As you can tell from the title, I have been having a splendid time in Sapporo. Yesterday morning was spent learning how to make carrot bread, chicken gratin buns, and fumanju (a mochi-like cake with red bean paste filling). See the recipes page if you like, they will be there waiting to inspire you to abandon all activities and head straight for the kitchen, wooden spoon in hand.

 

Nanae's father invited us to give hospital food a try for lunch. Despite momentary hesitation, we shared a nutritious and surprisingly good meal with the other surgeons at Sapporo Geka Kinen Hospital. The American hospital standards of bland mashed potatoes and cherry flavored jell-o pale in comparison to Japanese hospital food. I have a feeling that American doctors cringe at the thought of what their hospital-bound patients are eating. Here in Japan, the doctors eat the exact same things as their wards. On that particular day, lunch was miso soup, freshly steamed rice, korroke- fried mashed potatoes and meat coated with breadcrumbs and served with tonkatsu sauce- on a bed of finely shredded cabbage, peas, corn, and a lovely dessert of sliced pineapple. Everything tasted fresh and healthy. All the surgeons were lounging around after lunch with newspapers, watching TV, or simply taking a short nap. For a moment (fleeting, indeed) I could almost believe that people here don't work as hard. Maybe they just know when to relax.

 

Talking about relaxing, last night Nanae, her younger brother, and I took a taxi about 15 minutes away to a local onsen, Japanese bathhouse. In sex-segregated areas, we stripped down to our birthday suits and dipped ourselves into steaming hot tubs after scrubbing our bodies clean at individual shower stations equipped with plastic stools, soap, and mirrors. It reminded me of a barbershop in a nudist colony- rows upon rows of seated and pampering naked women. Guys, let me assure you, however, that in no way did these women look sexy. They were totally getting down to business scrubbing away with wet towels until their skin was shiny pink. Oh, and I would say more than half of them were 65 or above, so don't be getting any ideas! Some of the hot tubs were pink or green, presumably after the addition of various bath salts. One large tub was outside, which was pretty neat because the water let off a blanket of steam that enveloped me in a incense scented cloud. Next to the two wooden saunas was a bath full of water so cold I expected small icebergs to be floating in it. Only after roasting for a few minutes in the saunas ( one had a TV airing some stupid dating show, but dont ask me what it was really about because I wussed out after about 5 minutes) did I appreciate the frigid ice bath. It cooled me down enough to make my body forget that it had been roasting like a turkey 2 minutes previously and fooled it into reentering the furnaces. The other sauna had a big bucket of salt that you would rub all over your body. Nanae and I coated our bodies with childish glee and I must admit that I felt like a marinating piece of meat. In fact, not too long ago I was coating a giant piece of salmon in this manner to get it ready for smoking over wood chips.  I suppose this wasnt all that different, and definitely wouldn't be if I had stayed in another half hour or so. Smoked Teri, coming right up.

 

Since I have now so delicately transitioned to gruesome ways to die, I might as well write about the biomedical museum at Sapporo Medical University that we visited yesterday afternoon. This is a private collection to which the general public is not admitted. Lucky for me, Nanae has plans to apply here for medical school, so she managed to sign both of us in. I caught a glimpse of what to expect in the brochure that I saw the day before, but that in no way prepared me for the entire collection. The brochure showed a giant ovarian cyst that could hold 50 liters ( I still cant imagine anyone walking around with that thing even after seeing in person) and a skull fragment labeled 'this specimen stuck a chopstick into the orbit region', meaning that this 43 year old woman could think of no better way to kill herself than to stab herself in the eye with a chopstick and lucked out when it actually entered the brain. The museum couldn't have been larger than the bottom floor of my house, but, oh the horror! Gross things can definitely fit into small places and I am sorry to say that I was intrigued in some morbidly sick way. There was an entire glass case full of fetal defects, from cephalothoracopagus monosymmetros (a set of twins if you could call it that with 2 bodies, 1 face, connected chest) to Thalomid babies (deformities from Thalomid, a sleeping pill that was used to treat morning sickness during pregnancy and resulted in thousands of deformed babies even after a single dose), to cyclopia (one eyed babies that probably sparked legends of the Greek cyclops and are results of infections from the Rubella virus) to a baby in a jar simply labeled 'Monster'. Beyond this were rows and rows of body cross sections, various internal organs, medical equipment from the past, and a whole section on the ways people have used to kill themselves with physical evidence including stabbing, hanging, gunshot, poisoning, and the aforementioned chopstick eye gouge. Not to mention a large jar holding the head and arm of a middle aged man (rest his soul!) who suffered from Recklinhausen disease. He had large warty bumps all over his entire body and a large growth coming out of his large and misshapen head. How he survived to that age, I have no idea, but apparently this is an autosomal dominant genetic disease. I wonder what his life must have been like. Despite arousing discomfort and a bit of horror, the specimens in this museum made me infinitely thankful that I have my health and that they have cures for some of these things nowadays.

 

On a more cheerful note, prior to visiting the museum of atrocities, we took a brief tour of the Sapporo Beer Museum. It turned out to be something of a dud and I made us totally skip the required tour and sneak around the museum without getting caught. Luckily, we managed to catch a group leaving and one of the docents asked us if we would like a beer sample. She even gave the ice cold cans of Sapporo's finest brew to us in plastic bags with crackers for the road and took pictures of us posing behind a rather pathetic little cardboard beer can. I had the beer with dinner that night, and can vouch that it is indeed a fine malt brew and one definitely got me buzzed enough to fail miserably at playing a video game with Nanae's little brother. He even asked me if I was drunk, I was playing so badly.