be honest i didn't really look after myself very well either i mean i was 23 years old but i still didn't really know how to you know look after myself have to eat properly and live like a proper healthy life i didn't eat a very balanced diet because you know because i had hardly any money i would often survive by eating cheap stuff that i didn't have to cook myself for example in japan they have these like little fast food places that sell bowls of rice and and beef it's called gudon i think goudon gyudon they have a shop there called yoshinoya which i was quite fond of because it was so cheap i mean really cheap you can just get like a bowl of of rice beef and onions for just well the equivalent to just about one or two pounds and it was tasty as well certainly at the beginning i thought wow this is nice but really to be honest it was a bit like the japanese version of mcdonald's it's kind of like sort of japanese fast food but i liked it and i kind of survived on that stuff for a while just because it was so cheap and easy to to get you know to be honest i can't really believe that i ate that stuff every day sometimes but to be honest you know it helped me help me to to save money in fact i even sort of worked out mathematically how i could afford to live on goudon for for a few weeks just so i could get through each month before i got paid so i did manage to save money but i didn't really save when i went to my local bar there was a there was a bar that was near to my apartment and i used to go there at the weekends and that's where i would hang out with like some japanese people that i just met in the bar i decided one day that i would just go to this bar because i was bored and i went in there and i met all these local japanese people and they after a while you know they they got to know me and i i it was great those are some of the best experiences that i ever had in japan actually was just spending some time in this local bar hanging out with some of the local japanese people that i met playing darts and just trying to speak japanese to them there were some really funny people the bar was called stone bar near tsujiro station in in the sort of kanagawa area of of japan so i lived i lived near yokohama which is not far from tokyo in in japan so yeah going to that bar was was really one of the best experiences that i i ever had most i love hanging out there but i probably drank a little bit too much it's to be honest it's quite hard to notice the negative effects that um that drinking can have on your health and perhaps that's one of the things that's contributed to me getting a little bit sick later on in fact there were a few things which i think contributed to me ending up really sick in a hospital one of them maybe was the fact that i would sometimes at the weekends stay up quite late drinking cocktails with these friends of mine in this in this bar also work i think i worked really really hard in the first six months it was it was very stressful because of a very steep learning curve it was difficult for me to really learn how to teach english well without you know really breaking my back every day because it was it was hard it's hard teaching english especially when you're doing it for eight or nine hours a day without any preparation time that's pretty stressful you end up in front of the students who are all there expecting to like learn from you they've all paid their money they they want to learn from you there's a lot of pressure there and so it was quite stressful experience for me and eight or nine hours every day of kind of like rushing around without a moment to to relax was was quite tough at the beginning so that i think perhaps contributed to me feeling a bit exhausted also the weather in england the weather is basically cold and wet during this during the winter and dark most of the time in winter right so when winter is cold wet and dark but in japan it's kind of dry uh and cold in the winter and yet hot and wet in the summer which is different to england which is wet and cold in the winter and hot and dry in the summer well i say hot it's not not as hot as most countries but hotter than it is in the winter that's for sure so so in england when the sun comes out in the summer it's quite normal and natural to kind of you know throw off your clothes and just get as much sun onto your skin as possible but when the sun came out in japan i did exactly the same thing you know so in the summer the sun would come out and i was like wow the sun finally and i kind of i would go outside at the weekend and i'd try and get as much sun as possible which was kind of a mistake because i miss some you know i underestimated exactly how powerful the sun is over there for some reason it's just a lot more powerful than it is in england so i got well on one particular occasion i got really badly sunburned i kind of i remember one day the sun was out and it was the weekend and i thought wow great this is my chance to go outside and get some sunshine finally and i went out without putting any suntan lotion on and i just had a like a pair of shorts and a vest and i went out on my bicycle i had this kind of like housewife's bicycle in japan they call it a mama cherry which is a sort of imagine like a the bicycle that a housewife would would would ride i had one of these bikes because i bought one really cheaply from a little bike shop around the corner so i had a big blue mama cherry which had a huge basket on the back like massive basket which i could put all my shopping in and a big basket on the front and i would ride around on this bike i probably looked completely ridiculous to the kind of japanese locals who would see me this this big weird looking foreign guy riding around on a housewife's bicycle i probably thought i was a