This has been the first summer I have taken off since I have been in college. It has been nice.
Ok, back to business (side note: have you ever wondered why it is that the format for blogging takes the shape it does? Why does everything I write end up in this cramped column down the middle of the page? That is odd to me, there is a lot of wasted space). Yesterday I completed another paper survey, it is just awaiting approval from Sara so I can go ahead and print and administer. Also I spent some time yesterday working on getting to the right channels so that I could get IRB - institutional review board - approval so that I can start doing surveys at clinics with my hospital and other hospitals that are in the network. For obvious reasons facilities tend to be really careful about who they let gather information from human subjects. This is especially true of the pediatric and infirmed populations. For a long time I worked at a group-home for the developmentally disabled and it took a lot of time and documented work to be able to remove rights from our clients if they could not handle them. It is, however, hard to describe how difficult and complicated it is to try and get to the right people when trying to conduct any sort of research. You never get the right person and they usually have no idea what you are talking about (side note: I just found the right person to talk to and will be sending out the online application within moments. Hooray for me!).
If I can get that done fast enough I should be off and working in no time at all. For some reason I am still holding the lead in the internship, I assume that will change soon, but once I have my new surveys ok'd I can go out and bug people in the neighborhood and get some more surveys in no time at all. Entering the data later kind of sucks though.
Ok, this will be the last post detailing my adventures in Japan. Last night on the radio I heard an advert for travel in Beijing China for a really good price, for some reason though my wife seemed hesitant to pay another several thousand dollars on a vacation in the fall.
After this post I will return to my discussions of medications. Recently when making the new paper surveys I found that www.ratedrug.com has a listing of medications based upon the condition that is being treated. That opens up huge areas to talk about other medications for the neurological patient. There were a lot on there that I know about, but for some reason just forgot.
When we last left off we were traveling north to Misawa. Actually we did not stay in Misawa proper, it was more like a suburb. The name of where we stayed was Oirasse. Most of the people in Japan consider the place that we stayed to be the 'backwoods' of Japan. Kind of like how we tend to think of people who live in the Ozarks.
As you can plainly see I am working with a different format for the photo. I also think I will ditch the parenthesis. Too much punctuation just gets in the way.
This is just kind of a cool pagoda we saw when we stopped in Matsushima Bay. It is supposed to be one of the top 5 prettiest places to see in all of Japan.
Here is antoher picture of Matsushima Bay, this is looking out over the bay. That bridge can be crossed for a fee, we didn't do it because the people we were with were cheap.
This is my mother - the blonde woman on the right - with my sister's family at a shrine/ grotto around Matsushima Bay. She and her husband are the people who showed us around Japan for 3 weeks because he is in the Air Force and is stationed at Misawa Air Base. Everywhere we went it was that pretty and green.
Here is another shot of the grotto/ shrine. There were a lot of cool Buddhas and Bodisatvas too, but there will be a lot of Buddha pictures, so I won't linger too long here. I do miss how pretty it was though. I can see why they have a pseudo-nature worship culture.
I had to add this picture. This tree is over 700 years old and was just growing in some guys yard. I think it is a Juniper.
Here is an example of local cuisine. We walked past a woman who was grilling a squid and putting some sort of soy baste on it. The things that look like snails are actually scallops. The scallops were not too good, but I liked the squid pieces. She even threw in some tentacles for free.
This is another great example on Engrish. This was found at the Daiso or 100 Yen store - which kicks the crap out of our dollar store. They had all kinds of things for sale there.
Finally up north we were able to see this outside of Aomori; the biggest Buddha in all of Japan. If you look closely you can see me and my wife standing in front of it - this should give you and idea of the scale.
This is the Buddha's head sticking out over the treetops - once again, this should help you appreciate the scale of this thing.
These next several will be of the aquarium also in Aomori.
This was cool. It is a local style of dining where you have a grill set in the table and they give you raw vegetables and meat to cook and you cook it yourself on the grill. I would like to set one of these up in the states, but I bet a lawsuit would be right around the corner from some idiot who burned himself.
Here is that same table covered in plates, now that we ordered our stuff.
This was a carrot field just on the other side of the road from where we stayed. I think that picture is cool.It is at this point I realize that I must make a third chronicle of my adventures in Japan. I have posted another 10 pictures and I still have at least that number left to go. I will try to post later this week - more like next week - but because I am going out of town on Thursday next week seems much more likely.
Thanks for your time, I hope you found my photos as fun as I did. I will hopefully finish off the last in the next post.
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