Health care and hospitals in Japan

With this post I don't want to judge the japanese health care system, in fact I think one experience can't reflect the entire system, but......

Around 20 days ago a little red spot appeared on my skin, I though it was nothing, but since it was really itching I preferred to go to the closest hospital just to know what it was. The Hospital was the one close to Kansai Gaidai University. The building inside didn't looks so good, but the people were friendly and in few minutes I've been visited from a doctor. She had no idea what I had, and so she gave a cream just for itchiness.

The day after, the situation went worse, I had more red spots. I got a bit scared and decided to back to the hospital. Since it was saturday there was no chance to be visited. So I had to go to another hospital. There a doctor visited me after one hour (still good compare to Italy), but he really had no idea what was happening to me. He visited me for more than one hours, guessing random illness...finally he decided to give me another type of cream, some pills for the liver and some vitamins.

Monday...I was covered all over by big red spots, I was really scared and i couldn't sleep so I decided to go in Osaka to a dermatology hospital department as told by my japanese girlfriend. There the department semmed to be clean and competent. The doctor visited me but couldn't figure out what I had. She said different things, and gave me some medicines....nothing worked...so I went back angain some days later and she said that probaly was wong and I should try other medicines, this time for different illness. Nothing! I came back again and she was surprised and didn't know what to do...sh said that probably I had some bugs inside my skin!!!!!! I got scared and decided to go to another hospital....The hospital was in Temmabashi and looked very clean and new. The doctor that visited me seemed to be more confident but colun't figured out what I had....fortunally she gave me some medicine and this time it worked! In 5 days I could seen that I was getting better. In the meanwhile they took a pice of my skin in the last visit to analyze it. The day I went back to the hospital to know wich kind of strange thing I had, the doctor still wasn't able to explain it. Now I'm almost cured...after 23 days!! And as they said last week...tomorrow they will be able to tell me what i HAD!!!

At last, I can say that for my experience, healh care in japan seems to be not so good, some doctors couldn't figure out what I had, some others just gave me random medicine for different illness without be sre if it was the right things to do. For what it concern the price I paid I can tell that it was ok. I made a japanese insurance as soon I arrived in the country, so I spent few money just for the medicine. About 3000 yen every time! I can say that I wasted around 12000 yen since they gave me wrong medicine several times, but I think it wasn't too expensive.

Anyway...in my case, I can say that japanese health care is not very good as I thought. Hope nobody have similar stories to share with me, but if someone have please tell me, because I want to know if I've been just unlucky or it's better not to be sick in Japan!

The country of new tecnology

Since I've been ill the last two weeks and I didn't take any pictures around, I wanna talk about a problem that looks big to me here in Kansai Gaidai. I don't know if is related to japanese culture or just to this university, but since I didn't go to any other university in Japan I think it can be a common problem in Japan.

Basically this is just the half of the amount of paper that I collected in a month in the Gaidai. The other half I trown it away before thinking about doing this post. The thing that annoying me the most is that the 70% of the informations in the sheets is EXACTLY the same of the one we have in books! The teachers prints new sheet of paper every day with no reason. So, if you think there are about 500 international students and they collect about 3-4 sheets of paper every day just for the japanese classes, can you imagine how much waste of paper? Plus there are all the afternoon classes and all the waste in the computer lab. I've been told from a Japanese student that works in the CIE lab that students print 3000 sheet of paper every day! EVERY DAY!

This appens only for international students in Kansai Gaidai for what I know. But what if is he same in every school in Japan? So, what I'm asking is, do they do this here because is an amercanizated university or is the japanese system? Japanese people don't care about nature and trees? Are they just lazy?

When I left Italy I thought I was coming to the country of new tecnology, I thought that maybe they even didn't have books here, maybe they will use only computer I was thinking! Well, look at the pictures and multyply that amount of paper per 2 and than per 4 months and than for 500 students, how much paper do we waste here in a semester?

Blog essay 2

In the post Spiderman lives in Japan in the Willy's visual blog I founded interesting at the beginning the text about Kansai salesmans. It says in fact: "I was amazed at how I was assaulted by people wanting me to buy their product", and also Willy expained that Kansai salesmans are known to be the best or at least the most persistent. I experienced the same thing at the Kansaigaidai festival. I can't say that Kansai salesmans are the best so far, since I only been in Kyoto and Osaka, but between this two cities I don't really see the difference about shops and salesmans. What I can say is that what I see in Japan is a very hard competition in every spot of every cities in order to sell products and make money. It looks like a war sometime in the streets and in supermarkets. Sometime I get scaried when people in shops shout "Hirashaimasen!!!!" without any reason, just randomly while are cleaning or take care of the shop. I would like to know if this people that seems to want to make more money as possible, do it because they need to spend more money as possible in this heavy consumistic country, or just because is a cultural thing. As Willy says : "I understand that the money goes to their clubs, but I was just overwhelmed with offers for cheap food", so? They really need this money for their clubs? Or just they fell like sell more as possible because is the Japanese way?
In the second part of the entry Willy talks about his friend and how people thought he was a gaijin because he had a Spidermam's costume. He says: "Did they not think it possible for me to have a Japanese friend or for a Japanese person to dress up for Halloween?". I think often Japanese people tend to separate gaijin from Japenese people. So if u are a gaijin it's hard for them to belive you can be integate and have Japanese friends, that's why they think automatically that a friend of yours that they can't see because the mask must be gaijin too. I think they separate gaijin also because Japan has been always a bit far from others western countries, and the idea of integration in the Japan culture can seem too far for them. They use this word "gaijin" in fact, and they use it often, is a way to identify someone from a forein country but it doesn't mean forein person isnt't it? I think there is not even traslation for that word in Italian, Spanish or French...Correct me if I'm wrong!