real freak but i didn't really care because it was a great bike i mean it was it was really good and it was a pleasure to ride around on it so i went out on this particular day on my mama cherry housewife's bicycle getting loads of sun and i spent loads of time in the sunshine and then i came home that evening and i realized that oh my god maybe i got a little bit too much sun today because i was boiling hot night i remember looking in the mirror and i realized i was seriously sunburned and i took off my vest and it was like my my skin the skin which had been exposed to the sun was so burnt it was like pink like a salmon you know in fact when i took the vest off it looked like i was wearing a pink t-shirt like a dark pink t-shirt with a white vest over the top because the dark pink t-shirt was well that was where my skin was all sunburned that's what it looked like and then the white vest was where the other vest that i'd been wearing was had actually blocked the sun so it looked like a i was wearing a pink t-shirt with a white vest over the top but actually i just wasn't wearing anything it's just the pink bits were where my shoulders and my neck were had been really really badly sunburned and they you know they got so so badly burned i was so worried because they even on my shoulders they started to blister so i started to get these blisters on my shoulders which would then burst and they were really painful horrible experience so i've now learned that you must always wear suntan lotion when you go outside but particularly in a country like japan because the sunshine was so much stronger so anyway this sun burn didn't directly cause me to get sick but it's just an example of how i i wasn't really prepared for the difference in climate there so i you know it's just an example of how i wasn't really looking after myself japanese listeners might be feeling a little bit alarmed when i when i'm telling you all of this because japanese people tend to have a great sense of how sensitive the human body is for example a slight rise in temperature you know if they if they take their temperature and realize it's rise just a little bit then they really kind of go all out they wrap themselves up in scarves they take medicine they wear these kind of ninja style face masks to make sure that they are looking after themselves so japanese people tend to look after themselves pretty well and they can be very health conscious so me telling you these stories of how i didn't really look after myself might be a bit alarming for you but don't worry obviously i'm fine i'm okay i'm still standing anyway i'm english you know i'm i'm naturally tough even if i am a bit stupid sometimes so okay that this brings me to the japanese summer now the japanese summer is different to to the summer in the uk as i've explained generally in japan it's it's beautiful in may may comes along and the sun comes out and it's it's it's gorgeous you get kind of fresh air it's not too hot but it's nice and sunny it's fantastic it's a bit like the best days of english summertime then at some point in june it goes very cold and rainy again and this is something to do with a large front of low pressure which comes across japan and it's they call it rainy season and for for a few weeks it's just cold and it rains all the time it's miserable okay but this this wet and cold weather wasn't very strange to me you know it wasn't really a surprise to me but it was quite disappointing obviously it's a bit depressing when it rains all day every day and then after rainy season the the humidity and the heat arrive so that's kind of like the second half of july all the way through the rest of july all the way through august and to be honest most of september and so that period the humid and hot period was really difficult for me as i've said in the uk when the sun comes out and we go outside and and we enjoy it while it lasts to be honest the myth about the weather in england is that it rains all the time and that's not really true it does rain a lot but not all the time although our summers recently have been unusually wet probably due to climate change so rather the the the main feature of the english weather is that it it changes a lot it's changeable so you get it might be kind of hot in the summer but only for a few days and then it cools down it might rain a little bit but then you know the sun comes out for a while so the the weather kind of changes a lot and i was used to this kind of changeable weather but in japan in the summer after the rainy season the weather was just constant just consistent it was consistently very hot and very humid for months like two and a half to three months of just the same weather all the way through now that was really weird for me because my body was expecting the weather to change to give me a chance to kind of you know cool down a bit but no it didn't it was just hot and humid all the time so between 30 to 40 degrees centigrade and sort of 80 percent humidity or more in central tokyo if you ever go into tokyo in the middle of summer it's about 40 degrees because all of the air conditioning units are pumping out the heat the the sunlight and the heat reflect off all the concrete and so the heat has nowhere to go and in fact at night it's even hotter because the concrete in all the buildings has actually absorbed the heat during the day and then at night it releases it so the heat actually comes out of the stone in the ground and the buildings and everything it's incredibly hot so this was really really difficult for me it it's it's my body really couldn't uh get used to it i spent like almost the entire summer sweating i don't know how much i must have lost a lot of weight but um basically 24 hours a day seven days a week i was just sweating at night i