Japanese Surgeon's Daily Life

Spanish mackerel

　　The name of fish often varies depending on its growth stages or landing places. When I write about fishes on this blog, I search for its English name on the net using Google image retrieval. I took a fish as today's topic, which is called "Sagoshi", or "Sawara" in my hometown. Its English name is Spanish mackerel, I think.
　　By the way, a dentist who runs his clinic near my office visited me today and gave me three Spanish mackerels which he fished. His best hobby is apparently fishing and he seems to own a gorgeous fishing boat. I tried to clean them for dinner. The result is shown below and it might not be perfect, but acceptable, at least, so I thought. I wouldn't need to comment on their "sashimi", the Japanese traditional cuisine. It was only two hours after they were hooked. They went with Japanese sake very well.

(Vocabulary) 
clean : to remove the inside parts of an animal or bird before cooking it

Helicobacter pylori

　　I got infected by Helicobacter pylori. An annual medical check-up revealed I had been infected with Helicobacter pylori. During the gastroendoscopy, I found myself infected with Helicobacter pylori. After receiving the formal result in about two weeks, I have to take three kinds of medicine for a week. It's bothersome but ok and acceptable. However, the timing is awful. I don't want to take medicines around this time of the year. The year-end and the year-starting season is a party season in Japan. Several parties are held between friends, coworkers, various bodies. I will have to refrain from alcohol. So sad!

Memorial Day

　　Today was the anniversary of the onset of the Great East Asian War, which has been considered to be a war desired by Japan. With recent researches based on historical records in the U.S., however, the truth of the war has been gradually disclosed. Anyway, I visited Pearl Harbor last spring and saw various facilities related to the war.
　　On the day of the attack, 10 young soldiers were assigned to the exit of the harbor to ram the military vessels which would come out of the harbor, and one of those was captured, leaving the others killed. Their memorial service was held today near my office and I joined it. This small fishery village was their training site. We should remember those who sacrificed their lives for Japan.

Nibukawa Gourmet Marathon

　　Marathon has become more and more popular in Japan as well as in other countries. Even small villages often hold marathon events as a means of activation of their communities.
　　I joined one such event, "Nibukawa Gourmet Marathon". Its name contains "marathon", but the distance was only 18.1km. The route was designed merely to connect scenic sites in the village. As a result, the runners were shown the village's boasting scenery, but the organizers seemed not to mind slopes, which exhausted the runners.
　　Every service point on the route offered us their products like wild boar meat-processing foods, rice balls with edible wild plants, and so on. I took a relaxing rest at every service point over abundant food. The road was always up or down, and there was almost no flat road, but the local people along the road were really friendly and warm-hearted. I spent a really comfortable day.

Peace Oven

　　I'm going to write about an oven which had sat unused for about 16 years in the storage room. I don't know the name of this type of oven which is designed to be used on the gas cooker and looked for its description on the visual search. Is "peace oven" ok?
　　Now, when I had my house built, a new modular kitchen was installed and the former oven had gone into the storage room in the end. Then, it had been sitting unused there for 16 years and we decided to discard it, but before that, my wife tried to use it on the outdoor stove which was made of a useless steel wheel. I'll show you below the way how it was used.
　　The conclusion was, the oven got the lifetime extension! She baked pizzas with it. As it's used outdoors, we didn't mind the smoke and the smell, which are usually a nuisance indoors. The outcome was beyond our expectation. Outdoor cooked pizzas were added to our home party menu.