National Rehabilation Center for PWDs (NRCD)

Yesterday visited the National Rehabilitation Center and the National Vocational Rehabilitation Center for PWDs at Saitama Prefecture. I think that's Masaki's hometown, right? It's about 1 hour drive from Tokyo.Took the photo from the brochure..show you how big the center is. There's admin building, hospital, training center, dormitories, driving range, baseball field, college, research center and other stuff.... it's huge! The Japanese government started building it around 1979 to meet the needs of PWDs. The center offers training in independent living, transition suport for employment and other stuff. Want to find out more... http://www.rehab.go.jp/English/

Each of our countries flag at the conference room.

Showing us the room the occupational therapist train PWDs using the wheelchair how to bathe.
More photos. We are not allowed to take any photos unless there's no patient around....and this room has no one so we were happily snapping pictures.

Laundry room. Most of them have Intellectual disabilities. They are receiving training and at the same time the hospital staffs uniform get's washed & iron.

This hand looks very real..... or is it a real hand?

One of the guy explaining to us the about the hands & legs at the Prosthetics & Orthotics Laboratory.
Visited the Vocational Rehabilitation Center in the afternoon which is next to the NRCD. Unfortunately we are not allowed to take any photos of in the center so only got this of the logo. There's Prof. Terashima on the right who gave us a short lecture on the rehabilitaion process. The NVRCD gives vocational training to PWDs so they are equip with the skills to be employ. Courses they offer there...Mechatronics, Interior Design, IT, business management, practical work (specially for intellectual disabilities) like, office work, hotel service & product distribution. There you can also get vocational counselling and job coach support once you found a job. WOW. If only we have such a center in Malaysia. Not only good facilities but good well trained staff. Even the roads outside the center is barrier free with tactiles for the blind and wider walkway so the trainees can come to the center independently. Overall when I look at the trainess there, there's something I see in all of them...HOPE.

Homestay at Sagamiono

Last saturday went for the homestay program. Keiko-san and Kitagawa-san came to TIC to bring us to the station.

That's Kitagawa san with Indra in the train

Once we reached the Sagaimono Station which is about 40mins from central Tokyo, I saw my host family...holding a placard with my name.... nice..... There's Hiroko-san (L), Aki-san and her daughter Hikaru-chan.
Indra & my host family is at the same place so we were bought to the home of Hiroko who's the leader of the "Hippo Club". Hippo club has been around for about 20 years in many pasrts of Japan and the members join it to learn other languages and culture not from a teacher but by hosting people from other countries. So I was surprise that a lot of them knows how to greet me "Apa Khabar" even the chhildren. One of them has stayed in Malaysia before with a host family.

Tea time after the introductory session and games time.

The ladies and children of Hippo Club. Guess what action we are making? I requested all of them to do this action for my camera....hehe
My host family....Aki-san, husband, Shinobu-san and 6 years old daughter, Hikaru chan playing a japanese card game. And they call me Foong-chan.... hehe. In Japan, you call an adult's name and end it with"san" and for children, it's "chan" so I guess I'm still a kid! haha and Hikaru calls me "onesan" elder sister.
Back of thier house, 3 stories, quite narrow, below is 1 guest room, 2nd floor is the living, dining & kitchen....and top floor is the entire master bedroom.

Dinner...what else to eat but sushi!

Have to show this. This meat is taken from the fin of a fish. Texture is like jelly fish...crunchy... I like it. So does Aki-san.
Fresh Blueberries!! Akisan and Hikaru-chan went to pick(dun think they are "self-plucking"! hahahaha) it in the morning before meeting me at the station........told them never eaten fresh ones before.....

The guest room where I slept...

Japanese Breakfast! Rice, grill fish, miso soup, salad, fried egg, sweet potatoe salad and this sourish seaweed thingy.

When to a museum nearby.....replica of a traditional Japanese house. I've seen it a lot in Japanese anime....like in "Inuyasha"......

Sending me off at the train station! Only stayed 1 nite. Had to return to TIC on sunday.

Indra's host family and mine......really didn't want to see us go or the other way round!! hahahahahahahahahahahahaha Had a great time! tiring but wonderful experience......

Decent Work and Facilitator skills

Not feeling very well so won't write too much today......

Yesterday in the morning Hideko san, a lady who has rheumatism when she was a teenager so now she's a wheelchair user shared with us her experience. She's now working in INAX, one of the largest company in Japan.....er......they sell toilets and some other stuff including interior designing. Amazing...18% of employees there are people with disabilities.
That's Ms Hideko in the middle, behind her is her helper, a service from the government if she needs one.
Afternoon we had the lecture on right of decent work for PWDs. What is Decent Work? Many explanation.... work with dignity, meaningful work, etc.....Matsui san, (the one on my right) was telling us the different convention, resolutions of the right of PWDs to have decent employment.

