Health topic: Flagged for health intervention!

This year was the first time I took advantage of the cheap yearly health check that is available for people age 40 and over (I'm not sure if this and other health benefits vary regionally or not - I will describe the system for the part of Japan I live in, anyway). I'm 42 now.

This health check costs around 1000 yen, or about 10 U.S. dollars, and includes a variety of standard tests & measurements, including a blood test. Also, since I had been having some pains in my chest, I asked for the ECG, for an extra 200 yen or so (2 dollars). My grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack at age 50, so those pains were making me nervous.

Anyway, the doctor said the tests showed no problems (and the chest pains have gone away, too!). That was back in August.

This week, I was surprised to receive a card in the mail telling me that on the basis of that check, I have been flagged for a free health consultation, at our local ward health center! The reason seems to be the following (as shown on the card):

(my height is 177.5 cm, or 5'10")

Weight: 81.5 kg (180 lbs.)

BMI: 25.9

Blood pressure: 134/86 mmHG

LDL Cholesterol: 133 mg/dl

As you can see, I am a bit overweight... healthy BMI is supposed to be 20-25. In fact, after having that cheap health check in mid-August, I learned that my company was also requiring us to have a health check (at a clinic of their choosing), so I had a second health check in late August. My weight measured slightly higher, and when I got the results sometime in Sept., I had gotten an "A" grade in everything except my weight, which had a "C" grade, and on this basis they had given me a "C" grade overall. :(

This and various other things (like finally getting really fed up with being overweight, a situation which started when I was expecting my second child more than 10 years ago!!) led me to start dieting in Sept. (still dieting now). Mostly just paying attention to what I eat, and not overeating or bingeing on snacks. When I'm full, I just stop eating! One piece of toast, not two, etc. Also, trying to walk most days to and from the subway station and my workplace, etc...

As of yesterday (*before* our Thanksgiving meal!!, which, yes, we had on Sunday evening), my weight was 79.2 kg (175 lbs.) and my BMI was 25.3 - yay, almost to healthy range! Although I've only lost 5 lbs., people have been saying I look thinner. My ideal weight would be about 70 kg (154 lbs.) (remember I am tall), but I want to go to 75 kg (165 lbs.) first and then see if it seems necessary to continue or not. So, about 10 more lbs. to lose in the next few months.

The health intervention card I got this week said I'm at risk for "metabolic syndrome" (something about excess fat, blood pressure problems, etc.), and that I've been flagged for the lower level of intervention ("active"?), not the higher level ("aggressive"?). I'm to go in to the health center in late Dec. or early Jan., to be weighed & measured, and then to have a free consulation about my lifestyle and how to improve my weight & fitness. The total time involved will be about an hour.

By U.S. standards, I am only a little overweight, but I'm definitely not in top condition and at my age it would be easy to keep gaining!! I think it's wonderful that the Japanese health care system is so proactive in trying to keep people in good condition, even people who are not so far over the healthy BMI range, like myself.

I'm definitely planning to go in for the free consultation, and it will be good motivation both beforehand and afterwards. Beforehand, because I will want to maintain and even improve on my current weightloss progress, to show them I am already trying. Afterwards, because the counselor will presumably say some helpful things and get me fired up for more weightloss!!

Health Topic: H1N1 (Swine) flu

I think our city was one of the first ones in Japan to have a proper outbreak of swine flu. The school where I work had to be closed for 3 days in mid-September, but the teachers still went to work as normal. It was also one of the first schools in the city to be hit. We had a kind of seige atmosphere, with just teachers hanging around in the teachers' room, all of us wondering if we had already contracted swine flu. In the end, only one teacher caught it. The kids returned in due time, in good health and spirits.

Some time later, my younger son's elementary school also had several closed classes and grades. However, 1st and 4th grades had hardly any flu. They decided this was because the 1st and 4th grade classrooms were on the other side of the school from everyone else. Later the 1st grade caught it, but still not the 4th grade (my younger son's grade).

Then it came to my older son's school. My son caught it at the same time as quite a few other people, and the whole school was closed for 3 days. This was around Oct. 21 or so. My son had a positive result on either an Influenza A test or an H1N1 test (I don't know which), and the doctor said he had H1N1. He was prescribed Relenza, which you take by breathing in. Here in Japan they do not give Tamiflu to kids age 10 or over, because they had a worrying number of older kids getting hurt or dying from irrational behavior while on Tamiflu (though it has not been proven that Tamiflu was the cause). Here, Tamiflu had been regularly prescribed to most flu sufferers for some years - my younger son had taken it the two times he caught flu, in 2005 and 2006. Anyway, I was very happy with the Relenza because my older son's stomach is sensitive and he tends to throw up anytime he has a fever (even if it is a fever from an ear infection or some other random thing). I wouldn't like for him to throw up his medicine, so the Relenza (that is breathed in) was just right! He got well soon - he only seemed really under the weather for one night (during which he did indeed throw up, but good boy, didn't wake the rest of us!). By about 10 a.m. the next day he was happily watching TV! His fever didn't go higher than 38.9 (102 degrees F), that I know of. After getting well he had a lingering mild cough, for a week or two.

