Coming to a new country can be hard because you don’t know many people and don’t speak the language. Fortunately we are on the military base where we knew some people coming in. Our friend Ricky introduced us to Ryota, an Emergency Medicine phsyician in Japan who speaks fluent English as he’s studying to practice medicine in Australia. Ryota is hilarious and very outgoing. He invited me and Leanne to dinner with his friend Haruka to a local Chinese restaurant. It was really fun getting the Japanese take on Chinese food. According to Leanne it’s still not authentic, just like American Chinese food is not authentic, but it was really different from what we have in the States and also really good!

We ate and ate and ate. Haruka is a General Surgery resident studying for the USMLE to come to the US. It’s so interesting how people in Japan want to leave to go to other countries. We love it here so much it’s hard to imagine, but I guess we often want what’s new or different and get used to what we have.