Today we had Ikezumi san teaching us facilitators skills. He started by asking us to write down what we call People with disabilities in our own country.

China

In Malaysia the government's term was "Orang Kurang Upaya" OKU, People lack of Abilities. I shared that most of the PWDs would like to change the "K" to "Kuat", People with strong abilities and Ikezumi san likes it very much, says we should advocate to the government to change.

Japanese. There was another term, Sho Gai Sho but Matsuura san said she prefers to use this term when doing translation as that one is very negative.

That's Matsuura san, Ikezumi san and Take san on the right just came back from Ghana as a JOCV(Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteers) volunteer and was interested in observing what we do in this course. The session is very interesting. Ikezumi san used very simple illustrations, no laptops, no projector. There r 2 different types of Education. 1 is "Education of Authority", putting in ideas and the other one is "Education of Change" which is drawing out ideas. Which one do u thing is better?

He also shared with us about 5 points on important Principles/Philosophies behing Faclitator:

1. Everyone has rich experience, knowledge, skills & power (including children)
2. Start with what people know,concern/interest. Build on what we have.
3. Change is possible!
4. Change comes from inside...(waiting is important)
   
5. Process than content. (He wrote down this quote, Democracy cannot be developed through the Authoritarian way and he demonstrated it. I laughed and told him that's how our government is behaving.....telling us there's democracy but ruling us with authoritative ways!)

My medicine, pills for cough and the powder is for cold.

Ok enough blogging. Went to see the doctor after Japanese class. Thank goodness JICA provide this facility here in TIC. Gave me medicine for cough and cold. Very drowsy now. Funny thing is I bought all sort of medicine from Malaysia and MC was telling me to get cough syrup and I told her dun need becoz I wouldn't be getting it. And first thing I got...cough. Irony....

Official program starts today!

The official program starts today. Morning had the program briefing where we meet all the persons who is involved with this 7 weeks course.

The orientation is simple. We all introduce ourselves and Mr Asahi (who lost his voice so he mostly write the words down on the whiteboard and Keiko has to "voice" out for him) explained about the program. For the next 3 weeks we will have lectures, visitation, learning skills like facilitating, business management & organization. 1 week we will visit the Fukushima Prefecture. of course we have to submit some reports, job report which most of us prepare oledi before coming over, a Project Plan and a Progress Report (to submit 6 months after going back to our home country)



Amazing... so many people arranging for this course for only 5 of us. The back row, L-R: Keiko, Mr Akira Terashima, Mr Masaya Asahi, Mr Yoshmichi Ogawa, Okuhira-san, Sadaie-san &
Kitagawa-san. ermmmm If I have to write their position and from where it will take up an entire blog so later...if got time Front row: Zhou, Nerand, me, Indra & Kiran
Later on the way to the Ministry of Health, Labour & Welfare, we stop by to take photos of the Japanese parliment or what they call there "Diet". Amazing when the Americans bomb Tokyo during the WW2 almost everything was flatten and this building was left intact. Very nice Aztec architecture.

View from the 17th floor of the Ministry of Health, Labour & Welfare.

Mr Takao Chinone who works for the welfare department. He gave us the lecture on the Welfare Services for the Persons with Disabilities in Japan. Here the term they use is different from us. They use Intellectual Disabilities and we use Learning Disabilities. There's 3 categories in Japan,

1. Physical Disabilities which includes the visual & hearing impairment
2. Mental Disabilities, schizophrenia and other mental illness
3. Intellectual Disabilities

PWDs who are 18 years & above needs to apply for a cetificate (like our welfare card) in order to get the benefits from the government. 18 and below doesn't need as they are cover under the children welfare law. Those who are severe to moderate disabilities will get a pension from the government about 990,100yen a year.... sounds like a lot...even more then what I get in my 1 year salary but not enough if you are living in Japan. That's y they need to work and the gov is trying to create more employment for them. There's so many things to read on their welfare law....even Mr Takao couldn't finish the lecture in under 2 hours!
Came back about 5:30pm...check my mails and then went for my first Japanese lessons class, free at TIC. Classes is on from Mon-Wed, 6:30pm-8pm for the next 3 weeks. There were 7 of us in the class, me, Nerand, 1 from China, 1 from Sierre Leone, 1 from Jamaica and 2 from Indonesia. Basically we just make fun of each other's pronunciations! It was funny & hilarious! The teacher is damn funny. I took japanese lessons before more then 10 years ago and forgot most of it but the teacher knows that I learnt before becoz straight away I greeted her with "konbanwa" and pronounce it correctly! phew! She taught us the standard greetings and how to introduce ourselves:
Hajimemashite (How do you do?)
Moh Foong desu (My name is Moh Foong)
Malaysia no Kuala Lumpur kara kimashita ( I am from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
shigoto wa komuin desu (I work as a social worker)
Dozo yoroshiku (Nice to meet you)

Have to memorize it for tomorrow's lessons!