was so hot that i i slept without any clothes on and without any bed clothes covering me and i would still sweat all night i'd wake up with a wet pillow now about air conditioning you're probably thinking why didn't you just put the air conditioning on you idiot but you know i couldn't actually stand the air conditioning either i really hated air conditioning i felt like it was dehydrating me because the air the air from my air conditioning in my apartment felt really dirty and kind of dusty and in england you know we don't use air conditioning very much so i wasn't very used to using it so i just preferred not to use it and also i'd been given advice that it was best not to use air conditioning too much and that you should just try to get used to the heat so i decided that i would try not to use the air conditioning very much and i didn't like the idea of sleeping in my room with the air conditioning on you know blowing cold air down onto my head as i slept i just didn't really think that was very healthy so anyway i decided that i would sleep without air conditioning and without any bed clothes and and yet i would still sweat all night long and wake up with a wet pillow i would you know in the morning i'd be sweaty i'd have my shower but because it was so hot and humid almost as soon as i came out of the shower and dried myself off i'd be all wet again and sweaty i remember like going to work in a suit like i had to wear a suit black suit and tie to work every day so i would walk to the station and i would be pouring sweat as soon as i got to the station just pouring sweat and then i'd get on the train and the trains are very heavily air-conditioned so they'd be the train is suddenly blowing ice-cold air down the back of my neck you know with with my sweaty neck and everything and then after half an hour of being frozen in the air-conditioned train i'd get back out into the boiling hot street again and walk to work and then get frozen by air conditioning there so it was like you know it was like i'm sure it was very bad for me and i got pretty exhausted i got stressed out by work i didn't really eat a balanced diet i didn't drink enough water i didn't sleep enough i didn't really cover myself up in bed which was a bad idea i didn't i stayed up late at weekends and i probably drank a bit too much also i remember in summer getting bitten by a mosquito now i was very careful to avoid letting mosquitoes into my apartment because we had one of those kind of insect screens so i from my bedroom i had a sliding glass door which i could use to get onto the balcony and i had some plants on the balcony which i which i would water every now and then and i would be very careful to make sure that i closed the the insect screen every time i went outside but i remember with this one particular time i forgot to close the insect screen and of course a mosquito came into my into my room one lucky mosquito got in there and i went to bed went to sleep without my bed covers on and this mosquito basically had a kind of it was like an all-you-can-eat buffet for this mosquito so he just feasted on me and i swear i got bitten about 15 times by this one mosquito in fact i remember waking up in the morning scratching i was kind of scratching my arm in my sleep and i woke up and i looked at my arm and there was blood on my arm because i'd actually killed this mosquito in my sleep this this must have been a very full and very sleepy mosquito at this point to let it actually be killed by me in my sleep me instinctively kind of scratching my arm where this mosquito was biting me and then i realized i'm gonna sneeze oh it feels good to sneeze and then i realized that this mosquito had bitten me something like 15 times and that my legs were itching already and my arms were itching and so this constant itching was like really annoying it was another thing that prevented me from sleeping properly and i've got this weird suspicion that maybe somehow the the the mosquito got me sick i don't know how but it was about a week after being bitten by this mosquito so many times that i started to feel pretty sick i started to feel like i had flu you know like i was feeling really tired headache chill you know like uh cold chills aches and pains in my body i felt like my glands were swollen i felt awful and i i took some time off work and i lay in bed resting or at least trying to rest but of course that was difficult because it was so hot so i couldn't really rest i mean i you know i remember i i kind of one day i felt kind of okay and i thought it would probably be a good idea for me to just get outside a bit because staying indoors in in the in my apartment was miserable you know i just felt depressed so i thought it would be good idea for me to go out and in fact i in fact i went out to a local temple there was a kind of temple on the hillside so i went for a walk up there and i i went to look at the temple it was an amazing place actually this place in kamakura in in kanagawa prefecture in japan where they have a huge bronze statue of a buddha sitting there in the temple so i went to check out this buddha and i took some photos and by coincidence very strangely enough when i was there i met dave grohl who you might know you might not know he but he's the drummer from nirvana you know that grunge band with kurt cobain nirvana well dave grohl is the drummer from nirvana he's a huge rock star he's also in the band the foo fighters and a few other bands and things i mean he's one of my heroes this guy and just by coincidence i managed to meet him there which was really strange all part of this very strange summer that i was having as i was walking out of the temple i noticed a group of foreign people walking in like westerners and it's not very common to see westerners when