A day of good things!

Peter Here;

They say good and bad things come in threes, and I am happy to say that Wednesday 13th January was a case of the former!

Firstly, I went to the hospital to get a check-up on my toe, which has now finally been removed from it's cast. It looked a little weird and there's now a bit of a lump on the side of it, and there was a small case of stinky foot after not being able to wash it for a month, but overall it feels genki. I was given a set of exercises to do three times daily (I call them 'toe curls', thought it would sound manly but now I write it down it sounds a bit silly), and I can FINALLY wear shoes again! Thank goodness, because my toes were starting to fall off from the cold.

Secondly, Arakawa Sensei surprised me after training with an award that I missed out on collecting at the end of year training in December (because I had to work), congratulating my achievement at the Wadokai Nationals last August. It is rather splendid I must say, and now sits next to my medals in the aparto.



Lastly, I received via Arakawa Sensei a wonderful late Christmas present from Juergen Fabian Sensei- a Calendar for 2011 containing pictures of our time together in Japan. It was a really thoughtful and touching present! Thanks Juergen, I look forward to seeing you again soon!

Ouch!

Peter here,

It seems that I was tempting fate with my blog entry about getting hit, for I was injured with a dislocated little toe on Friday 10th December and was told to rest for 5 weeks.

I was training with the junior high school high-performance class and pushing ourselves in jyu kumite (free sparring). The eldest kids and I were together and was sparring with Rikito (who was giving me the customary pasting he usually does) when I felt my little toe ache a little after a badly timed sweep. It was only when I looked down when we finished that I saw that my little toe was pointing sideways.

Arakawa Sensei told me to immediately get to the local hospital, which I did with Rikito showing me the way to go.

In Japan, hospitals (byooin, or 病院) can be very small as well as like the large buildings that exist in the UK. I suppose we call the smaller ones ‘health centres’, but the Japanese make little distinction between the two.

After confirming that it wasn’t broken (hurrah!), the doctor then tried to relocate the toe (ouch!), with no success. We were told to go to a larger hospital in Miyashiro for an X-Ray and a further attempt at relocation. Arakawa Sensei took me to the hospital the next morning, where two further very painful attempts were made to put the toe back, before admitting that I may need to go to an even bigger hospital in Shin-Shiraoka.

The news at that hospital wasn’t good. After a two-hour wait (and being wonderfully ferried about and tended to by Uchida-san, Yamazaki-sensei and Arakawa Sensei) I was told that I may need an operation to put the toe back, which would cost 130,000 yen! But when we returned to the Sugito hospital, the doctor there was very sceptical of the operation, thinking the doctor was a little ‘op happy’. Also, talking it through with Richard, we all agreed that we will wait and see for at least a few weeks before signing anything about an operation.

On the plus side, I have learned two new phrases: “Koyubi dakkyu shimashita”, which is “I dislocated my little toe”; the other is “shooganai”, or “it can’t be helped”.

So, every cloud, eh!