None of us caught it from him, but approx. one week after he was well, the 4th grade at my younger son's school finally came down with it, all at once! About half the 4th grade was suddenly home from school, and I think the diagnosis was confirmed in about 1/3 of the total number of kids. My younger son got sick at the same time, with the same symptoms as his friends, and the same as my older son. I took him to the doctor 17 hrs. after symptoms had started, but the flu test was negative. I've heard that the test could still show negative even up until symptoms have been there for 24 hrs. Anyway, the doctor thought it was probably H1N1, anyway, and prescribed the Relenza for us (my son is 10 -- it seems that a classmate who is just short of her 10th birthday was prescribed Tamiflu).

As mentioned, younger son's symptoms were very similar to older son's, and the progression of the illness was basically identical. He did not have a lingering cough, however. He also had a highest measured fever of 38.9 C (102 degrees F).

I hope that he did indeed have H1N1, because I would love to be done with it and not have him catch it later!

Both times it did not spread to me or my husband, and I have not heard of any other parents or teachers here having it (besides that one teacher at my workplace) (though I'm sure there are others, of course). Generally speaking, in Japan it seems to not be spreading so much beyond young people, for some reason.

The nice thing for us was that both my kids had it (or hopefully had it) at the same time as many other classmates, so when their classes were closed, they were home sick, too, and they didn't miss anything at school. At my younger son's school, all of the 4th grade missed their school's school performance day (Happyoukai), but they had a special 4th-grade-only Happyoukai the following weekend. The school was so nice, asking all the other kids and as many non-4th-grade parents as possible to attend the 4th grade performance, to duplicate the conditions of the real Happyoukai so the 4th graders wouldn't be sad! It was a good show, and only 2 kids missed performing in it (out of about 62 total 4th graders). It was a space story called Cosmo Rangers Go, Go-go! A cute story about some space rangers who go to two different planets - on one planet they inspire the inhabitants (cute aliens with silver antennae) to clean up their garbage, and on the other planet (an ancient Greek-inspired planet) they help the two fighting queens to become friends again. When I first heard the theme, I thought it sounded a bit kindergartenish, but it was cute and the kids looked happy! My Jiji played one of the rangers (he did the first third of the role of a boy called "Taku", a kind of naughty boy who argues some with the other rangers). He did great! :)

Drawings

Okay, here are a couple more of the things from Jiji's jiyuuchou:

I couldn't scan Acorn Master in the end, but here are 3 more that did come out. This one is Ten-face.

Autumn Master.

Part of a random color drawing with various characters like SpeedDragon, DrD and UltraDragon.

More Jiji quotes

We have had a nice summer - with some new "pets", as always seems to happen. We kept a stag beetle for a couple of months, and just released it yesterday. The main reason I wanted to release it is that we have about 30 marine hermit crabs (from the size of a walnut to the size of a small pea), that Jiji and Dio gathered on our camping trip to the Shakotan Peninsula a week ago. They are a lot of work, as I have been trying to make a nice, clean environment for them. So King, the beetle, has been released back into the wild.

Jiji continues to give big brother Dio a run for his money, in the memory department. Dio is smart in his own way, but he is a "visual spatial learner" (I found this on the internet about a year ago, and was so glad to see the source of Dio's sometimes frustratingly slow verbal processing!!!) and is a bit unbalanced on the other learning sides, so he is great at anything mechanical, maps, spatial problems, and math, science, computer, etc., but his processing of verbal input is really slow, and he has a poor sense of time (apparently these are typical weak points of visual spatial learners). Also, whenever he goes head to head with little brother on memory, we figure little brother will win about 4/5 of the time... a bit sad, but anyway he needs to know his weak points! Little brother Jiji's main weakpoints seem to be terrible handwriting, lack of stick-to-itiveness (sp.?) for after school sports or lessons and the like, and a tendency to throw punches at his big brother (but luckily at no-one else).