you're in japan so i kind of made eye contact with them as if to say sort of hello you know your westerners as well and i remember looking at one of them and thinking i know him how do i know him and then as i walked past him i realized oh my god that's dave grohl from the foo fighters and you know i went back and i i i first of all i thought no i'm going to be cool i'm not going to hassle him he's probably on a holiday but then i went back to him and i i kind of plucked up the courage to speak to him and i i managed to get a photograph with him and i had a little chat with him we talked about my mobile phone actually it was really strange i kind of said to him hey excuse me dave dave grohl aren't you dave grohl aren't you what the hell are you doing here at this buddhist temple on the side of a hilltop in in japan and it was very strange but they were playing a concert in tokyo in a couple of days time and they were just visiting the temple to do a bit of sightseeing so that was amazing i met dave grohl one of my heroes and sort of chatted to him so anyway i kind of felt a little bit better and i went back to work and i had an eight day stretch so that's eight consecutive days of work and by the end of that eight days i was just knackered i was absolutely exhausted and i actually felt worse i felt ill again in fact i felt more ill than i did before and i had i had then three days off and i just tried to rest i lay in bed trying to sleep but i couldn't really sleep i had the swollen glands and and painful tonsils your tonsils are glands at the back of your mouth and it's quite common to get an infection in your tonsils particularly when you're a teenager or when you're quite young and i used to get tonsil infections quite a lot when i was exhausted and this particular time i got a really bad tonsil infection so it was incredibly painful i couldn't swallow if you know what swallow means it's to go you know when you eat food or drink i couldn't swallow because it was too painful i couldn't eat all i could well all i could eat was was banana because it was soft and miso soup so i had all this miso soup and i was just trying to drink miso soup and try to eat banana but really i couldn't eat or drink very much it was awful i was in a really bad condition my girlfriend i did have a japanese girlfriend at the time she was kind of like half american half japanese because her dad no she was like a quarter american because her dad was half american and her mum was japanese so she was like three quarters japanese and one quarter american lovely girl who i was going out with at the time but she ironically was at that time on holiday with her parents in england while i was in japan feeling awful alone and so i it was terrible actually it was a really bad time all i could do was just sort of try and rest and try and eat eventually my girlfriend came back and immediately when she realized that i wasn't well she arranged for me to go to the doctors and this was really a horrible experience because the first doctor that we went to just i i i think he just didn't want to see me because i don't know maybe because i was a foreigner and over there in japan they you know they can be a bit strange with foreigners sometimes i think it was a bit inconvenient for him to have to deal with me the fact that i didn't speak japanese you know that's my fault i didn't learn japanese so the doctor was not friendly with me i had health insurance but he still you know didn't really want to deal with me eventually my girlfriend persuaded him to to let me into his surgery it was a very busy surgery too he didn't have much time for me he wasn't friendly at all and generally the the kind of the feeling that i got in his doctor's surgery was that it was very old-fashioned a kind of victorian kind of vibe that i got from it in fact i got the sense that i wasn't welcome and the whole the whole thing was just an inconvenience for him and so he sat me in this kind of chair which which was like a sort of old-fashioned dentist's chair so i sat very upright with a neck brace around me and what was very really off-putting for me is that i could see all of his medical instruments in a in a glass cabinet next to me and there were like nurses and other people walking around behind me it was like a sort of dark room and he he took out some of his instruments and he had like a long metal rod with a swab at the end that's kind of like a piece of cotton at the end and he dipped it into some antiseptic and his base his way of dealing with my tonsil infection my throat infection was to was to basically use this swab and and kind of paint my tonsils with antiseptic now if you can imagine how painful that was that that was it was awful it was it was one of the it was just horrible how painful it was so he was there sticking this thing down the back of my throat covering my tonsils in antiseptic and it was so awful that i couldn't help coughing and i was like coughing the the antiseptic back into his face it was just awful i mean just a disgusting experience really really a nightmare he he didn't even give me any medicine he didn't give me any antibiotics for my tonsil infection he didn't even give me a blood test to see what was wrong with me and at the time i didn't really know i just knew that i i felt really really bad and so he just told me to go away and have rest so i tried to rest i took another couple of days off work and tried to rest but it didn't it didn't work in fact i started to feel even worse even more exhausted so yeah i continued to get ill a couple of days later i went back to to this doctor and this was very awkward because i met my girlfriend's dad and it was the first time that i'd met her dad which was not really the it wasn't really a great uh situation to be meeting