I’m not going to Japan this summer.

For the program that they’ve got, and the way it’s set up, I’d be going for the wrong reasons. I wouldn’t be going to Japan to experience the culture, or to immerse myself in the experience of 日本.

Instead, I’d be going to graduate a semester early. I’d be going because I could get the credits out of the way faster, and that is no motivation to go to JCMU.

Additionally, I need the break from school for the summer. I’ve been going straight on since I came back, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t felt symptoms of burnout months ago.

With the need for finding funding gone, and the summer opened up, a mountain of stress is gone from my shoulders.

As a side note, Japanese has two verbs for “to exist.” One is あります (arimasu), and is meant for inanimate objects. The other is います (imasu) and is meant for living, mobile objects. When we came upon this lesson, I jokingly mentioned zombies, and いおろい先生 (Professor Ioroi) immediately responded with, “Well, since they move around, they’d be います.” She then put her arms out and shambled a bit around the front of the classroom.

So, I tried to donate blood on Friday.

They got the needle in, and were only getting little spurts of blood out. So, the lady called another lady over, and she felt at the entry point of the needle and said, “Looks like you just got the top of the vein.” So, they tried to move it around a bit, and when that didn’t work, they called a third lady over.

The third lady adjusted a bit, and told me that they were trying to get through a hematoma. I was all like, “I have no idea what that means.” She was kind enough to explain to me that it was a bruise. So, they nicked the vein, and it was bleeding into the surrounding tissue. My guess was (and is) that this caused a pressure problem in the vein. Not enough to push the blood into the tube.

They couldn’t get past the bruise, but because there was “blood in the bag,” I get to wait until April 21st to donate again. They apologized profusely, and thanked me for coming in and trying over and over again, and I tried to let them know that it wasn’t a big deal to me. I just hope being the first appointment of the day didn’t set the mood for the rest of the drive.

So, it looks like the Red Cross site doesn’t have anything but platelet donations around 4/21, so I’ll wait to schedule until there are whole blood drives. Better to donate all instead of part, right? :)