Destination Japan! by Seth Hassan
I bounced out of bed with my heart gone from 70 to 120bpm in a second! I was late. I rushed to the door and wrenched it open to see Hideki Mori (5th Year Medical Student – contact person) fully dressed and with an exasperated expression on his face.
“I’m sorry! I’m very sorry,” I gushed.
“You’re not ready?” he asked with a mini-frown on his face.
“I just need ten minutes please, I’ll be done in ten” I pleaded as I debated mentally on how to cut my waiting time into nothing.
He looked at his watch and at last decided, “I have to pick what we’ll study this week in Surgery. You come meet me at Surgery Department when you are ready. Just inside the Medical School”. Then with a partially sympathetic smile, he turned round and left for the Medical School.
As I rushed through my morning ritual, I couldn’t help going over the night before when he’d told me that I’d have to wake up early to be ready by 8:00am. I remembered laughing and telling him that being in school by 8:00am was pretty standard as far as Ghanaian Medical Students were concerned. He was quite impressed. What we both obviously didn’t make allowance for was jet-lag! I also distinctly remembered waking up and looking at my watch seemingly just seconds before and reading 6:45am on its face. I thought, oh, more time! 30 more minutes and I’ll get up. And now see my disgrace…
In 20 minutes flat I was outside my apartment and in front of Kinki University Medical School & Hospital…and I didn’t know what was where. After mentally kicking myself a thousand times for losing my guide, I briefly debated just going back to my room and calling it a bust. But I knew that’d be a bad sign both to my hosts and my own conscience. So after taking a deep breath, I walked up to a guard and asked him (in English) where the Surgical Department was. He looked at me, smiling, and pointed at a very large building to the right. I then walked up to this building and the moment I got in, I realised my ‘luck’ had just run out. I then proceeded to attempt to find Hideki from the Information Desk (whose occupants could not speak any English) armed with 5 sentences in Japanese Hideki had taught me the night before when I arrived:
Watashi no namae wa Hassan Seth des – My name is Seth Hassan
Watashi no koto Seth-to yondekudasai – You can call me Seth
Watashi wa Ghana kara kimashita – I come from Ghana
Watashi wa igakobu gomensei-des – I am a 5th Year Medical Student
Ikagetskan yoroishku onegaishimas – Please teach me
Long story – short, I was actually in the main hospital and had practically walked by the Medical school on my way over. A kind gentleman working at the Info Desk then actually walked me all the way back, asking for directions along the way until we reached the Surgery Department. It was 9:10am by then.
Needless to say, that story had a happy ending: I was never late for another session again, sometimes even arriving there up to 10 minutes before Hideki and definitely before serious business began! Too bad being back has eroded those good habits…
Choosing Japan was not a frivolous decision, I can assure you. I did not decide to go to Japan just because other slots had been taken either. I’d always meant to have been to Japan by the age of 30. So when IFMSA came along with the Medical Students’ Exchange programme, I couldn’t have been more delighted to snap up the Japanese slot. And I never regretted it. Sure it felt a bit awkward in the first week when it finally dawned on me that I’d just flown over 14,000 kilometres to another continent on which the number of people ‘d known for more than a week equalled 0! I remember feeling that I’d probably be having a better time if one of my classmates had picked the other Japanese slot. But wishing was a luxury I didn’t have. I decided to sink myself in this once-in-a-lifetime experience by fully doing whatever I knew I probably couldn’t (or wouldn’t) back in Ghana. That was the real reason why I didn’t balk at the insanely exciting theme park rides of Universal Studios Japan, didn’t chicken out of trying sushi (surprisingly good by the way – so much 
more than just raw fish!) or any other Japanese food, swallowed my gall to jump off a cliff into the Nagara river at the end of a rafting trip, and even pushed away my reluctance to learn how to ride a bicycle!
But I also got the unique opportunity to watch many surgeries both laparoscopic and open; observe a myriad of other procedures such as colonoscopies, OGDEs etc.; learn the basics of interpreting CT films, PET Scans and endoscopy results as a part of a host of diagnostic tools and also to learn about hospital administration in the technologically-advanced world. I remember somewhere during the third week when I realised that I hadn’t seen a single X-ray film yet! CT’s and PET’s though were in abundance. Oh, and do you remember your clotting cascade? Remember Factor III - TPA? I met the man who discovered it during his post-graduate research years ago, Prof. Osamu Matsuo! He was the Vice Dean of the Medical School. I’d describe him simply as a lesson in humility.
The culture was so different that I frequently found it hard drawing any similarities between the Japanese and Ghanaians. And whenever I went out, I had instant celebrity status! Of course that was to be expected when I only saw about 9 black people during my whole stay in Japan! They were so nice that within a few days I felt right at home, as if I’d been living there for at least a year. Were it not for my obviously dark skin, I’m sure I would have woken up someday soon believing I was actually Japanese! In fact, I got so used to their way of bowing to show respect that ever since I got back to Ghana I’ve had to catch myself on more than one occasion half-way through a bow whenever I greet someone!
I managed to pick up a bit of Japanese too. Come see me and I’ll teach you! I also took the opportunity to teach them some Twi. And if you come across any of them singing along to Amakye Dede, Becca or Okyeame Kwame, I’m probably responsible for that too! :D
But it wasn’t all roses. Not when I had to go PC-less for the first 2 weeks because my laptop adapter had different pins from all the sockets available; and not when I had to get a whole new adapter when I realised it had also given up the ghost somewhere between Dubai and Osaka; not when I realised that due to a difference in telephony networks my GSM phone was useless and therefore I wouldn’t get to speak to my family or…my loved ones; and definitely not when I suffered a nasty fall off my new bicycle going down a steep incline behind my apartment!
But adding up the positives and negatives I can definitely say that the overall outcome was pretty positive. I made friends and saw places that could never have dreamt of. If there’s anything I could learn and keep from the Japanese, I guess it would be their discipline.
Let me know make a few clarifications concerning Japan:
· There are no samurai or ninja left in present-day Japan.
· Kimonos are rarely worn nowadays, partly because they are usually quite expensive and people consider them old-fashioned in modern Japan. They are however still worn on special occasions, akin to how Ghanaians see kente cloth nowadays.
· The Japanese are very different from the Chinese and their languages are so different, though they only share a set of alphabets. Strange? It gets stranger! Chinese alphabet is known as ‘kanji’. The Japanese though, have 3 sets of alphabets: ‘hiragana’, ‘katakana’ & ‘kanji’. Oh, and ‘kanji’ has about 5000 characters!
· Yes, about 70% of the Japanese you meet know at least the basics of some form of martial arts…so it’s obviously a good idea to not go picking fights with the naturally calm Japanese!
Whether it was standing for 12 hours to view an oesophageal carcinoma operation or sitting in a quaint ice-cream parlour eating cake and a sundae with Masami, my Medical Exchange Programme trip to Japan was the best adventure of my life. If you haven’t gone yet, take my advice: go to a place where you’ll benefit both medically and socially and be prepared to do things and go to places (positively!) which you have never done or gone to in your life and you’ll be glad for it.
.JPG "Fathia Karim")