him for the first time you know i looked awful i looked like a zombie basically you know it's as if my girlfriend was going well dad i'd like to meet my boyfriend here he is he's an english zombie and i kind of walked in you know not exactly the best way to make a good impression anyway he was very nice to me and you know he understood that i wasn't very well and i they they took me into the doctor's surgery again and the doctor this time decided that it might be a good idea to give me some antibiotics and he gave me he gave me three days worth of antibiotics antibiotics are those medicines that you need to deal with infection for example penicillin is an antibiotic so he gave me three days worth of antibiotics these tiny little antibiotics pills and i knew immediately that this wasn't going to be enough because you know i'm quite quite a big guy i need quite a large dose of antibiotics i've already kind of built up a resistance to antibiotics because uh when i was younger i i had tonsillitis quite regularly when i was when i was young tonsillitis if you don't already realize what that is that's an infection of glands at the back of your throat so glands are parts of your body which are responsible for producing things like hormones or producing saliva or sweat things like that you have glands in your throat you have glands around the back of your head you have them in your armpits and in various other parts of your body so i had tonsillitis so that's like a badly a bad infection of the glands in your throat and i'd i'd had tonsillitis quite a few times when i was younger and so my doctors in england had given me antibiotics already a lot of times for that and and so i knew that i needed quite a large dose of antibiotics in order to in order for them to work so i kind of reluctantly went back home to my apartment with these antibiotics and i took them but it didn't work and and i just continued to to feel ill so my girlfriend and i don't know i'm not in touch with this girl anymore i just we lost touch for various reasons it's a long time ago but if you're listening then you know god bless you basically because you really looked after me i really appreciate it but the she she found me another doctor because we decided that this other doctor was just a waste of time so she found me another doctor near my school actually kind of he had a surgery near the school that i used to work in and i i came into this surgery again like a zombie i kind of walked in feeling awful and by coincidence this doctor was one of my students i didn't realize that this guy was a doctor at the surgery he was just another one of my students now i kind of met hundreds of students at this school and one of them was this guy and so this this was good this was really nice because i already had a relationship with this guy he already knew me and you know the fact is that as a teacher with him i'd i'd you know given him a lot of attention and care or already i'd like already built up a kind of relationship with the guy and so this was really good because he he cared about me a lot more than the other guy did the other doctor so he this doctor took a you know a kind of special interest in in me and he decided that he was gonna definitely try and make me feel better i mean anyway that's what a doctor is supposed to do right so you know it was no great surprise but anyway i felt more comfortable with this guy because i already knew him not that his english was very good in fact his english was very basic despite the fact that obviously he had the most amazing english teacher in the world me yeah right so he kind of sorted me out a bit he he gave me a blood test and he put me on an intravenous drip that's when basically they they put meds they put medicine directly into your blood so they kind of attach something to your vein in your arm or in the back of your hand and then in a they then hook up a kind of plastic bag full of medicine which then comes down a small tube and goes directly into your blood is an iv drip so it gave me an iv drip of antibiotics because he realized that i needed you know a really good dose of antibiotics and that that made me feel much better i lay there in this bed for half an hour while all the antibiotics went into my arm and i immediately started to feel better it was incredible actually and i went home and feeling you know a lot better not not perfect by any means but certainly better than i had done and the next day i went back to this doctor in order to get the results of my blood test and i was thinking i'm going to be all right you know i'm feeling better i'm sure it was just tonsillitis and now that i've had these antibiotics i'm feeling a lot better but i still felt pretty awful you know i still felt pretty exhausted and really in a bad way and so i went into the surgery and the doctor gave me the results of the blood test now bear in mind that this doctor's english wasn't very good and obviously i didn't speak very good japanese either so kind of a lot of what he said to me was quite was lost in translation so i misunderstood really what he was saying but what he said to me was okay luke you have you have liver damage so your liver is is damaged and he showed me my results and he said this is what your liver should be and it's something like 50 i don't know really what the numbers meant but he said your liver should be at around 50 but your liver is about 250 so i was thinking okay that's that's really bad isn't it so he said you've got liver damage you have to go to hospital and you will need an operation right so obviously immediately i started to kind of panic because i thought what i've got liver damage i need to go to hospital and i need an operation so immediately i was assuming that he meant that i had like some sort of