Meeting Akiko

Met Akiko today (not the one in Malaysia who sleeps at 8pm!), an old fren. Last time I met her was when she was in Singapore with her parents in 2000. Still looks the same, slightly thinner. She bought me to Shibuya with the famous crossroads. Couldn't get a nice picture as it was raining.


It's amazing that it's raining and people still comes out. Everyone has their own umbrella. I had one too! bought it from malaysia as the JICA officer told us it's raining season. This is Akiko.

We walk from Shibuya to Harajuku. Bought the tickets to the Ghibli Museum at "Lawson"...it's a convenient store smimilar to 7-11. First thing I asked Akiko to do is to help me to get it becoz the instructions at the machine is all japanese. Keat Lim, Wan Ching......I'm going to Ghibli Museum on the 12th July! Yippee!! I will try to take photos but no cameras allowed inside. For those of you who wants to go in the future...contrary to what the website tells you...dun have to book 1 month in advance. For fans of Miyazaki, you want to go but cannot go here's the website link http://www.ghibli-museum.jp/en/ cool eh?

Took a train back to Shinjuku and had lunch at Takashimaya.


I ordered cha-shoba...niceeeee

After lunch Akiko bought me to a cafe....can't remember the name......french name.....anyway the interior is nice. simple gray with paintings of gods & deities on the wall

Oh and this place only sells their famous tarts........

Akiko ordered a mango & fig tart..... delicious. 2 pieces of tart and 2 cups of coffee cost 2600 yen. expensive no? I think it's roughly the same price as KL for this kind of places.

First Saturday in Tokyo! Lepak time!!

It's Saturday!! and of course we have to go out. Went to Akibahara becoz Indra & Nerand wants to get a digital camera ASAP. And so off we go trying to figure out the Tokyo rail system with our limited or no vocabulary of japanese language. I was the acting "tour guide" guiding the boys at the station! hahaha Not too bad. Did not get lost at all, well almost.... Nearest station for us is Hatagaya...take to Shinjuku and then we had to walk about 5 mins to the JR line to change train to Akibahara.
This is the Shinjuku JR Station, one of the largest station in Tokyo....they are 13-14 gates to different lines!Everyone is walking super fast....... And we can't find any lift for wheelchair users becoz commuteers have to go up a flight of stairs to catch the train. What did we do?...... Go straight to the info counter. What they lack in facilities....they make it up in services. The guy at the service counter politely ask us to wait there....and then they send 2 personals to escort us to the lift.....there is one..you just have to know how to get to it...it's like going through a maze!
The 2 "kawaiii" personals bought us all the way up to the platform, got ready the ramp, waited for the train to come...
And then when the train arrived....put the ramp and then make sure we are safely inside the train then only ask the train to move....
Indra, Kiran & Nerand enjoying the train ride. Took us a while to get on it but at least we are on the way.
This is something our transport people should learn. When we arrived at Akihabara (I told them where we were going earlier) there were 2 other personals waiting for us with the ramp. So efficient and very coordinated! And after that they escorted us all the way to the ticket exit! wow.. I'm impress.....

I heard from Kiran later (they had to go back to TIC on their own becoz I went to UENO so no more travel guide!) that they send someone to escort them all the way back to Hatagaya station so they did not get lost at all. Wow!

Akihabara! It's like stepping into my heaven! Electronics shop everywhere! Though it's very, very noisy...there's people shouting everywhere. And of course we get duty free prices. And it's cheap!

You can also get a lot of anime stuff here. I had to ditch the boys becoz they still want to look around for cameras and other stuff and I really, really want to visit the Tokyo National Museum before it close at 6pm. So I walk all the way to Ueno Park (about 15 mins) from Akibahara.

I think this ia a life size replica of a whale at UENO park. This statue is next to the Science Museum. If only they would stop killing them......
ahh... Finally reached the Tokyo National Museum before 4pm. Entrance is 600 yen. About RM22. Roughly the same price I paid to go into the Lourve at Paris but at that time it was student price. But then again you can spend the whole day at the Lourve and there's more things to see. If Kiran & Indra are here I can most probably go in for free as the admission is free for the disabled and their supporting fren. This is the main building called Honkan. It houses the sculptures, metal art, swords, paintings and other stuff from prehistoric-to present Japan. Spend one and a half hour here.
Kiddies ride at Ueno Park. So many rides! Helena & Haeleigh(my goddaughters) would luv this place....I miss them....

UENO park

Ameyoko at Ueno. Very cheap stuff. I bought a business bag there for 1050 yen!
Was glad the boys could make it back to TIC. Was a bit worried for them. After dinner we lepak at the lounge beside the dining hall. Saturday night! One group was playing some techno music on the computer. We were just sitting there chatting and drinking beer. I didn't drink any and bought my own orange juice becoz I had the Sapporo beer the night before and didn't like it. Too tired to walk out to buy other brands. ;P