The Japanese Manners of Visiting a Patient in a Hospital

Flowers, fruits, or sweets — these are the very common gifts for hospital visits in Japan. When you go to see someone there, what do you give them?

In American movies, I often see people bringing colorful balloons to visit a patient in the hospital. I’m not sure it’s ordinary in the States, but it’s not in Japan. Almost all Japanese bring a present, as I wrote before, and mostly flowers. It must seem so cliché, but we have unique Japanese manners for お見舞い (omimai), or going to see a patient in the hospital.

First of all, choose clothes carefully. You shouldn’t be dressed in all black, because it reminds patients of funerals. Try to choose light and soft colors, if possible, like the kind of colors that would make the patient feel better. Sometimes strong smells make them worse, so avoid wearing perfume.

Second, there are some manners to send flowers. Never give them a potted plant. The potted plant will take root. When describing “taking root” in Japanese it is 根付く(neduku). Neduku can also be written in a different way, 寝付く, which means staying in bed. This brings us a bad image. Send an arrangement or bouquet of flowers. But you have to be careful to choose the flowers’ colors. Only in cold colors could remind of funerals, and dark or deep red reminds of blood or bleeding. So if you want to send flowers, light, soft, and warm color arrangements are best.

There are also flowers we shouldn’t select. First don’t choose 菊(kiku), chrysanthemum, because it’s a typical flower used to decorate funerals in Japan.

椿(tsubaki), camellia, and 山茶花(sazanka), sasanqua, are said to be unlucky because part of the flower will fall after blooming, and it’s thought to look like a head dropping.



↑ 椿 (tsubaki, camellia)



紫陽花(ajisai), hydrangea, is a type of flowers that fades. Flowers fading makes people imagine a life fading.



↑紫陽花 (ajisai, hydrangea)



シクラメン(shikuramen), cyclamen, should also be avoided. When we write cyclamen in its phonetic equivalent, the first two characters can be written in this way — 死苦. 死(shi) means death, and 苦(ku) means bitter, difficult, or harsh.

百合(yuri), lily, is a very strong smelling flower. For the same reason of not wearing perfume, let’s not choose it.



↑百合 (yuri, lily)



These flowers are very beautiful flowers in daily life, but you shouldn’t choose them when you visiting Japanese friends or co-workers in the hospital. Even though they may not care about the images brought by flowers, their family could mind.

However, we sometimes have to think of other gifts because depending on the room, there could be no space to have flowers anyway, or some patients may have hay fever. If a patient is placed on a restrictive diet, we can’t bring food either. And during hospitalization, patients are required to bring many appropriate personal belongings: chopsticks, a mug, a few pajamas, a pair of slippers, some towels, a box of Kleenex, and more. So we want to avoid something that’s too much to carry. In such a case, I recommend books, magazines, or a テレビカード(terebi-card), a prepaid TV card.



　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　↑prepaid TV cards           　　　　     ↑TV card vending machine



While they are in hospitals they have plenty of time. But they can’t kill time easily there. So your presents will be very helpful for them. When they finish reading books or magazines, they can leave them on a bookshelf at a lounge in their hospital. And magazines are easy to throw away. In Japan, almost all hospitals have a fee TV at each bed or room except private rooms. So if patients want to watch TV in their beds, they have to buy a TV card beforehand because it’s necessary for watching TV. When they don’t use up a card they can refund at the hospital.

The best thing is you won’t need to visit your loved ones in the hospital; but if you do, I hope this helps.

Recession: Despair or Hope?

In recent years, many industries are trying to survive the next generation in this continuing worldwide economic recession. Therefore they began cutting costs and jobs, getting out of some unprofitable businesses, or slimming down in just about everything. Ironically, those countermeasures create a deeper recession and therefor Japan is going into a vicious cycle of deflation. As a result and unfortunately, people called 買い物難民(kaimono-nanmin), or shopping refugees, have emerged. These are elderly people having problems getting to stores.

When I was a child, many people still shopped at specialized retailers, such as a butcher, fish shop, grocer, liquor shop, or rice shop. We bought only what we needed. With the changes of the times we promoted rationalization for everything, so our life became more convenient and efficient. Since people began to buy everything at one-stop stores like a supermarket, many nearby retail stores lost customers. And more, many people began to stock up food at cheaper priced supermarkets to save money and time.

In that tough situation, small retailers closed their stores and streets became like ghost towns. Those areas are called シャッター通り (shutter dori), a Shutter Street, because many stores closed their shutters. Several years later, Japan, along with the rest of world, slid into our current severe recession. Many supermarkets began closing their businesses, even though they were the only places where people can shop in those areas. After those supermarkets closed, many elderly households began having serious trouble getting to stores because there is no store around, no helping hand, and no transportation facility. Since they can’t drive, they have to walk with bad legs for a long time to get necessities for life. I don’t think the recession is the only reason for this; maybe it’s just a trigger. The買い物難民 situation is contributed by many Japanese social problems: the continuing recession, a fast-aging society, increasing numbers of nuclear families, and more.

Meanwhile some people have started a new service for helping elderly people having shopping problems. They are not working at a large company. They’re working at sort of a mom-and-pop shop. Twice or three times a week, they visit door to door selling necessities to people longing for daily fresh food, or something heavy like a carton of milk, a bag of rice, or a bottle of soy sauce, etc. They are also having several different types of small portions of food prepared, which are the most popular. To satisfy customers, they are trying to have a wide variety of goods and accept requests. This service is also helping to deter elder solitary death. Even though they are sure there is high growth in demand, expanding their service is difficult due to a bad cost-revenue ratio.

Now companies are required to read the future and fit current public needs at the same time. If big companies can coexistent with small business, much more public needs might be fulfilled. Even though it is impossible to accept all of them, some of their new ideas and challenges will give us hope for the future. I think the service for 買い物難民 is hope for both, people having shopping problems and people seeking new business opportunity.

Newspapers, TV news, other mediums, and we ourselves tend to highlight only a bad side of our current situation. But I think this continuing recession brings not only a bleak future, but many hidden opportunity. Recession brings both despair and hope, especially for companies. So, let’s keep our chins up! The darkest hour is always just before the dawn.