liver oh he also said to me yeah you've got the eb virus and i didn't know what the hell the eb virus was i was thinking my god what is this some sort of horrific liver disease and i'm gonna need to go to a hospital and i'm gonna need to have a liver operation i'm going to have to have my liver changed that's what i was thinking at this time you know i it completely freaked me out i was so frightened and i kind of broke down at that point and i was thinking oh my god i'm really ill i've got to go to hospital have a liver operation this is an absolute nightmare and it was awful it was just terrible i they took me to a hospital checked me into a hospital and next thing you know i was lying in a bed in a japanese hospital they took me to kinugasa hospital in yokosuka which was near to where i was living and there it was i was in hospital i had no idea what was wrong with me as far as i knew i had like some liver disease and i was gonna have to have an operation in a in a day or two and uh so i lay there i remember i clearly remember the first night that i had there and i when i arrived it was about ten o'clock at night and like my my girlfriend's mum and my girlfriend took me to the hospital they couldn't really explain what what it was you know they were to be honest i i was in such a kind of bad way that i was confused and probably quite paranoid and so that was a really bad moment and i remember lying in the bed just trying not to panic basically just lying there trying to sleep just trying to rest trying to keep myself calm just trying to play games with myself in my head to stop me thinking to stop me worrying about my health so i was lying there thinking okay just try not to think try not to worry too much you're in hospital now that's good so just to keep myself calm i played the abc game over and over again that's where you you might know the game already that's where you pick a subject and just try and list things that begin with each letter of the alphabet for that subject and so i just could you know i just played as many abc games as i possibly could it was like okay so boys names right andrew ben chris daniel edward you know girls names okay anne belinda caroline denise elisa you know and i just kept playing this game in my head all night just to stop me thinking about things i i got to i can't remember all of the different subjects that i covered but just some random things like okay smells different smells okay absinthe battery you know all these sorts of things for some reason the letter q and the letter z are always the hardest ones to to find words for when you're playing the abc game but anyway so yeah i it was horrible they they they kind of gave me lots of drugs they gave me more intravenous drips in fact every day i had about i had intravenous drips for about five to six hours every day now you're probably thinking to yourself what what was what was it luke how ill were you what did you have what was wrong with you well i still didn't really know until my girlfriend's parents contacted my parents and told them everything that they knew everything that the doctors had told them they contacted my parents and told them all of that and i had a mobile phone in the hospital which had email on it and so i eventually got an email from my parents obviously they were very worried about me and they checked out all of the symptoms that i had and everything that the doctor had told them you know via my girlfriend's parents they checked it all out on the internet and they'd worked out what i actually had so they sent me this email which explained everything to me and this was a huge relief because it turns out that i didn't have some kind of horrible life-threatening liver disease i had infectious mononucleosis which is otherwise known as glandular fever and that's actually quite a common virus let's say it's a virus which infects the glands and the symptoms are that it gives you liver damage because you've got a high white blood cell count in your blood and so your liver is like working hard to try and try to clean out the white blood cells from your from your blood so it's quite a common thing i didn't need to have an operation in fact what the doctor had actually meant was he said okay so you've got liver damage that's that's normal it's a normal symptom of glandular fever what what was the other thing you've got liver damage you you have to go to hospital so the reason he told me that was because i had to go to hospital in order to rest i just needed to rest and to get medicine and treatment and i just needed rest basically for for a few weeks and you will need an operation what he meant there was that i would eventually need to have my tonsils removed because of the the the frequency at which i was having infections in my tonsils he decided that it would be a good idea for me to have my tonsils removed so it was nothing to do with having a liver transplant or anything like that i was just panicking at that point so when i learned that actually i had quite a common virus i mean it's quite common and the symptoms can be quite serious if you don't rest and you know obviously what i had been doing is going to work and not eating properly and not resting and so i felt absolutely awful i felt you know like like i was on death's door but it wasn't a life-threatening illness in fact it was quite common illness and i was in the right place in a hospital there to relax and take it easy and so all of that panic and all that worry and paranoia was unnecessary and then as soon as i realized that i was going to be all right i relaxed quite a lot and in fact being in that hospital was was quite fun in a way it was quite an ex quite an interesting experience being in a hospital in japan i was the only as i said the only foreign person in