rollercoaster : March 15 2025

it was one saturday morning. i woke up a bit early and prepared for a long day ahead. in this two-day weekend, i will be visiting a friend who recently got a shoulder surgery. the surgery was performed a day before, and quite a difficult one to say the least. it was a planned two-hour surgery, but got extended to six hours. and he was like me working far away from home. the sad reality of it all is the fact that your immediate family will never be around in your hardest moments. it is rather difficult to ask help from friends no matter how close you are, and knowing the fact that all of you have work to attend to, that just makes it extra difficult. i know he must surely be in pain and needed some comfort, so here i am spending my weekend just trying to lift some spirits up.

prelude

so sorry for the dramatic intro, but i came to his house around 11am after an hour long train trip. luckily, he lived just a stone's throw away from the hospital. the plan was to stay at his home and be an errand boy (for lack of a better term). this was my first experience with hospitals in japan, never knew they were quite strict with visitation. visitation hours are from 2pm to 5pm, 15 minutes allotted inside the ward room and the rest can be made in the public common spaces.

since i arrived before the visitation hours, i got to explore the neighborhood. this place was in ota, a tokyo metropolitan city near the border to the south. i was in the station building mall, a very different experience than the one near my home. this building had a grocery shop, a coffee shop, a specialty foods shop, a drugstore, a clothes shop, a gym, and even a library. that is a lot of things in one building.

and the interior was quite refreshing as well. the sides had huge windows with resting spaces, the first picture was taken in one of the resting spaces. it was really something, a city within a building.

visitation

then came the time to visit the hospital, he only requested a vitamin c drink and the gryffindor mug. it could be for bravery as that hogwarts house was known for that, or it could just be his favorite mug. the hospital asked for an attendance sheet where you write the name of the patient, your name and address and relation to the patient. it also asks whether you have cough and colds, and for your body temperature with thermometer available in case you do not know. we finally met and talked at least an hour in the common area, he had a blood bag for a transfusion, and lots of wires for detecting heart activities. he also had a bag of blood drainage from the surgery. all of this was very new to me. clearly, i had no surgery experience at all.

we talked of many things, i'm just glad he talked. that is good sign to me that he will be recovering well. we even laughed a bit, i was happy to share those laughter. this accident happened on the very last snowboarding trip we had last week. yes, i was doing the same thing he was doing, slid down the same slope he was on on that fateful day. we all knew from the start that snowboarding is quite an extreme sport, and we never underestimated the slopes, we always stayed on beginner courses. but no matter how careful you are, lady luck is sometimes not on your side. on a quite steep and icy hard slope, he happened to be on the tail of three small kids. getting cautious, his board caught an edge when he turned to a side, and boom.

i don't know what the future holds but i really wish, hope and pray for no more accidents to come. it was really a humbling experience, not saying that we weren't, but it made me more grounded. probably, in the next winter season we will only snowboard in the early months to insure powdery snow. that will be more safe.

nightfall

i returned to his home and rested a bit. his unit was very clean with white floors and gray walls. i thought the hospital was quiet, but his room was nothing but silence. i turned on the tv for some white noise, after a few stretches and yawns, i finally went out and was surprised that it didn't rain. the forecast clearly said that rain was expected. so here i was excited for some nightwalks, although i don't think i could go far as the wind was really cold and i was quite underdressed.

let me end here. it really was a rollercoaster that day.
but as always, AMPING KANUNAY!
always stay safe!

a few minutes later, drizzles! japan forecasts are accurate after all. i had no umbrella. my nightwalk was cut short, i'm not even sure if you could call it a nightwalk as i was only walking in circles around the train station's vicinity.

the paths

this was my path around noon time, and yes i visited some other place which i will feature soon in this site. that shape looked like a key if only the bottom left closed. i'm sure it did but my pedometer just didn't start on time, it was in auto mode.

now compare that to my track that night, look how chaotic that was. i was thinking chaotically as i was walking myself. i was debating hard whether to go home, buy some alcoholic drink, buy some snacks, or buy some dessert. i ended up buying food for tomorrow's lunch before going home.