I wake hungover sweating in a fever: sleep the day away while Brad and Jen see stuff. Next morning is the same, & the next... I'm sick. Guess that 4-night blur caught up to me. Jen's host mom, Oba-san, is a doll, & though she can't speak a word of ingrish, cares for me like her own, taking me to a local doctor who gives peculiar Chinese medicine: I gargle granules for 2 minutes 3x per day—strange, tastes like cereal & does nothing. I stay sick, cutting a total of 4 days off our country tour. On the 6th morning, I say screw it & Brad & me buy tickets for the next town on our agenda, Osaka.
I continue laying low on account of being ill. Eventually go to a hospital in hopes of finding western medicine, & it was there that I witnessed the world's best janitor. **Japanese take pride in everything they do... taxi drivers wear white gloves, 7-Eleven clerks always perky & ready to help, in the subway you see men in suits, Jen calls them 'salary men', they have what we consider 'real world jobs' & work 10-12 hour days, 6 days a week, no joke, & on the subway at night you always see 1 falling asleep reading a document on their way home. This hospital janitor had the same determination.
I'm waiting to be seen when he turns a corner, concentrating hard—button down yellow shirt tucked-into navy slacks, carries large Swifter-like mop, walks rigid on the prowl. After a few steps he sees a dirty spot on floor—darts toward it, mops it, then steps his left foot on the mop just like Michael Jackson (unintentionally) twirling around to rub it out, then stands stiff admiring his work. And then he's off again down the hall mopping everthying like an olympic curler. Someone walks pass so he pauses, steps aside, bows, & then jumps right back to it. One would think he's dancing to an iPod or coked-up or something, but no earbuds and his face is relaxed, he just reeeeally wants those floors clean, to do a good job.
Eventually I get seen by a doctor who speaks shattered ingrish, so I draw a picture of my symptoms and she gives me more weird medicine...
I do this for 3 days & start feeling amazing, so we go to Osaka Aquarium & see manna-rays & whale sharks...
We also go to Osaka castle. It's incredible, and we can't stop discussing how gnarly paintball would be there...
Finally, we peep the cityview from the SkyGarden.
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