The other day, cool big brother (now a full-fledged teenager with long, straight-permed hair!) was asked to write "cereal" on the shopping list. He wrote - "cerial - the Greek name for the goddess Demeter" (something they are learning at school). Dad saw the misspelling and called to him to fix it. He erased "cerial", forgot what he had written the first time, got mixed up, and wrote "cerial" again. Dad called Jiji - "Jiji, spell cereal!". "C-E-R-E-A-L - what, Dio, you can't spell cereal?? What is this you wrote here, the Greek word for Demeter?" Dio - "Oh, so I couldn't spell cereal. I can spell lots of words!! How about this - can you spell Aphrodite?????" Jiji - "A...P..H..R..O..D.." (Dio is looking really worried now, and Mom and Dad are looking back and forth laughingly) "Y..T..E?" (Dio looks so relieved, and Mom and Dad are saying, "Ouch, he almost showed you!! Don't underestimate him next time!!" ) Jiji - "Well, I'm only 10 and I go to Japanese school, and I'm not even learning about that in school. Shkamo [and besides], what you wrote [about Demeter] was jiman [bragging] and a waste of space." I had to laugh at that... "jiman and a waste of space." :)



Another funny one recently -

Jiji - "Can I go on the com?" (computer)

Dad - "Kiss my ass!"

Jiji - "... I'll take that as a yes!"



Jiji's summer project (jiyuukenkyu) was a super easy project - his uncle (my husband's big brother) who visited us for 2 weeks had found a piece of driftwood shaped like the head and neck of a swan, so all Jiji did was paint it in white, black and yellow. The kids in his class liked it and started saying, "Aflack!" (with a quacking voice).


But Dio has had a really nice summer as far as projects. His school has no jiyuukenkyu, but he and a neighbor boy/classmate have been visiting our 81-year-old next-door neighbor every Weds. all summer, and are still continuing it now that school has started. He is teaching them how to play "Go", and they really like it!! He has also started trying to teach them various things about life and his own life, etc. (which includes almost having to fight in WWII, but "unfortunately the war ended and I was unable to serve the Emperor"!!) . He is a really nice man, anyway, and they enjoy their Go lessons. Then another neighbor, a lady about 50 years old who is into weaving, had us in her house briefly and Dio was looking with interest at her loom. So she invited just him over one morning for more than 2 hrs., and he wove a wall-hanging for our house! When I came home it was hanging on the wall in the genkan. She said his "souzou" was "juunan" (I think that was it - anyway his imagination is flexible) and he had a lot of ideas so it was fun teaching him. So, he has been having a lot of valuable experiences with our neighbors!



One more thing (since I know I will not be bothered to post for another month or more) - I want to test out my new scanner, to bring you the Acorn Master - a weird drawing by Jiji in his jiyuu-chou. The indispensible "free-drawing notebook", that they are allowed to have in school (for rainy days, I guess), and that he cannot do without. Just a minute while I attempt to work my new scanner...



Hmmm - this is taking way longer than I'd hoped, and I have to go and do some dishes etc. before Za Papa comes back from his evening private lesson (teaching two friendly & cheerful hairdressers :/ ). So instead of the Acorn Master, here are two little characters - a fruit guy and a guy with weird eyes.



Hope this is not all too much "jiman and a waste of space"!!!

poems in typing

Jiji has been doing some typing practice recently. He goes to Japanese school and doesn't really get enough English writing practice, etc., and besides that, his handwriting has never been so good (in English or Japanese). I think it's a mild hand coordination problem - just his weak point, I guess. Ironically, the thing he writes the most neatly is kanji. I think it is because of all the straight lines. English letters and hiragana have curves and he seems to have more trouble writing them neatly. Anyway, if he can type then there is less pressure on us to improve his handwriting! So I have been letting him type for 20 minutes at a time. He loves it! Some of his best efforts have been:

June 3, 2009:

Monkeys eat apples. Elephants eat bananas. Dogs eat fish. Cats eat bones. Anteaters eat sweet stuff. Ants eat ants.

That was the food chain.

Detective Jiji.
Jiji looked for footprints.
He found handprints.
Jiji looked for handprints.
He found footprints.
Jiji is an inexperienced detective.

June 7, 2009 (this one's about our dog, Toby):


As black as eyes as black as a nose the thing he’s afraid of are pure black crows who am I typing to? Noone knows. That was a poem about Tobias D----.


June 17, 2009 (another one about Toby):

Big big whirlpools, robots grabbing scruffs.
Zombies grabbing paws, giant bugs chasing dogs.
A giant grabbing for Toby’s neck---.wu—wu—wu—wu—.
Toby just woke up from his nightmare whimpering.

He also enjoys playing around with the fonts, colors & sizes. The other day I thought it might be nice to see what all our family's typing speeds are. I knew mine more or less because I sometimes used to work as a temp in the States and England. Anyway, the results were:

Me - 74 wpm
Husband (I was amazed he actually took the test!) - 34 wpm
Dio (age 14) - 32 wpm
Jiji (age 10) - 4 wpm. It took like 30 minutes for him to complete the 1-paragraph-long test... he did it until the end, though! I told him he can try again in a year!

