Fundamental Fitness: How to Avoid a Transplant

Posted on 03/30/2021 Last updated on 05/31/2021

Top Photo: Timothy Ian Horn, used with permission

There’s a sickness that cannot be cured with simple rest or over-the-counter medicines. It won’t affect someone all the time, but it will affect everyone some of the time. The symptoms can be hard to see, but you will feel them. The sickness I’m talking about is the dread HS: Home Sickness.

As the saying goes; home is where the heart is. But a heart transplant costs far too much for this common issue. Home sickness is something that everybody warns us about, and it is often laughed off, till it hits you or someone close to you. I know exactly what you are about to say: It’ll never happen to me!

And I’m sure that for some it won’t. For those that it will, there’s good news. By following a basic (mental) exercise routine anyone can keep the dreaded HS from hitting them. It is all up to you which of exercises you choose to make a part of your life, but I recommend doing at least three every month with one a week being a good minimum. Personally, I try to do number three multiple times a week. But here we go:

Walk

It is widely regarded as a good form of exercise, but we should not overlook the added benefits of a good city-walk. While I call it walking, I actually recommend bicycling for this as well, purely for the ease of movement that makes a city-walk so much more interesting. I’ve been doing city-walks wherever I live, be it back in South Africa or any other country I visited.

The purpose is always the same, get out, see the city, and find new places. We can get trapped in our own heads when we stay trapped in our own rooms or houses, especially now that we are looking at a global situation forcing social interaction to be limited. So get out of your own house, air out that gray matter, get some fresh air, and make sure to go down the side streets.

Eat

Eating correctly has long been held as a cornerstone of health, thus it is only fitting that it be included in this article about (mental) health. This has two parts: 1) Finding places around your residence where you can get something akin to comfort food. A nice ice cream shop, or a ramen restaurant, or so forth. 2) A place where you can get food that will help you relax after a stressful day of hearing 150+ reading tests where half of the students forgot to study for it.

Next, you should look for food that reminds you of home. I know that this sounds difficult, but let me share my experience and methodology with you. I love spicy food and even back in SA I preferred a good burn to a mild sizzle. This in and of itself is not a problem, but my favorite spicy dish is curry. I have had the opportunity to eat many different types of curry in my life, so I was excited to try curry in Japan.

To say that the curry here is mild is a serious understatement. Often it is sweet, and though flavorful, it does lack a certain bite that I associate with the word “curry”. So I made it my mission to find a small curry restaurant that makes authentic Indian curry. The joy of finding it and the nostalgia of eating a true spicy curry did wonders for me. (That I had to go there multiple times and ask them to make each order hotter, is a completely different yet tasty story.)

Finding that link home in the food is a wonderful thing, but sometimes to find that direct link, we need to get creative. What I want to do in the future is revive an old tradition I had, where a group of us expats from different countries would get together and share our food culture with one another.

Talk

Communication is the name of the game, and talking has long been known to help people manage their frustration. So what do you do when the only person who you can speak English to are the people working closely with you? That is when you need someone in another country that can listen to you. This is so much easier these days as technology has advanced to the point where a basic internet connection can have you speaking to and often seeing your loved ones back home.

But what happens when you want to talk about things with someone that is not family? Once again, technology comes to the rescue with the advent of groups. I personally belong to 10 different interest groups, some here in Japan and others overseas. The reason for so many is that while some of the groups are really active, some go many months between messages (often by yours truly asking a question or for a check in). Even in this time of social distancing, we can still stay connected to our friends and families.

Do

What do you do in the moments in-between? I want you to think about that for a minute. Doing is about actively being in a different state of mind from your normal everyday life. The easiest way of doing this is to practice your hobby here in Japan, or even just taking up a new one. Do you like nature? Japan has beautiful camping sports as well as some great fishing spots. More into shopping? Go window shopping and keep your friend up to date about what’s available here. Interested in anime and manga? Well, yeah, you know what? I probably don’t need to tell you that this is the place to be for that…

Hobbies are for your well-being, and a way for you to actively seek something out instead of just sitting around doing nothing. Be it something that you do alone or with other people (socially distant of course) it is for your own benefit to have a hobby that you can indulge in from time to time. For those who haven’t found their preferred hobby yet, this is a good time to try out something like photography or fishing. Both work wonders to get you to focus on something other than work. Or, if you are more a ‘house mouse’ type, even something like knitting can help you de-stress, and allow you to make some cute handmade gifts.

Conclusion

I know that life currently makes social interaction a bit more risky, but by being smart and keeping the areas I spoke about in mind, you too can keep your (mental) health high and the dreaded HS at bay.

Finally, I just want to remind everyone who stuck through this that even though it might not always feel true, we are not alone, and with just a little bit of effort, we can stay in touch and up to date. Stay well and stay safe.

Photo Credits:

Top Photo: Timothy Ian Horn, used with permission