the hospital except for an indonesian guy who worked there as a carpenter or he was like a caretaker or something in in the hospital and he that like somehow the staff in the hospital decided that this guy this indonesian guy called chandra should be my my kind of interpreter now chandra didn't really speak very much english himself but he was a lot better than the the japanese staff in the hospital and so chandra san would come and visit me and he would talk to me and ask me what i wanted to eat for my lunch and dinner and it was great i basically lay there in the bed all day my friends came to visit me which was fantastic and they brought me books and and music and stuff and i spent about two weeks lying down in bed having people bring meals to my bed i had like a relaxing ice pillow nurses would come and and make sure i was okay in fact all the nurses in the hospital in that particular ward decided they would come and visit me because it was i think for them it was kind of like quite an exciting novelty to have an english guy in the hospital so they'd all come and visit me and you know they'd all want to talk to me and stuff and i was kind of like the star of the the hospital ward and most of the time they left me alone and i just lay there listening to ambient music on my headphones reading the lord of the rings i read the whole lord of the rings trilogy which was fantastic because i love those books they're really really great and i had a lovely time just lying there in a hospital bed being treated like a king people would come and visit me as i said and and it was lovely i mean it was also a very strange place to be it was just a very bizarre experience to be on my own in this japanese hospital on the other side of the world and all sorts of weird and wonderful things happened but generally i had quite a nice time although of course i felt pretty exhausted and my throat hurt a lot and and i you know i kind of had other symptoms but they gave me loads of drugs which really helped me to to feel better as i said every day they would give me intravenous drips they'd they would give me two large bags of a kind of clear pink fluid directly into my arm and each bag would take three hours to go into my arm and to this day i don't know what it was i don't know what they were putting into me i think it was probably a mix of like you know sort of vitamins and stuff like that to help me recover but it would take three hours for each of these bags to go in so i'd be lying there with this pink liquid going into my body and i could taste it in my mouth even it was very strange and they'd also give me a bag of antibiotics every day in fact they probably gave me too much in antibiotics because after about 10 days of this i was nearly ready to leave the hospital and i woke up one day with a rash all over my body a really bad rash a rash is when you get lots of red spots and they can be very itchy and i suddenly had this rash all over my whole body which was kind of a surprise but apparently it was a result of having too much antibiotics sometimes that happens so i had to stay in the hospital while the while the rash went away but what a bizarre experience eventually i i was discharged from the hospital and i i went i went back home and i i still had some time off from work the the company were quite understanding they gave me sort of quite a long time to recover the doctors recommended it in fact the doctors sent some you know they wrote letters to my company suggesting that i needed to have time off to recover so i had you know a couple of fantastic weeks just relaxing in my flat and i learned to look after myself so now obviously now i'm i'm healthy again i'm absolutely fine that was 10 years ago so i now have this story to tell about when i got sick in japan and also i learned a few lessons from the experience and i think you know we can all learn a few things from the experience that i had so what can we learn from this well first of all i've learned that you should eat healthily you should eat a balanced diet with lots of fresh vegetables because you've got to get all those vitamins and minerals into your system to make sure that you can stay healthy also drink plenty of water you gotta keep yourself hydrated particularly when you're in hot places like japan in the summertime keep the keep yourself hydrated drink plenty of water when you go to live in another country you got to be prepared for cultural differences so you've got to be ready for things being a bit different even stuff like the weather the climate is going to be different so prepare yourself make sure that you're looking after yourself try to follow the ways in which the locals do things for example in japan they would in the summer they'd all just take it easy i i would notice people in the street kind of slowing down a lot you know they would try to relax particularly the people who lived in the in the the houses near the beach where i where i used to live i noticed that they would have a very slow pace of life particularly the locals you know they just knew how to deal with the hot summer so take it nice and slow during the summer you know don't stress out take time to chill in your home in the summer time when it's really hot keep the keep the doors open and the windows open to create a kind of draft of natural cool air that will just come through the apartment do that rather than using the air conditioning wear relaxing clothes so i learned um to get out of my my business clothes you know get out of my work shirt and my trousers at the end of each day and i'd change into my a pair of shorts and a pair of flip-flops so i could really get into a relaxed mode sleep when you when you're when you're in bed even if you're hot you should have something covering your body even