"Paper Orphans" - The Lie we Love

This article contains important information about international adoptions:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4508&page=0

Lovely Toby

A Valentine's Day post...

We all love our dog Toby, and have so many nicknames for him. Yesterday, I heard Jiji saying, "Hello Toby my little Love Fuzz Bucket." My husband calls him things like "Love Penguin" and "Captain Cuddles." I call him "Tobiliboo" or "Herr Toblepooper", etc. We make up many new nicknames all the time, in a similar vein.

Valentine's Day news from kidland...

My older son went to a Valentine's Day dance last night. There was a special price for people going as a couple, so he wanted to ask someone. There is one particular girl (the same age) who he has liked for a few months (after being told no by the previous girl), but he seemed to nervous to ask her. There is another girl (one year younger) who used to email him a lot to ask advice on getting together with boy in my son's grade, but the other boy recently dumped her and she was crying. So he decided to ask her. I said, "Shouldn't you ask the girl you really like? After all, what if she likes you too and it hurts her feelings when you ask that other girl?" "No, no, ii, ii, just let me do what I want." He asked the other girl (the recent dumpee), and after thinking about it for a day or 2, she said no. The other girl (the one he really likes) heard about it and asked him (in a neutral tone) why he asked that other girl. He said he felt sorry for her because she was dumped recently and was sad. The girl he likes then said, "Oh, I can't understand because I've never liked anybody, anyway."

After he was told no by the recent dumpee, he decided to ask the girl he really likes, after all. Then she said no, too. He was going to ask her one more time on the day of the dance, but she was absent. She was also absent from the dance itself. He was trying to get up his nerve to ask the recent dumpee to slow-dance with him, when the recent dumper (the old boyfriend) asked her to dance. He didn't end up slow-dancing with anyone (he never has before), but had a nice time anyway. There was some sort of drawing, where they drew heart-shaped slips of paper with random numbers on them, and were supposed to do one slow-dance with that person. There was some sort of mix-up and he drew the same number as a boy from Siberia, a friend of his. To save them from embarrassment, he went to the toilet to hide for several minutes until that game was finished.

Also, my big son recently had to do a standardized test involving writing a fictional story (among other things). The start-off picture was of a shadow of a man or something. He made it into a Valentine's day story, which also involved a mysterious living shadow, and proudly told me that the very last word of the story was "love". I was happy he finished the story, because last year (or 2 years ago?) he took the same test, started a rambling story, got only half-way in the time allowed, and got a very bad score for that part of the test! This time I told him, "Just try to make it a *normal* story, and FINISH IT IN TIME!!" It sounds like it was maybe pretty good this time. He seems to have romance on his mind a lot lately.

Report from no. 2 kidland...

I was driving my younger son back from his karate class last night, with a Japanese friend from his class (3rd grade in Japanese elem. school). They went into Seiko-mart to get some snacks, and were talking about something. When they got in the car again, the friend, "Ryosuke" (who claims to be receiving about 5 Valentine's chocos from girls in their class!), said,

Ryosuke - "Nee, kitto... Miyu ni suki tte yuttara, Miyu mo Jiji no koto suki ni naru to omou yo." (I'm pretty sure if you tell Miyu you like her, she will start to like you, too.)

Jiji - "Sou? Doushite?" (Do you think so? Why?)

Ryosuke - "Datte, ningen tte souiu mon da." (It's human nature.)

Jiji - "So na no." (Oh.)

It just sounded really cute... does this mean he likes Miyu now? Before, he liked Fuka and Kie... There seems to be something about coming from the same kindergarten, because in the whole of 3rd grade, there are only 3 other kids from my son's kindergarten, and Miyu and Kie are two of them. They are also both really small, cute girls, and Jiji is the second tallest in his class.

For about 2 years he was the tallest kid in his class, but on the last measuring day (in Jan.), he came home and said a girl classmate called Kokoro (=heart) had edged just taller than him, and he is now the second tallest! Everyone was surprised. He was happy to not be the tallest, for a change. I told him he is now entering the stage where girls grow faster than boys, and a few more girls might pass him in the next couple of years. Three times a year, they are all measured to the millimeter, and they figure out the exact height order for the whole class. Then they frequently line up or stand in that exact order, for a multitude of reasons (standing on bleachers to sing, standing in line to walk somewhere, etc.). So every child who is anywhere near either the shortest end or the tallest end will be able to tell you, "I'm the 5th shortest in my class," or "I'm the 3rd tallest in my class."