if it's just cover covering your midsection you should sleep with something over your body even if you're hot because you shouldn't sleep with nothing covering you at all because even if it's hot in the room somehow your body will get cold so you need to have something covering you when you're sleeping at night one thing i learned from some of my students as a way of keeping cool when it's really hot you should take some bottles of water and freeze them in the freezer so you've got like liter bottles of water frozen in the in the freezer and then you can take them out of the freezer and put them in your bed in the evening and then when you come to to get into bed because you've had all these frozen bottles in there the bed is like really cool and really nice and comfortable to go to to lie down in so that's kind of a nice tip put some frozen bottles of water around the bed and on top of the bed or even in the bed and it's nice and cool when you go to lie down look after yourself get plenty of sleep stay positive and that's just a general a general rule in life you should always stay positive because it might not be as bad as you think for example for me i thought it was i thought i had some life-threatening disease but in fact i didn't i could have you know i could have panicked i could have freaked out but i had to stay positive and i think that's a good thing to learn in general stay positive because it might not be as bad as you think don't give up you know by the same token don't give up don't don't decide that it's all over don't give up don't drink too much i mean don't drink too much alcohol obviously sometimes it's great to just enjoy yourself have fun and enjoy yourself but you shouldn't drink too much ironically my doctor who i kind of became friends with afterwards he said he he told me right you shouldn't drink shouldn't drink alcohol for a while and so i didn't drink alcohol and then he actually invited me to his house for a new year's day party and when i got to the house he gave me a beer and i said but i thought you thought you said i shouldn't drink and he was like oh no you can drink today it's fine so you know apparently it was all right to drink on that particular day i'm sure he knew what he was talking about he was a doctor you know that was a couple of months after i'd been in hospital anyway and i hadn't drunk anything for like two months i was very well behaved and i really felt the health benefits actually i just gave up drinking completely i didn't drink that much to be honest not compared to some people i know but i gave up drinking completely i felt really good i felt really fresh and everything and i went to this party with this japanese doctor's house and he was like you know forcing me to drink beer at 11 o'clock in the morning it was pretty funny i actually had a really good time at that party so it shows sometimes it's good to drink and just relax and unwind and enjoy yourself if you're living in a foreign country make an effort to learn the language you should learn like i should have learned japanese it would have helped me it would have meant that i you know it would have avoided all those weird misunderstandings which which made me believe that i was gonna die in a japanese hospital you should take time out of your life to relax and take it easy sometimes and you know listen to some ambient music i recommend stuff like brian eno aphex twin the orb listen to that kind of really nice chilled out relaxing music sometimes it's good it helps to i'm sure it sort of lowers your blood pressure and things like that enjoy your life you know just enjoy it it's healthy to be happy accept friendly invitations for example the invitation from this doctor that i had i had such a good time at his party and it really made me feel good about myself i felt very healthy afterwards so accept friendly invitations generally you should be nice to people i was very nice to the doctor in my english lessons i i took a lot of care and attention to make sure that you know i was teaching him correctly and that's like i gave him lots of lots of good attention in the end it paid off because when i became his patient and he was my doctor he felt like he should take extra special care over me because i'd been careful with him as a as a teacher so be nice to people because in the end you might not you know it's good policy to be generally kind and nice to people because it will come back to you in the end okay that's pretty much it i think for this episode wow my god i've been talking for like an hour and 15 minutes okay that's it i'm going to stop now because otherwise this episode is going to be much too long i've been rambling on and on and on in this episode but i i hope you've enjoyed it please do feel free to leave your comments on this episode you can share your own stories if you've ever had a similar experience just tell us about maybe your experiences of living in another culture have you ever lived abroad were there any things that you found difficult have you got any good tips for how to survive hot summers in foreign countries have you got any good little health tips for example do visit the page episode 118 and you may well find some useful bits of language which i've written there that is it for this episode stay tuned for more episodes in the future but for now it's bye bye bye bye thanks for listening to luke's english podcast for more information visit teacherluke.com [Music]

Channel: Luke's English Podcast

Views: 41,513

Rating: 4.951654 out of 5

Keywords: learn, learning, english, lesson, lessons, luke, podcast, luke's, vocabulary, native, speaker, interviews, listening, pronunciation, british, accent, london

Id: 0eznZT94GOw

Length: 61min 32sec (3692 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021